If you get a group of experienced CAD journalists, vendors, analysts and users in a room they will say that the construction industry would be a better place if a 3D building model was to communicate design between all the stakeholders. However, most design communication in the construction industry today is by 2D drawing or by document. This suggests a serious gulf between best practice and common practice. What's going on?

The most common explanation is simply the fragmented structure of the construction industry. Creating the 3D building model in the first place will cost the designer more, and the return on that investment will accrue downstream, to the building user, the building owner, the contractor etc. That's the system and we can't do anything about it.

I don't think that is good enough. If we do think a building model will create more value, then market mechanisms should distribute that value up the chain to the building model creator. Those of us who work with the construction industry have got to "try harder".

Last October, in Nice, a group of partners and directors from the European construction industry joined a summit meeting sponsored by Bentley systems. Among the presentations and networking meetings were a set of breakout sessions where small groups did "try harder". They identified the barriers to adoption and some action lines that could be a first step to overcoming the model free culture. I attended these sessions and this article draws on those discussions. However, I take full responsibility for the assertions and opinions in this article.

Our cast of players took as read the benefits of using a building model:
Better quality of decisions when the stakeholders are reviewing a model, as the representation of the project leads to lower lifecycle costs. This in turn creates value for the client as a developer, and their client as an occupier.
Greater certainty as to the costs of the project at an earlier stage that allows developers to proceed faster, and with lower risk premiums on the projected return on investment.
Design and construction companies want to be known for signature buildings. When they use a model they can express more complex ideas without increasing the risks of construction mistakes and cost overruns.
Staff aspire to create great buildings. When they are working to co-ordinate and record design decisions in a model they are doing what they are best at. Few staff aspire to working on co-ordinating revisions across tens of working drawings. Empowerment creates better motivated, more effective employees, who add more value for their employer. It's more fun as well as good business sense.

Most enterprises in our economy use buildings. Property, along with raw materials and labour, is one of the top three ledger cost lines. If management is serious about improving profits for their shareholders, an obvious action is managing property costs as aggressively as procurement of materials and negotiation over wages.

Because the construction industry value chain is so complex, it is difficult for managers to know if they are overpaying. They often do. Most towns have a building that only gets sold on, or let, at the height of a boom. On examination that's because something went wrong in the construction phase. The only time the owner or leaseholder can recover their cost is to move on when prices are on a roll. Building occupiers don't have visibility or metrics that let them know if they are overpaying because of incompetence at the building stage. At present, decisions are made on subjective rather than objective measures.

Making this economic benefit more transparent would enable industry to justify building more detailed models at an earlier stage. Manufacturing industry has proved that practice leads to lower costs and extra value. Construction is going to follow suit, it's just a question of when.

The analogy that comes to mind is that of a parent getting a small child to sleep when he wants to stay up. As the child gets more and more tired, his behaviour gets more and more irrational. But sleep is inevitable. The parent has to be consistent and patient! A skilled parent can overcome barriers to sleep and accelerate the time when peace will reign.

At the summit, our groups brainstormed barriers to the acceptance of models. These started with the client's low expectations. When the client is a developer who will sell the project on to a pension fund as soon as it is let, this is understandable. However, the owner/operator market and property companies have a business model where reduction in the building's construction and running costs flows straight to the bottom line. These clients' expectations can most easily be raised, and satisfied.

Perhaps the biggest barrier, though, is the work culture in firms in the construction value chain. As Mark Twain said, "I'm all in favour of progress, it's change I hate". Change costs money. A project focused culture leads to short termism. The day to day time pressures mean that it's difficult for the various parties in the chain to find the time and resource to change working practices. There are still problems with inter-operability between CAD and related systems that cause a great deal human interaction to interpret and re-input data. Set up costs to create a solution are too high and standard component libraries too hard to find and use. Particularly in contractors, staff are used to drawings and not used to models. They will need training to change their working practices and to gain benefits in efficiency.

Finally, there is the barrier of the way fees and costs are distributed up and down the chain. This has to be adjusted for the change to take effect. However, our group thought that the pressure on scale fee structures was already enough to force change. We feel that, after a period of pain for the less efficient, this barrier would go away of its own accord. Interestingly, one construction company director present said his company had an established measure for quality of the information received from each architect/engineering firm. When they bid to clients for projects designed by those architects and engineers, the bid contained a premium related to the metric. The cost of poor quality design was already being passed on.

Having reached a consensus on these barriers the groups brainstormed action plans. Overall the conclusion was that the key is to identify who has the power to trigger change, and then providing education to facilitate that change.

Our analysis is that the key trigger is building developers wanting better profits. They can be educated to ask their suppliers, the architects, for more accurate information on the costs that the building will consume in occupation. They can then use this information in lease negotiations.

Possible allies are the Enterprise Application software vendors like JD Edwards and SAP. They are hungry to expand their clients' financial efficiency. Today, they simply provide financial information to management. In future, they want to show companies how what-if scenario planning could improve decision making. Property costs could be an important factor. Could these vendors, who do have the ear of the CFO, be part of the solution? Certainly, it is facility management practices in large management consultancies that have produced most of the studies to date. Management education doesn't come cheaply from that direction.

Not every developer nor architect will change. Owner occupiers who commission buildings have the most obvious economic interest in cheaper buildings across the lifecycle. We need computer literate managers at all stages of the building lifecycle from design through construction to occupation. Probably it is the younger architectural and engineering practices who are more ready to change.

The classic take off point for a brash new practice is to win a competition with a sensational building that complies with the brief's constraints. After that success, they will need to work hard to differentiate themselves. The ability to sell the lower lifecycle cost from occupying their buildings could be one angle. Maybe one trick is a bit of sales training for architects.

We do need case studies that can be widely publicised. Can anyone provide me with examples where the building owner did in fact demand a building model from his contractor and design team? Does any occupier get the building model, so that a second user can plan and visualise their layout, using information generated during the original design of the space?

The Bentley International Building Summit provided an opportunity to think longer term. The insights from networking were really valuable and we're all now in a better position to translate some of our ideas into actions. We'll be talking to our construction industry contacts over the next few months to find a few pioneers.

Mike Evans

mike.evans@cambashi.com

A version of this article was first published in the February 2003 issue of AEC Automation.

Other Cambashi articles that may be of interest:
Is PLM applicable to AEC?
A-E-C Systems 2002 review

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