World Building Congress 2013 - 2

As I had promised in an earlier post, here comes a synopsis of the works presented at a selection of the sessions I attended during the World Building Congress 2013. Summaries are grouped according to their subject area rather than the chronological order of presentations:

a) Briefing

Peter Johansson from Jönköping University in Sweden touched on the value of use of IT in the briefing phase. His suggested solutions were DRofus and PTS applications which are based on the concepts of standard rooms and functional requirements. Visualizing and discussing a set of devised solutions early in the design process are essential parts of any efficient briefing process according to him.

b) Design

Bob Giddings from Northumbria University in the UK lectured on architectural design quality evaluation with an example from sheltered houses in North East England. One of the most important issues that he raised was that performance aspects of design alternatives could easily be documented and evaluated, while more qualitative measures such as atmosphere, comfort, and aesthetics cannot be captured with normal tools. In line with this, the lecture by Sebastian Macmillan from Cambridge was focused on evaluating an entire building design project. He presented a report on outcomes of implementation of the method, critical success factor framework, for gauging successfulness of students’ design projects at the Royal College of Art.

c) Procurement & Green Building

WLC minimisation with integrated procurement vs
conventional methods (Murray et all., 2013)

Moving on to the in-between phase in the construction procedure, Alex Murray from the University College London articulated why he believed that an integrated procurement should be considered as a substantial enabler of any whole-life-cost (WLC) estimation approach. He presented the outcomes of his studies on a number of benchmarking methods for evaluating the procurement phase, namely Capex and Opex. Robin Hardy from the University of Canberra looked into procurement from another perspective: in her interpretation, procurement is not merely confined to the stage between design and construction; rather it prevails, in one way or another, during the building’s entire life cycle. There were some amazingly controversial citations in her presentation such as “Sustainable procurement is dependent on skills and competence of the staff rather than established universal routines”; or “Even though procurement is an important stage, it may quite often be a barrier to sustainability”!

This was not the only occasion where the key to a genuine sustainable building practice was traced back to sustainable procurement (also termed as green procurement). Robert Crawford, from the University of Melbourne talked about environmental impacts of the construction supply chain. He put forward an alleged set of tiers of supply chain among which the highest amount of direct energy consumption was asserted to be associated with onsite construction activities. Manufacturing of structural elements, concrete, ceramic, and metal and wood building elements exhibit the biggest potentials for energy optimizing according to Crawford.

In a broader context, Scott Kelting (California Polytechnic State University) notified how global decision-making procedures influenced ubiquity and efficiency of green buildings. His studies encompassed key influences, central visions, and guidelines for green building around the world. A major global challenge is maintaining a satisfactory balance between functionality and environmental friendliness, according to him. Limits to mitigating negative impacts of natural light such as glare and heat is an example. Joseph Lai from Hong Kong Polytechnic University talked about another aspect of green building practices: mandatory reporting of greenhouse gas emissions from buildings. He provided an account of the guidelines for the FM sector in Hong Kong for reporting their CO2 emissions. In this case, reporting was limited to residential and institutional buildings and even this was implemented on a voluntary basis.

d) Building Knowledge Management

BIM Execution Plan Cube (Mitchell, 2013)

As expected, a good number of papers including mine were focused on building knowledge management. Not all of those works had been submitted to the AMIDDS track (Architectural Management and Integrated Design and Delivery Solutions); which was held during the two last days of the congress in the Plaza Hall. Lonny Simonian, for example, presented his research on challenges ahead of implementation of BIM in electrical engineering for producing prefabricated assemblies. A key factor in a more widespread use of such models was more suitability of such models for contractors and more willingness of the owners, he contended. The finding seems to also prevail in other domains of the industry.

Among the papers included in the AMIDDS track, David Mitchell talked about the requirements for a successful 5D BIM practice and emphasized the roe of early implementation of BIM in a design-driven approach. In his second presentation in the form of an exploratory dialogue together with Scott Lambert, Mitchel accentuated advantages of effective involvement of subcontractors in the construction procedure in an appealing. Many things should be made clear in the kick-off meeting of the project including terminology, tools that people use, and how to share savings realized by using BIM, in their opinion.

Will BIM technology be also profitable for small enterprises? This is in fact a very frequent question among AEC practitioners. Matthijs Prins from Delft University of Technology shed some light on this topic. Declaring the fact that 60% of the architectural firms in the Netherlands consist of one or two people, he explained the results of their research on implementation of BIM at small architectural firms. They had based their survey on a level-0-to-4 scale for implementation of BIM. Those who had accomplished more than four projects in BIM were considered as experienced cases. He concluded that the usefulness of BIM for small architectural firms was actually not as low as it was quite often perceived.

Iva Kovacic from Vienna University of Technology also pointed out that construction is an SME-dominated industry with 95 % of firms being constituted of up to five employees. She criticized insufficient education time for AEC practitioners (a two-hour-per-year average education time), expensive software licenses, expensive skilled BIM staff, lack of standards for BIM-oriented planning (in Austria), fees being set for linear processes rather than collaborative methods, and multifarious applications at use. According to her results, there is still extensive need for face-to-face contacts among team members despite all technological progresses.

