Eastman begins
his chapter on BIM for designers by talking about different methods for
contracting the work of creating a building. Design-bid-build contracts separate
the design and construction parties and are the current industry standard. He
points out that there are various efficiencies associated with the system
because the different parties cannot communicate all their information so the
other party has to do the work again. Another method is design-build where a
single company is responsible for the entire building. It (theoretically)
eliminates the poor communication because all the parties are jointly
responsible. While this probably does improve communicate and reduce waste,
many engineers would prefer to work for a small company, the type of company
that cannot exist in a design-build world.
Eastman then
talks about the Integrated Project Delivery (IPD) system where all the involved
parties “enter into a single collaborative contract,” (Eastman, 200). Theoretically
this type of contract rewards all the parties when a project goes well and only
punishes the parties that cause issues. This means that small companies can
still exist but eliminate the waste of design-bid-build. BIM is what allows
this system to function – all the parties work on the same model instead of
different, sometime conflicting, sets of plans. While BIM systems still need to
improve for this to be a common reality it does show that it will be possible
for small firms to exist and reduce waste.
Eastman goes on
to talk about different ways BIM can help designers conceptualize a building. I
found the case study on Georgia Tech’s GSA courtroom software very interesting.
This software could analyze different designs to compare them based on
programming and circulation, energy consumption, and cost. This then allows the
GSA to pick the best and most economical design. One of the really cool things
that Georgia Tech developed was an integrated naming convention. For a variety
of reasons different industries have different naming conventions, they
developed a system that linked the names across industry lines thereby allowing
different analysis tools to examine the same information.
While this is
obviously very good, a few limitations stuck out to me. The first is that this
can only work if there is a huge standard manual describing the building type
(such as P100 2005). This would work well for a McDonalds or warehouse but
would probably be more difficult for a home or laboratory that needs to be very
customizable. The cost estimate system would need to be designed with great
care. A design firm could put one option in simply because it showed up as
cheaper in the GSA database even though there were other issues with it. The
design firms could also be smarter than the system; they might know an
inexpensive way to span a certain area with concrete when the computer will
think it can only be done in an expensive way.
I found Eastman’s
comments about structural engineering firms reluctance to adopt BIM software
interesting. He essentially states that engineers deal with idealized world and
BIM brings them too close to the real world (Eastman, 224). I believe that
reality is a little more complicated. While BIM can certainly improve
efficiency and decrease repetition (Eastman, 255), it takes a lot of initial
over head to redeveloped standard libraries and retrain engineers. This is also
the second round of new major software for many engineers, especially those at
small firms. He also talks about how data can be quickly imported from BIM to
structural analysis software, eliminating the need for reentry. A SAP 2000 and
Revit interface was only developed in 2015, four years after he wrote this
chapter. I imagine that as BIM systems become easier to use and interface with
analysis tools to a greater degree more structural engineers will learn to use
them.
I think you bring up good points in regard to coordination among the diverse ways in which the structure of the design process can occur (i.e. DBB, DB, IPD). Even in a large company in which coordination seems easier there are still issues that remain. Particularly on large scale projects where the central model consists of upwards of 11 linked models. This can really slow down the process and is a huge frustration for designers. I've seen companies use both CAD and BIM on an individual project in order to separate the documents that actually require BIM while single-line diagrams can be easily done in CAD, and prevents increasing the memory of a central file.
ReplyDeleteI think you bring up good points in regard to coordination among the diverse ways in which the structure of the design process can occur (i.e. DBB, DB, IPD). Even in a large company in which coordination seems easier there are still issues that remain. Particularly on large scale projects where the central model consists of upwards of 11 linked models. This can really slow down the process and is a huge frustration for designers. I've seen companies use both CAD and BIM on an individual project in order to separate the documents that actually require BIM while single-line diagrams can be easily done in CAD, and prevents increasing the memory of a central file.
ReplyDeleteThat's interesting that companies are using both CAD and BIM systems simultaneously. Most BIM software can handle complexities that CAD programs cannot. I am surprised the company is that worried about saving space.
ReplyDeleteI like the point you established at the end of this post, which mentioned that the reality is always more complicated. From my own experience, I learned that the only reason why BIM is such a great tool but it took a good amount of time for people to actually accept and use it, is because in reality many people tend to avoid risk. While conventional design process can be promising, many people simply do not want to sacrifice their time and effort to make the switch. It makes sense to me because nowadays many things are developing so fast, and there are new born technologies occurring in less and less time, and it can be very intimidating for small firms to take the risk.
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