4 BIG TRENDS. Owners Guide to. In Construction Project Delivery And The Technologies They Need To Work

Transcription

1 Owners Guide to 4 BIG TRENDS In Construction Project Delivery And The Technologies They Need To Work New methods of project delivery promise on-time results, within budget. As an owner or manager of buildings or infrastructure, what are these trends, and what technologies do you and your vendors need in order to take advantage of them?

2 BETTER project delivery methods demand better supporting technologies. By definition, design and construction are highly collaborative, and success depends on how well the hundreds of people who make up your extended team communicate and collaborate with each other and with you. Successful collaboration delivers more successful projects. Poor collaboration results in disputes. Over the years, some very bright minds have developed ways to reduce risks and improve collaboration and information management. You ve undoubtedly heard of these trends: Effective collaboration demands tools for bridging silos and managing project information. 1. Building information modeling (BIM) 2. Design-build (vs. design-bid-build) 3. Integrated project delivery (IPD) 4. Lean design & construction (also known simply as lean ) What are they, really? What do they offer you, as a building owner? And what tools do your design and construction companies need to execute these methods more successfully? This ebook looks at each trend and the technologies essential to making them work. 2

3 TREND 1: Building information modeling BIM centers collaboration around 3D models. With building information modeling (BIM), the design team builds digital, three-dimensional models of a project well before a shovel breaks ground. Like IPD, BIM requires lots of inputs up front, in the early stages. To add to the complexity, the BIM process requires the sharing of really big models among numerous contributors. On top of that and this is the biggest benefit and hurdle 3D design software produces sheet sets in minutes. Such productivity is great if quality assurance processes can keep up, which they usually cannot, having been designed for much slower CAD sheet generation. Fortunately, just as software for BIM is introducing better ways to collaborate, software for PIM project information management is introducing better ways to collaborate and manage BIM information. Unlike PIM software built in the past, which favored either the design or the construction team, newer PIM technologies serve both worlds. A simple demonstration of that versatility is found in design-build companies. New collaboration technologies recognize that BIM is a subset of PIM. 3

4 TREND 2: Design-build Design-build eliminates bidding as a separate phase of your project. With design-build project delivery, you determine a budget, and it s up to the design-build team to meet it. As with IPD and BIM, early collaboration is essential, because for design-build to work, your architects and engineers need to produce a design that your construction team can actually build within your budget! Collaboration between designers and builders is easier said than done when the two teams usually prefer different systems for collaboration and project information management. The design team prefers a system that manages and file transfers, whereas the construction team primarily needs to manage bid sets and submittals. It s uncommon to find one collaboration technology the design team and construction team both like to use. Fortunately, new systems have arisen that work for both sides of the D-B house, design and construction. Information silos fall and teams work more productively. Those technologies that suit both ends of the design and construction spectrum are ideal for our third Big Trend, integrated project delivery

5 TREND 3: Integrated project delivery IPD stimulates creativity by rewarding collaboration. The big difference between IPD and traditional design-bid-build project delivery is that IPD makes individual project participants responsible for and rewards them for total project outcomes, not just their individual performances. Total project outcomes looks beyond schedules and budgets to include other goals important to the owner, such as cost of ownership, sustainability, absence of claims, and more. Collaboration is key in IPD. Team members who wouldn t normally have input until later in the process contractors, for instance suggest time- and money-saving ideas in the design phase, when changes are easier to implement. IPD benefits from software robust enough to manage its fire hose of activity. The intense teamwork of IPD exceeds the capabilities of conventional collaboration technologies. , spreadsheet logs, and Dropbox file-sharing can t handle the fire hose of activity IPD creates. These first three trends IPD, BIM, and design-build emphasize collaboration between design and construction teams. Lean is a project delivery method being used to improve collaboration among individual team members. 5

6 TREND 4: Lean design & construction Lean replaces command-and-control management with collaborative, visual planning. Lean design and construction incorporates a few Big Ideas, among them: The people who actually do the work are in the best position to know when they ll complete it. Scheduling is easiest when it s visual. Lean methodology displays each work item with a color-coded card on a wall or board, sorted by core workflows as simple as to do, in process, and for review. Everyone can see the status by its position on what s called the kanban board. The obvious challenge is that physical boards are only available upon a visit to the site office. Plus, it takes time and invites error to generate reports from paper notes. New lean planning software provides a digital kanban board accessible from a laptop in the office or a tablet on the jobsite. Better yet, reports are fast, accurate, and generated in a lean fashion! Everybody wins, although no one more than you, the owner. Lean planning software eliminates collaboration practices that are decidedly not lean! 6

7 TREND SUMMARY: Silos must go! The 4 trends are built on collaboration, transparency, accountability and respect. These trends IPD, BIM, design-build, and lean are growing in popularity because they break down silos, which means you benefit from fewer adversarial relationships and potential litigation. When projects fail, it s all too often due to missing or incorrect information. Put another way, success requires all team members have 24/7 access to ontime project information. That raises an obvious question: How can you, the owner, assist in improving collaboration and project information management? Do your design and construction vendors have the tools they need to succeed with the four trends? 7