Information in the Mirror World, with services
for the Real World (Tarandi, 2013)

Tarja Mäkelänien from VTT emphasized the importance of roles such as BIM champion and the need for re-engineering processes for getting the most out of BIM. Geoffrey Booth from Texas A&M University described their sustainable real estate development practice using quadruple net value analysis and BIM. Väino Tarandi (my advisor) introduced the proof-of-concept system for a sustainable urban collaboration hub (SUCH) developed at BIM Collaboration Lab. The system envisions a holistic trans-sectorial, trans-scalar, trans-phasic, and trans-disciplinary spatial knowledge management by means of open-standard life-cycle-support data formats. This offers a wide range of desired functions such as version management and loss-free data transaction across actors and corporations, according to Tarandi.

In search of an understanding of the affordances of BIM in the construction phase, Christoph Merschbrock from the University of Agder in Norway had tapped into tacit knowledge of the practitioners. This was in fact a worthy and detailed report on how diverse capabilities of BIM technologies are met, attained, or dismissed by different AEC actors and firms. Among the multitude of the works on automated building-permit procedure, Eilif Hjelseth from the Norwegian Building Authority explained a recent Norwegian initiative, Byggnett. The paper presented by Johannes Dimyadi from the University of Auckland in New Zealand dealt more or less with the same topic. The key to a fully-automated code-compliance checking practice is developing a standard legal data exchange protocol, according to him.

e) Safety

Among numerous works on safety at construction sites, Helen Lingard from RMIT University talked about methods and indexes for measuring health and safety in construction, in general, as well as their own initiative, multi-level measurement. In another presentation, Kristina Sulankivi from VTT introduced a BIM-based automated safety-checking tool developed jointly with scholars at the Georgia Institute of Technology. The proof-of-concept tool is based on a ruleset that controls the building model for the most common safety issue i.e. falls from height. The approach can be propagated to other sources of risk, according to her. 

Millesgården

"Angel Musician" by Carl Milles

Indian Head

Carl Milles' hearty desire was to bring his works of art to the public realm and to bring people to his art. This is evident all around Millesgården where sculptures are all integrated elements of a whole. The united sequence of chambers of different sizes, forms, colors, and atmospheres are subtly settled in a sublime public garden delicately enriched with a plethora of heavenly figures. Columns, the beloved elements of Milles, are present allaround the garden together with other reminders of Roman art and architecture. Paintings of Carl's wife, Olga Milles are also on display at Millesgården, located in Lidingö north of Stockholm.

God's Hand

There are two major characteristics that differentiate Milles' work from his contemporary artists: firstly, they have been designed and articulated as installations to be placed in specific locations either in the garden or in the outside world. Those not installed in their intended settings, for any reason, have been assigned a new location and role in the domestic constellation of Milles' works in Millesgården. Moreover, Milles hardly believed in any virtue for originality and uniqueness of the works of art. He used to produce his works in numbers and shrewdly marketed and sold them. Some of his most well-known works have not even been made by himself. "God our Father on the Rainbow" installed in Nacka Strand, for example, was crafted by one of his pupils years after the original bronze model eventually failed to be developed into the monument for peace for the United Nations building.

The last crystal clear and sunny Saturday in Stockholm was a timely opportunity for us to make a visit to Millesgården together with a number of members of SIRAP. An informative guided tour around the garden by Katja Stemme and an exhibition of the impressionist collection, "Painters in Normandy" complemented our visit.

World Building Congress 2013

During my thirty-hour rail trip from Brisbane to Cairns, I came across more roof solar panels than any other local Australian feature. I would now prefer to associate this country first and foremost with its vibrant social atmosphere, good wine, good food, sunny days, and welcoming, friendly, and easygoing people rather than kangaroos and koalas! Yet, those exotic ibises with their iconic long curved beaks freely wandering around the city were reminders of the unique flora and fauna of the continent.  

The alluring city of Brisbane hosted this year’s World Building Congress. The event was somehow overshadowed and influenced by recent natural disasters around the world, namely floods in Queensland and New York City and earthquakes as well as the financial crisis. The most concurrent topics among the works presented were resilience, sustainability, safety and security, offsite manufacturing, integrated design and planning, and smart building knowledge management. More or less similar topics have been introduced and discussed in the first series of CIB Research Roadmaps. 

The major theme of the congress, construction and society, was brought up, emphasized, and clarified in concrete terms by the Minister for Housing and Public Works of the Queensland Government, Tim Mander. The eventual goal is to add value to buildings through – among all - innovation, PPP constructs, and whole-life cost analysis, according to him. 

The first keynote speaker, Prof. Martin Fischer from Stanford University communicated their most recent findings on how to simulate numerous possibilities of a construction project before actual construction. The answer to the question “why we come up short in projects?”, in his opinion, can be traced back to organization and prediction. Here comes a list on some other topics Professor Fischer touched on in his talk: the importance of the stage following the design phase and prior to construction, clear-cut clarification of the goals of the project, elimination of uncertainties, on-budget, on-schedule, and quality projects, staff working for the project rather than for the company, continual evaluation and redefinition of the process, manufacturing building elements based on digital models, deployment of laser scanning for post-construction determination of discrepancies, implementing Multidisciplinary Design Optimization method (MDO) for balancing carbon footprint against life cycle costs, using Space Constraint Method (SCM) for evaluating efficiency of use of construction space, and integrating subcontractors in the design team. 

