Decomposing Services

I had a very nice conversation with Bob Smith of Tall Trees yesterday about building services. Bob is one of my co-conspirators launching the Building Service Performance ONTOLOG group. Bob had just submitted the laundry list of check-offs developed by the City of Irvine for its construction process to the ONTOLOG discussion.

I was both happy and disturbed to receive this document. These check-offs clearly drive the contracting process, They are also inherently backward looking, enshrining the best practices of yesterday as we move forward. The best practices of yesterday are better than the normal practices of today, but can be the enemy of better practices going forward. They trade innovation for good enough.

The ONTOLOG (just google it) project is to define an ontology of Building Service Performance. The problem we are trying to resolve is that while people want specific services from their buildings, we always specify technologies or systems, which is something quite different. Buildings may be providing alert students, productive office workers, or regulated environments to store labile chemicals. By discussing the services rather than the systems, we can

• Allow earlier discussion of / decisions on building goals in keeping with buildingSmart approaches
• Move conversations about building performance to the business level where commercial building owners will get interested (we want to provide healthy office space metrics in the upper quartile while staying within energy use goals).
• Commissioning then gets re-defined in terms of service performance effectiveness rather than in terms of system operations, a much more useful measurement.
• Commissioning numbers that look like B are simple enough to get built in to the sales and leasing processes for commercial buildings, enabling owners to monetize improved performance.

Check off lists such as Bob provided are the opposite of this approach. Nonetheless, I agreed to try to dig up two other documents that are contrary to the goals and thinking of the new group.

One such document is the original list of nearly 50 vertical control system markets that we came up with as oBIX was launching. These systems are specified in buildings now, but only rarely with any sort performance or business deliverable tied to them.

The other document I am trying to come up with is a comprehensive list of ICC (International Codes Council) domains. It struck us during conversation that many of the ICC areas deal with avoiding the failure to perform these services. While we are trying to twist these services around into a new ontology, a list of all the services which must not fail to be provided would be useful.

I have found neither list yet. If you think you have one, please send it along.

Why BIM, Why Now

When I prepared my talks for REALCOMM this week, I had assumed that many of the attendees, active in REITS and large property managers, would be familiar with Building Information Models (BIM), and in particular the Nation BIM Standard (NBIMS) and buildingSmart. Regular readers are familiar with these, but because some new readers may be coming from the conference, I am going to review quickly why the property owner should know BIM, and demand buildingSmart.

The traditional business process is designed around delivery of hand drawn paper. CAD automates paper production, but not the completion of business process nor the tracking of deliverables. CAD only works for simple buildings, without fine tolerances and building controls. Because bits of information are spread over multiple two dimensional (2D) drawings, issues are not properly resolved in advance. Duct may be routed through a steal beam. Plumbing may block the telecommunications chase. Multiple utilities may not even fit above the dropped ceiling.

Capital projects need to adopt the disciplines and use of information technology adopted by manufacturing in the 80’s. It takes diligence, experience, and time, to catch these problems in a CAD project; in a large complex project, the task is too difficult. Usually they are caught during the construction process, creating additional expense in the form of change orders and construction delays. BIM is the answer.

Best Practices in Information Exchange relating to Capital Projects are codified in the National Building Information Model Standard (NBIMS). NBIMS aims to create a common standard for electronic exchange of all information associated with a building new or old to be able to use that information in all stages of the facility life-cycle. This information model allows the free flow of graphic and non-graphic information among all parties to the process of creating and sustaining the built environment.

Newly valued deliverables are not linked to traditional business process. For example, Energy Modeling, has no intrinsic link to design. The designer is not liable for it. Using BIM, energy models can be generated directly from the design, in effect commissioning the design before it goes to bid.

The following are symptoms of the poor information exchange using traditional design approaches:

• Failure to adequately integrated complex systems during construction process
• Late construction change orders
• Failure to hit Energy Modeling targets
• Difficult or undefined Commissioning targets
• Incomplete designs, especially of control systems, mean that there are many modifications during construction; these modification increase the cost of obtaining accurate as-built information.
• The many changes during construction make it difficult and expensivce to get as-built drawings of completed projects.
• Ill-defined and ineffective hand over of operating instructions mean that information is inaccessible.

NBIMS produces the following immediate benefits:

• Standardizes construction documents in line with national and international standards
• Models rather than draws buildings so problems are caught before construction, when they are cheap to ameliorate.
• Run Energy Models directly against Building Models to enable iterative energy analysis, even during value engineering
• Contractors are able to bid electronic Building Models, not the piles of paper.

ASHRAE has published the following numbers on the benefits of using a building model for construction.