8 TECHNOLOGIES for success IPD requires tools to manage and more. More collaboration, fewer silos. That s the prescription for integrated project delivery and the other trends outlined above. But conventional project information management practices increase silos: Individuals hoard in their inboxes. Individuals have data on their tablets and smartphones that is not filed to the larger project record. The individual companies that make up project teams each maintain records of project information, ensuring those records will disagree. Software for project information management breaks down silos: It s easy to file with other project documents. It s easy for anyone in the company to quickly find and other information, even if the person who filed it is no longer with the company. The software automatically logs the who, what and when of transmittals. Project information in the cloud is equally accessible to everyone, and everyone works from the same files. With the right software, team members can manage IPD s wealth of s, files, markups, meeting notes and more. When your teams are more efficient and effective, you come out ahead. 8

9 TECHNOLOGIES for success Building information modeling requires technology to manage BIM s inputs and outputs. BIM-related challenges include all those of IPD, plus the challenge of managing fast outputs of sheet sets: They all need to be quality-checked. They all need to be named correctly. They all need to be logged so you know who received what, when. They need to be distributed ASAP. Because BIM is a subset of PIM, project information management software improves management of all the inputs to the model, as well as its outputs. It s quick and easy to manage sheet sets from the model. Distribution occurs the moment documents are quality checked and approved. Distribution includes downloads to apps on ipads, making updates available immediately. The right software cuts down that whole process so it s quick, efficient and gap-free. Everyone wins, but especially the owner. BIM is a highly collaborative process that just happens to include the sharing of huge files. 9

10 TECHNOLOGIES for success Design-build requires both sides of the house to work in sync. Design teams struggle with and file transfers. They re hard-pressed to turn around RFIs and submittals quickly. Construction project managers need to get drawing sets to scores of bidders and dozens of subcontractors. They need to track who s received what, and it helps to know those recipients have actually downloaded the files. Construction PMs have their own challenges with RFIs and submittals, too. And both sides of the house need to log their actions in case questions or disputes arise later. The right software for collaboration and project information management serves the full spectrum of the design-build continuum. This flexibility, plus automatic logging of every transaction, are two sure ways to reduce conflicts and meet schedules. And what owner doesn t welcome those outcomes? Something as simple as a combined file viewer and markup tool can streamline workflows for everyone. 10

11 TECHNOLOGIES for success Lean design and construction provides visual planning to visual thinkers. Lean is a natural for the construction industry since most of its workers think visually. But lean is much more than a kanban board. The key to success with lean is for it to infiltrate every pore of an organization. It may start with construction scheduling, but soon a light goes on in people s heads, and they re removing waste and adding value to every process they encounter. Billing? Materials procurement? Vendor selection? They can all be more efficient and more effective. They can all be lean. Like other tech discussed here, kanban software captures a project record for later reference. One key to expanding the scope of lean is to implement kanban software that lends itself to more than construction scheduling alone. Not all software is equally adaptable. Whether evaluating vendors or improving your own internal operations, consider lean as a way to empower people, eliminate waste, and raise the value of actions and outcomes. 11

12 OWNER success Take ownership! As an owner, you re committed to the full lifecycle of your building, from designing and building it to maintaining and renovating it. Rather than delegating critical oversight to general contractors, believing you as an owner have no need to follow the day-to-day progress of your projects, you have much to gain by overseeing construction, such as by viewing submittals turnaround times, which can provide advance notice of schedule delays. PIM software in your organization enables you to better manage existing projects and tap the information in your archives. What s more, you have much to gain by managing the wealth of data that makes up the project record. After handover, a complete, digital, searchable project record is useful to the facilities managers maintaining your building, not to mention future architects you hire to renovate. New technologies support new project delivery methods that make your projects more successful. As the owner, put them to work inside your own organization, and specify that your design and construction teams use them! 12

13 The Newforma SOLUTION Collaboration & Project Information Management Mobile & Desktop Apps for individual productivity Cloud Services for team collaboration Enterprise Software for company performance 13

14 ABOUT Newforma Newforma develops software that building and infrastructure owners, architects, engineers, and contractors use to collaborate and manage project information. Newforma provides apps to empower individuals, web-based collaboration software to strengthen construction teams, and an information management platform to optimize company performance. Newforma was founded 2004 in New Hampshire, USA, and maintains offices in the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Singapore, and Australia. On more than two million projects worldwide, design and construction professionals are using Newforma products to improve collaboration, increase transparency, ensure accountability, and reduce risk. Whether you re working in the office, from the cloud, or on the go, Newforma products liberate you from administrative tedium to do the work you entered your career to do. newforma.com Newforma Australia newforma.com.au Newforma Singapore newforma.sg Newforma GmbH newforma.de Newforma France newforma.fr Newforma UK newforma.co.uk Intuitive. Collaborative. Intelligent.