During the afternoon keynote speech of the first day of the congress, Peter Verwer, head of the Property Council of Australia expressed an enthusiastic appraisal of the cities and their pioneering role in our modern societies. Urbanized and connected living areas nurture productivity, he asserted. Urbanization, IT, and globalization are three major contemporary driving forces that should be benefited for creating flourishing and evolving cities, he believed. Nonetheless, bringing the language of technology and that of business closer to each other is an essential requirement for more efficient urban services. 

Later on, during the panel discussion of the first day of the congress, a number of global challenges ahead of the building industry were put forward: 

• Still 30% of construction work is done onsite (on average). 
• Building Information Modeling is quite often comprehended as a technology that customers are reluctant to use. 
• Basic requirements and strategic guidelines for creating economic shelters and modernized settlements seem to diverge extensively. 
• Costs of building are increasing because of the higher costs of the newer technologies. This poses a serious threat to small construction firms. In the Netherlands, for example, 60% of the construction firms of today will vanish away by 2050 
• Costs of operating and maintaining public welfare equipment will double by 2040 due to increasing costs of technologies. 
• Green buildings should be replaced by resilient buildings. 

During the second day’s panel discussion, Carol Le Gall, chief executive director of the Centre Scientifique et Technique du Bâtiment (CSTB) notified contemporary challenges in the building industry with regard to optimization of production and consumption of energy, carbon, water, and waste. She continued with a comprehensive report on CSTB’s project for analyzing real-time indoor air quality; LUM’AIR. Prof. Peter Barrett from the University of Salford concluded the session with an inspiring talk to remind a neglected matter of course: what the overall role of the entire building industry is. Research activities in the field, in his opinion, may follow educational, economic, social, or environmental concerns; but they should eventually have a holistic impact and relate to how the buildings affect people. At the same time as agents in the FM sector neglect the impacts of their possessions on the lives of the mankind and simply regard their profession as a business similar to any other profitable affair, our built environment either contributes to health hazards such as Alzheimer, anxiety, and vision problems, or nurtures healthy and thriving societies. Finally, Lyn Beazley shed some light on recent technological achievements realized in the far western Australian port of Perth and Curtain University. The initiative for transforming non-visible parts of the light into energy by using photovoltaic cells and nanotechnology is an outstanding example of their cutting-edge research projects. 

The afternoon keynote speaker of the second day, Brian Krause from Turner BIM gave a ravishing lecture on their most recent developments in the field of BIM technology seasoned with demonstrations of a software solution for BIM-enabled facility management and operations developed at the University of Columbia. He touched on a variety of topics and issues in the field of use of IT for construction including authoring BIM execution plans, evaluation of total cost of ownership (TCO), turning SketchUp into an object-based modeling tool by means of plug-ins, pushing legislative boundaries forward by submitting a 3D safety model to NYC municipality, optimizing clash detection functions of existing applications, use of barcodes for more automated maintenance routines, and promoting lean BIM processes. 

The third day’s keynote speakers, Dr. Wim Bakens and Dr. Shyam Sunder depicted, among all, the CIB’s general research roadmap. Dr. Wim Bakens clarified the necessity of a research roadmap as a glossary of agreed-upon definitions and an overall conceptual model. Contemporary construction research institutes, namely CSIRO, VTT, TNO, bre, and CSTB need to be able to demonstrate that their concerns are relevant, they have access to all members of the community, and are capable of efficient and effective knowledge exchange and  collaboration. Implementation of research in practice is also momentous which calls for a closer contact with the society, industry, and government. He then noticed the fact that there is a tipping point for the percentage of investment in construction out of GNP to secure a positive contribution to development of the society. This could be termed as the built environment’s caring capacity; a concept that is closely intertwined with decline of building and the optimal peak of new construction. He articulated his proposed remedy as, among all, implementing different types of business models for overcoming the declining market, more efficient risk management, and future-oriented, sustainable, resilient, affordable, and adaptive buildings... I will probably provide a summary of other contributions in a separate post later on. 

David Mitchell, Christoph Merschbrock, Eilif Hjelseth, and me got together in a bar in Brisbane's South Bank before the last night congress dinner

BIM-boost

As agreed a while ago, today I made a rather concise presentation as part of WSP consulting Group's BIM-boost event held at Visualisation Center in Norrköping. The first part was a brief introduction of Building Information Modeling (BIM), BIM repositories, and the universal concept of open BIM. After the break, definitions and categories of activities within the facility management and operation phase of building were reviewed. Finally, implications, impediments, and empirical examples of informed facility management and operation routines were briefly presented.

As far as I knew, other speakers were more focused either on the status quo of implementation of BIM in the construction market, or detailed instructions on use of specific software. I tried to take a different approach by departing from the literature available on building data modeling and life-cycle perspective on building data management. Yet, each section was rounded up with introducing capabilities of several prominent commercialized solutions in each area. Definitions and common applications of BIM, aggregate data models, BIM repositories, introduction of buildingSMART, IFC (Industry Foundation Classes), facility operations and maintenance, Computerized Maintenance and Management Systems (CMMS), Building Condition Index (BCI) and Key Performance Indicators (KPI), COBie (Construction Operations information exchange), and FM:BIM:BAS loosely coupled constellations were the minor topics covered in my lecture.