Design:

• 20% to 50% reduction in Design Cycle Time
• 100% Accurate Procurement package

Construction:

• Time and Cost reductions 20% to 40%
• Reduced Rework
• Elimination of most change orders
  

Operation:

• Life-Cycle O&M reduction 10%-40%
• Reduced Handover/Turnover time

I don't see how you can afford to not use BIM on your next project. Please write me if you want to know more.

Development & Planning with Google Earth

I honestly had not thought much about Google Sketch Up until Wednesday morning. It’s a nice enough 3D drawing application, easy to use, as far as it goes. It even has a snappy photo draw feature. Import a photo, identify the sight lines and horizon, and start tracing. Sketch-up knows enough to create a model from your tracing.

You cannot, however, do anything too sophisticated with it. You cannot interact with masses. You cannot get any BIM out of it. I felt it was an interesting sketching tool, and nothing more. I was not very interested.

Of course, I had neglected the benefit of network effects, failed to take into account how easy connections between systems create new value, value beyond that of the system itself.

One of the network elements is Google 3D Warehouse. 3D warehouse is, at first glance, a YouTube of models drawn in Sketch Up and submitted to the warehouse. One’s chance of finding something useful is limited by the accuracy with which the submitter tagged the sketch. There are many 3D cats, an eerily life-like disembodied head of Barak Obama, and so on. Manufacturers have uploaded a large library of 3D objects that you can include into your models. There is also a growing library of actual buildings in the 3D warehouse.

Sketch-Up also uses its shared heritage with Google Earth to eliminate the positioning or “origin” issue of most low end building drawing programs. Most drawings are at the center of their universe. This makes combining multiple drawings is hard. Sketch Up drawings are all located in space. You can select a town, or you can place your drawing at a latitude and longitude. Initial daylight analysis is almost effortless.

One final network effect was the interaction with Google Earth. You can pull up, say, an intersection in using Earth. From Sketch Up you can then grab the site and place it your building sketch directly on it. When you are done, you can post your building directly back onto Google Earth and share it with others.

Well now, this is different. Zoning and public planning processes can now be performed in shared real time using only free tools. Public access, including public submissions, can be straightforward in this environment. Community groups and planners can work from the same models, visualized the same way, with computers they have already.

Complex interactions between buildings can be explored. A new building might cast a shadow, or a wind shadow on an adjacent building. Does this increase heating requirements? Does it reduce on-site generation capabilities? Does it instead reflect more light on the existing building, causing increased heat load?

Zero Net Energy buildings will be concerned with energy interactions at this level. Early easy visualization might let us notice these interactions early in our processes, so we can plan for them.

Field BIM: RFID and the transformation of the Job Site

Monday at FIATECH I learned about Field BIM, using BIM to bring lean manufacturing techniques to the job site. The approach was illustrated using a case history of the ongoing construction of Giants Stadium.

The new Giants stadium was entirely designed in BIM, meaning that complete three dimensional objects for the entire stadium were known in advance. The major structural components are a steel frame and pre-cast concrete forms. In essence, the largest issue on site is the most efficient assembly of these pre-existing modules. Examples of complicating issues are that erecting the steel frame for the upper decks would block access of cranes to lift inner pre-cast units into place.

An additional challenge, one that turned out to be an opportunity, is that the new stadium is collocated with the existing Giants stadium. This meant that the site staging was severely limited, as job site and parking for the old stadium were in direct conflict.

The team set up direct data exchanges between the scheduling system, the BIM software, the job site management system, and augmented it all with RFID tags. RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) is the name for the tagging technology that is used for inventory control in modern stores and warehouses.

Using the 4D BIM (BIM over Time), the team created an optimum sequence for assembly. This work was shared iteratively with the project management system, until a plan that the construction team could commit to was finished. This schedule was transmitted to the fabrication companies creating the pre-cast concrete. This schedule was also synchronized with the job site management software.

The fabrication plants received all forms as templates in CAD, and the delivery dates expected for each component. Just as in lean manufacturing, the agreements allowed no product to be shipped to sit until they were needed. This, by itself, improved efficiency because all on-site inventory was easily visible.

One of the requirements for the job was that an RFID tag was cast into each pre-cast module. This tag was then scanned and associated with the matching module in the job site scheduling system, which was them marked as “Manufactured”. The tag was re-scanned at the key stages of the module life-cycle: QA Inspection, Shipped, Received, Inspected (again), Erected, and, occasionally inevitable, Damaged.

This approach enabled the construction managers to anticipate problems at every level and prevent changes to the schedule. When looking ahead, the manager relies on the assembly schedule prepared in the 4D BIM. Looking ahead, the expediter could see instantly which materials needed in the next week were on site or en route. With only the materials about to be installed on-site, inventory and hunting time were minimized. As each module is scanned during installation the current state of the construction gets updated automatically, and re-synchronized back into the BIM.