Visualisation Center in Norrköping

Who earns from BIM?

On Friday, 15th February, people from different firms and disciplines within Swedish building industry gathered at Clarion Hotel in Stockholm to hear more about BIM (Building Information Modeling), this time with a focus on the financial gains of the technology. The seminar was jointly organized by WSB consulting company and Byggindustri magazine. Here comes an elective summary:

The session was initiated by Mats Lindgren's report on the actual situation of implementation of BIM around the world: Adoption of BIM in the United States is, in brief, broad but not mature enough. In Scandinavia, Finland, Norway, and the Netherlands are more advanced. Mandating BIM deliverables for public projects is planed to be enforced by 2016 in the UK. South Korea, Singapore, and Hong Kong are the pioneers among the east Asian countries, while there is no accurate evaluation of the situation in China. Australia and New Zealand are fairly progressive, while AEC firms in the Middle East, India, and Africa have stepped in, but with a slow pace in comparison.

Facility managers, who where not that interested in BIM technologies in 2009, are now more avid according to studies on perceived usefulness of BIM across actors and disciplines. PEAB has a considerable rate of BIM implementation in the design phase, but their construction sector yet largely relies on previous work flow configurations.

Ewa Hedberg presented an interesting report on results of surveys on the perception of BIM by Swedish AEC/FM companies. Attitudes span over a wide variety of standpoints and strategies from a total indifference, through implementation but no engagement at managerial levels, to some type of strategic agenda with no actual manifestation. An amazing conclusion was that a great number of actors believe that this is the owners and facility operators who can get the most out of BIM. There will thus be no incentive for design and construction crew in providing elaborate BIM's, if the eventual end-users are not willing to pay for their efforts.

Some positive views around BIM are as followed: problems are more easily discovered during the design phase rather than construction using BIM; BIM is definitely a time-saving tool; BIM tools are modern and cool! BIM helps attracting smart people to firms. Fewer errors, higher quality, and efficient use of resources are undoubted gains in the construction phase. According to Rikard Espling from Skanska, the profits gained by BIM are measured according to effective material use, reduction of accidents, quick preparation of quantity take-offs, and discovery of mistakes from design.

Perceived obstacles, on the other hand, are: organizational problems, staff engagement, and lack of expertise; many prefer to continue with prevailing traditional routines that they are accustomed to; specially the older generation find BIM only an unnecessary pushing force with no considerable positive effect; small firms can not afford rather high expenditures of establishing BIM systems; there are numerous uncertainties on what exactly BIM is, how exactly it should be implemented, what types of information it requires and from which resources should such data be obtained, and is it only confined to new construction?

Despite a unanimous positive view of all actors, not sufficient thorough studies have yet been conducted on indicators for usefulness of BIM in facility management. People are often bewildered about how to translate visions into concrete outcomes and scale down the concepts to tangible daily applications. Nonetheless, some advantages are now being more clearly pronounced and comprehended: enhanced computerized problem reporting, quickly articulating optimal solutions, fast and accurate area calculation for commissioning and ordering commitments, provision of detailed information for operational decision making, etc.

The event was concluded with a intriguing panel discussion among Staffan Åkerlund (Byggindustrin), Malin Lösjögård (Svensk Betong), Anne-Therese Albertsson (Trafikverket), Rikard Espling (Skanska), and Pontus Bengtsson (WSP). One of the audience suggested a thoughtful explanation on why the building industry is always lagging behind others in application of new information technologies such as BIM: what is missing here is the global market pressure and competition that other disciplines such as car industry are constantly exposed to.

The uncomfortable truth, at the end of the day, is that almost a decade after advent of Building Information Modeling tools, there is still need for introductory clarifications for the industry. Moreover, as almost all speakers declared, there are not fully established methodologies for quantifying the gains brought about by BIM. Participants mentioned however some approximate figures ranging from one to 15 percent as the ROI incurred by implementation of BIM. One aperture of hope is that more light has recently been shed on the importance and profitability of BIM for facility owners and managers, meaning that a higher demand from the real end-customers of building information models could be conceived and expected in the near future. This means stronger motives for the authors of BIM content and shiny prospects for an efficient, informed, and collaborative equilibrium for building industry.

A more social and cooperative living milieu

Around three decades have now passed since the first collective houses were constructed in Sweden. The main principle behind the initiative is buying or renting out an apartment, and mutually possessing and undertaking the responsibility for administrating the common areas of the building through consensus and cooperation. As a compensation for the generously spacious and quality shared spaces such as kitchen, dining hall, gym, sauna, guest apartment, and library, buyers and tenants have to pay for a slightly higher surface area than their own unit. One who rents out a 37 sq.m. apartment, for example, pays the rent for 44 sq.m. 

Yesterday, I showed up for a visit to Dunderbacken collective housing complex which was built in 2010 in Hägersten (Stockholm). The visit was organized by the Swedish Museum of Architecture. General information about the community and administrative routines by the head of the association (föreing) were followed by explanations from the building's designer, Thomas Hultegård, from the Architects' House (Arkitekthuset) in Jönköping. According to him, the core idea was to create a number of inner yards, keep a distance from the excavated rocky hills in the vicinity, and provide residential units with numerous and various views through a crooked layout for the building's footprint (in the southern side). This helped  Shrewd choice of material and detailing has been made to prevent formation of algae, mosses, and fungi on façades. Balconies (the very popular elements!) were contrived for as many units as possible within spatial and economic restrictions. 

Collective housing is now much more popular than its early times in Sweden, when it was mainly the way of living some intellectuals had acquired as a way to challenge the ever-increasing consumerism, alleges Dick Urban Vestbro, professor at KTH and the chairperson of the "Collective Housing Now" (Kollektivhus Nu) association. This form of living is not specific to Sweden and is also practiced in Denmark, the Netherlands, Germany, United States, and Italy. There are however also some drawbacks with this approach: quite often, it becomes rather difficult to maintain the gender balance among residents and women take the majority; besides that, housing shortage causes that even people who have no genuine interest for such a life style end up in collective houses barely in search of accommodation.

Sources:
http://www.arkitekturmuseet.se/program/
http://dunderbacken.dinstudio.se/
http://www.familjebostader.com/Ny-bostad/Bogemenskap/Ett-satt-att-bo-och-leva/
http://www.svd.se/naringsliv/livsstil/bo-tillsammans-har-blivit-inne-igen_7921410.svd

Stockholm's new residential buildings

The real estate company, Wallenstams will build two residential buildings in Sundbyberg (a municipal division in Sweden which is nowadays fully swallowed in Stockholm). Houses are designed by Vera architectural firm and will be built by DMJ construction company. The two 16 storey buildings totally accommodate 180 apartments including 60 one-bedroom, 60 two-bedroom and 60 four-bedroom apartments as well as commercial spaces at ground floor. The sculptural volume of the buildings with its light concrete and sandblast aluminum façade is envisioned to create a lively and spectacular shadow play. Selling begins summer 2014 and residents will move in half a year later.

It is now being more promoted and advocated that the IPD approach (Integrated Project Delivery) shouldn't cease at the end of the construction phase. The term "Project", in this sense, also applies to commissioning and operation of the building calling for a more prominent role for the owner. All around the world, more and more real estate companies are actively participating in the building process since right in the beginning. Swedish real estate firms are no exception, rather are fairly active and progressive.

Source:

http://www.fastighetochbostadsratt.com/Projekt/45232-Byggstart-for-180-bostadsratter-i-Sundbyberg.html

buildingSMART Data Dictionary

Last November, Nordic buildingSMART's workshop on Data Dictionary was held at KTH, Stockholm. It is perhaps more convenient to provide a summarized background before I proceed to my short report on the major topics discussed during the workshop:

buildingSMART is a neutral, unique and international non profit organization that aims for standardizing building information exchange and thus facilitate the smooth flow of information through the entire life cycle of the building. Data Dictionary is one of the three major components of the buildingSMART's initiative which serves to link existing product and material databases to disciplinary building information models (BIMs). The aim is generating a global IFD (International Framework for Dictionaries) library to be used by all actors around the world.

BuildingSMART data model and and buildingSMART processes are the two other components. The former is best known by the vendor-neutral and object-based building information model, IFC (Industry Foundation Classes) which is based on EXPRESS modelling language and is registered by ISO as ISO/PAS 16739. The latter is often translated as Information Delivery Manual (IDM) and is devised for filtering out portions of a building model for specific contractual situations. IDM is linked to the concept, Model View Definition (MVD) which defines a subset of the IFC schema delineated by certain data exchange requirements.

The dominant theme of the discussions at the workshop was how should problems triggered by trans-sectoral, trans-cultural and linguistic diversities in building industry  be overcome in search of a consistent worldwide standardization practice. Participants did not fully agree on - among others - whether GUIDs (Global Unique Identifiers) of materials, products, etc. suffice or actual names should also be incorporated in building data models.

It was emphasized by attendees that manufacturers and material providers play a momentous role in realization of bsDD. They should thus be motivated and conducted through both encouraging and mandating strategies to provide their product specifications in standard and life-cycle-supporting formats such as EPD (Environmental Product Declaration) and Omniclass instead of commonplace paper or PDF manuals.

Participants believed that IFD is intended to and will be the ultimate solution for overcoming current limitations of IFC. The global data dictionary of tomorrow should be flexible enough to swiftly navigate between different classification systems and cover the wide range of fully generic to very specialized object specifications. BuildingSMART Data Dictionary makes it possible to envision coexistence of radically different representations of the world accessed through simplified API's as well as user-friendly interfaces.

Source:
http://www.buildingsmart.com/

Happy 2013

I would like to post some photos of my trip to the dreamy German city of Weimar last month as a belated Christmas blessing. Thanks to Fredrik Kopsch, we - a group of Ph.D. students from KTH's Department of Real Estate and Construction Management - made a short trip to Bauhaus University and participated in an amazing colloquium together with students from the corresponding department at the German university.

Weimar is a unique cultural venue in the sense that the city is rich in cultural monuments and memorials spanning over such a wide temporal period that encompasses Goethe and Schiller from the 17th century as well as the Bauhaus movement and modern art and architecture.

Bauhaus University - Mensa

Bauhaus University - Main building

The University Library

Weimar Schloss

Goethe and Schiller - Theaterplatz

BIM for FM

A presentation for the course Facility Management (AI2119) last month forced me to put together my results so far. The initial part was as usual a short summary on Building Information Modelling (BIM), its definitions and common applications. This was followed by an introduction to the Integrated Project Delivery (IPD) contract method as a business enabler in building industry. The necessity of BIM for this approach by underpinning informed work flows was then demonstrated in a couple of slides. The third  and last episode of this first part was a clarification of the need for a vendor-neutral all-inclusive implementation of BIM if it is truly aimed to be used for promoting an integrated approach. This is, as you may guess, the buildingSMART's initiative termed as open BIM.

The first part was a prelude to the second and the main part of the presentation on FM:BIM - BIM for facilities management. This was initiated with basics of facilities management with regard to the knowledge management tools and systems that are used in the field. Subsequently, problematic areas namely work flows, contracts and IT tools, a number of available standards (e.g. IFC and COBie) and tools (such as FMDesktop, ArchiFM and Bentley Facilities) were shortly introduced. The presentation was rounded off by some words on what I tend to call FM:BIM:BAS. Actually, not so many applications support simultaneous integration of the BIM model and the Building Automation Systems (BAS) into the FM application of the client. Onuma Systems and EcoDomus are two prominent examples.

Architectural Concept

Architects are mainly interested in form, engineers much more in technology and economy, and both groups are largely apt to fall into overpositioning in their assumptions. Construction managers, on the other hand, are more pragmatic and indulge themselves in communicating and planning their relationships. Architects often strongly deny that they follow some specific style, rather allege that they tend to adhere to a set of "guiding principles". 

These were conclusions of one of the students groups participating in the course "Architectural Concept" (AI2802). As part of the final session for project presentations, a number of construction projects were introduced mainly with regard to the relation among the designer and the construction manager. One of prominent examples was Aula: the 7-storey landmark at Karolinska Institute in Solna. The well-coordinated collaboration among the client (Akademiska Hus), the design firm (Wingårdh Arkitektkontor) and the contractor (NCC) has made it possible to bring the complex curvy mass of the building and its intricate glasswork detailings into reality. The students' conclusion was that the well-established and seamless oral communication among the two teams helped developing the trust required for underpinning a fruitful collaboration.

A number of mixed rental apartments and condominiums together with a number of public projects were also introduced with Rosenbergs and Vera consulting firms as the designer and Wallenstam as the contractor. All of these projects are located in Norra Djurgårdsstaden, the new sustainable district of Stockholm. Higher energy saving, better environmental performance, efficient rain water management and higher green building scores are some common goals in Norra Djurgårdsstaden; while economic hurdles of green roofs, structural difficulties with wide cantilevers of continuous balconies and conflicts with the Royal National City Park (Kungliga nationalstadsparken) on land exploitation are the main challenges.

The last presented project was The New Karolinska Complex (Nya Karolinska Solna - NKS) which I had briefly introduced in one of my previous posts: a mixed research, education and healthcare center located at the conjunction of and joining together the two municipal divisions of Solna and Stockholm. NKS will be the third but the foremost component of the planned lifecycle cluster encompassing Stockholm University (SU), The Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) and NKS. The major design firms - White and Tengboom - have aimed to provide equipped rooms, a combination of modern and light and brick-like materials, a handful of artworks and interior intricacies as well as uninterrupted machine pathways all around the building. These are devised respectively for a commendable integration with the existing urban context, a warm and hospitable atmosphere for patients and their visitors and robot-aided transportation of clothes and instruments. The major criticism against the design is though the lower number of beds maintained compared with existing facilities.

Initiatives such as the course "Architectural Concept" are valuable steps towards a more collaborative approach to education of building construction and design. The course was being held at the KTH School of Architecture aiming for exposing the construction managers of tomorrow to the atmosphere, mindsets and working contexts of design professionals of the future. The career is heavily dependent on an array of digital tools that over increasingly demand for more trans-disciplinary collaboration and converging workflows.

Sources:
http://www.ncc.se/sv/Byggnader/Offentliga-byggnader/aula-karolinska-institutet-solna/
http://stockholmprojekt.blogspot.se/2012/02/norra-djurgardsstaden-norra-2.html
http://www.nationalstadsparken.se/default.aspx?id=1777
http://www.nyakarolinskasolna.se/

An informed and collaborative conception process and so on and so forth

1.

As part of the course "Architectural Concept", I gave a lecture yesterday at KTH School of Architecture, about characteristics of the ultimate digital media for design conception. It was preceded by an appealing and inspiring presentation of a selected array of works of Tham and Vinegård architectural office by Martin Vinegård. The new School of Architecture of KTH with its radically curvature exterior was among the works.

The first and main part of my presentation was an assortment of brief introductions to a number of subjects with regard to their relation to building design initiation and implemented tools and media for this purpose: architectural concept, Integrated Project Delivery (IPD), Building Information Modelling (BIM) and BIM model servers.

Since not all students were familiar enough with topics such as BIM and IPD, it was not possible to fully focus on the main theme of building conception tools, though I utilized such an index-style and summed it up all by introducing concrete examples of available digital tools in the field. Examples varied across a broad range of media from environmental analysis plug-ins for SketchUp such as gModeller, IES VE and OpenStudio to collaborative and integrated use of Excel sheets, SketchUp and Onuma BIM Server. My intention was to emphasizes the importance of interoperable and easy-to-use digital tools for realizing an interactive, collaborative, information-rich, analytic and visual building conception process.

2.

I got both surprised and delighted when Jonas Runberger showed me their 3D printer and some basic "printed" volumes in School of Architecture since I had already indulged myself for some time in reading about the phenomenon here and there. There are lots of potentials in this trend; yet in order that building industry may in its full capacity benefit from 3D printing for automation and optimization, fabrication and manufacture of building products and material among all need to undergo revolutionary changes.

3.

Finally, contacts were made for arranging a 3D laser scanning experiment here in our department and I am enthusiastically looking forward to that. Newly-constructed buildings are only a small fragment of the entire building stock. Hence, in order to be able to efficiently preach and practice approaches such as sustainability and BIM, it is strongly required to capture existing built environment and translate the data into pieces of knowledge that are commensurate and compatible with our contemporary building information. 3D laser scanning has proved to be an opportune entry gate to this field.

Architectral Competitions

Last Thursday, 13th September 2012, 17:00, a discussion meeting on architectural competitions was held at the Technical Committee House (Tekniska Nämndhuset) jointly by the City Planning Office of Stockholm (Stadsbyggnadkontoret) and the Swedish Association of Architects (Stockholms Arkitektförening). The panel was composed of Karolina Keyzer (City architect), Catherina Fored (SA), Boel Hellman (SA), Yves Chantereau (Sveriges Teknik och Design), Torun Hammar (Statens Fastighetsverk) and Magnus Rönn from KTH as expert. Erik Jarlöv from SA and Niklas Svensson from the City were the moderators.

This was in fact a discussion on part of the Chapter 4 of the architectural guidelines for the city of Stockholm which has been composed by the City Planning Office and is now being put into consultation chapter by chapter to be incrementally modified and completed. Here comes a summary of discussions:

Current binding and recommended principles and guidelines for formations of physical body of the city are mainly articulated in the two available official documents: Stockholm's Vision 2030 and Stockholm's comprehensive plan. The former determines what should be built in Stockholm, while the latter clarifies where exactly those constructions should take place. Architecture Stockholm 1.0 will in turn specify how this should be realized.

It has happened many times before that the winning design has eventually put aside and replaced by some other design in the construction phase. It is thus of great importance for the jury to be able to also evaluate technical and economical feasibility of designs parallel to their functional and aesthetic and merits. One of the approaches that can guarantee implementation of the elected design is devising a firm juridical framework in advance. One of the EU regulations for architectural competitions is that not only the generalities of submitted designs but also the program of the design should be approved by the jury.

City Planning Office's initiative for this purpose is a new framework for architectural competitions that aims to merge the two stages of competition process and planning process to make the overall design period shorter and minimize the risk of expiration of the solutions provided by the winning design. In this approach, a combined team of jury and advisory board will help integrate the initiation phase, information phase, vetting, approval, passage and implementation.

A report on architectural competitions of different types (open and invited) in different countries demonstrated that the annual number of such competitions in Sweden i dramatically lower (even per inhabitant) compared with other developed countries. In 2011, only eight architectural competitions were held in Sweden, while this number in the same period was 40 in Norway, 60-70 in Denmark, 60-70 in Finland, 200 in Switzerland and so on and so forth.

In many countries, participation of young architects and architectural firms are encouraged in variety of ways (wild cards) and in general, competitions are considered as cultivators of cherished and congenial architecture. Architectural competitions promote innovation and pluralism. Clients and politicians can be very determining in abundance and quality of architectural competitions. In Denmark, speed-dating among participating architects and construction firms is an established routine and in Finland, there is a high emphasis on transparency and web-based communication of designs. 

It was discussed whether competitions impose extra costs to the building and thus make it more expensive. Opponents to this believed that a competition with an appropriate program outline and implementation will not affect the overall expenditures of the building adversely. Examples are when limited budget of the project has compelled active engagement of participants also in economical administration issues and the urge by the program for reflecting on this aspect in submitted proposals.

In the final moments of the meeting, some participants spoke out against the "wild card" concept reasoning that extensive and technical projects require experienced design teams with established connections and qualified partners. This was however strongly rejected by the majority of panel addressing some successful falsifying examples.

ECPPM 2012

Dinner gathering at Harpa Concert Hall and Conference Center in Reykjavik 

Last Wednesday during our weekly lunch seminar at Department of Real Estate and Construction Management (KTH), I made a short report on the 9th European Conference on Product and Process Modeling (ECPPM 2012) that was held 25 - 27th July in Reykjavik (Iceland). This was a brief introduction of four works that I had found to be the most influential and merited among those that were relevant to my field of research.

Of the wide variety of topics and tracks, these sounded to be the closest to what we do here at the Division of Project Communication: modeling, interoperability, collaboration and team working, smart buildings, ICT based products, services and innovative and emerging ICT technologies. The initial session was opened by the President of Iceland's (Dr. Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson) speech which addressed among all environmental concerns in building industry and how this can be enhanced by a more widespread and shrewd use of IT technologies such as BIM. Keynote speakers then gave amazing talks mostly focused on challenges around efficient deployment of BIM in construction and interoperability.

Here are my choices:

1) Collaborative engineering with IFC: New insights and technology (by L.A.H.M. van Berlo, J. Beetz, P. Bos, H. Hendriks and R.C.J. van Tongeren) 

The shift in perception of interrelations among domain-specific building models (1998)

This research is mainly developed at TNO and Eindhoven University of Technology and clarifies the authors' new approach to the "model" part of "building information model". The point of departure is the historical change in perception of building models from a network of inter-related discipline-specific models to a "shared data model". The authors suggest that it is again time to clarify that this "shared model" can not contain all information from different domains but is simply a "reference model", an aggregated model" or a so-called "federated model" which is limited in use (only used for functionalities such as checking, analysis and coordination) and can well be communicated through IFC (Industry Foundation Classes).

Authors' suggsted data exchange scenario among building disciplines

The authors have also delineated dichotomies such as little BIM/big BIM and homogeneous software environment/plural data environment.

2) BIM as a centre piece for optimised building operation (by B. Cahill, K. Menzel & D. Flynn)

Researchers at University College Cork in Ireland and their partners have published results of their studies on optimization of open-source BIM for using it in building operation in this project. Their goal is devising a less manual and error-prone data transfer and integrating wired and wireless sensed building data sources. For this purpose, the authors have studied a system composed of ITOBO (Information Technology for Optimized Building Operation), BIMserver (which is produced by authors of the previous article presented here) and Berkley Database.

Data Cube

Their eventual suggestion is integrating the data in a datawarehouse which in turn builds up a Data Cube. This way, the original BIM which has been created and enriched during design and construction phase, can also survive and be constant synchronized with new data and exploited during the rest of the building's life-cycle.

3) Life-cycle building control (by E.W. East, C. Bogen & M. Rashid)

This work by the Engineer Research and Development Center in United States is built over the previous initiative introduced by East: the COBie (Construction Operation Building information exchange). This was aimed at development of open standards for contracted exchange of building information and "describe the content of building asset information deliverables regardless of the low-level format in which that information is transported".

This time, authors introduce LCie (the Life-Cycle information exchange) to also integrate data from design- and construction intent models with inputs from sensors and metering and control systems. The aim is enabling facility managers to easily control their resources in practice as well as creating grounds for an efficient and authentic environmental performance evaluation of the building.

Sensor Fusion Platform

The article is enriched by introduction of basic data transfer requirements i.e. defined "sourcing" and "using" routines and current approaches to evaluation of environmental performance for a better comprehension. Future plans for developing a Sensor Fusion Platform in collaboration with BIMserver and oBIX-based OX Framework have also been outlined.

4) Accessing large 3D BIMs from mobile devices (B.D. Larsen)

This work is an interesting representative of efforts for facilitating non-expert users' access to BIM developed at Dalux (Denmark). The author's suggestion (a web-based application which was also demonstrated in the conference room) is designed for mobile devices and uses cloud servers. 

The aim is making more stakeholder BIM-capable by developing a user-friendly, interoperable and fast device with the fewest number of clicks and menus possible. This tools takes in different formats, uses IFC as internal format and is fully cross-disciplinary and interactive.

PS. At the concluding ceremony, the work by Robert Zach from Vienna University of Technology received the Best PhD Paper prize and Vienna was chosen as the venue for the next ECPPM accasion. During and after the conference, we made wonderful visits to Harpa Concert Hall and Conference Center and the Blue Lagoon Geotermal Spa. Iceland is a fantastic country with unique breathtaking landscapes and a small but vibrant and open society.

:)

Leon did not expect at all that I would take his words seriously and actually write to his boss and complement on his presentation on "issues around a central model for the entire project".

I too did not expect such a facsinating and inspiring reply from the head of TNO, Jan Mengelers:

Dear Pouriya Parsa, 

On behalf of TNO I thank you very much for passing the compliment you have for Leons presentation to Leons ‘boss’. I appreciate this, because if any, I mostly get complaints and seldom the compliments.
Not about Leons contribution, of course! Nor about the other 4500 employees, but only on my own performances. Your last remark about “mission completed” may be correct for this small mission, but for the real stuff it takes a bit more. 

Maybe another well-known mission, I sometimes like to refer to, is that of Starship Enterprise of Star Trek “Space: the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise, its 5 years mission… to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before”. 

I believe all scientific research should contribute to a better world and to the benefit of mankind. This is an everlasting mission. I hope Leons presentation was a contribution to that. It is a pity that I am not familiar with Leons presentation. I will ask him to send it to me in order to confirm your judgement.
Thanks again for your compliment!

Kind regards,
Jan Mengelers

I, in turn, appreciate Mr. Mengelers's attitude. One does not recieve such letters every morning!