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Transactional IncompatibilityKicking off a new series of articles, Phil Bernstein,FAIA, identifies major roadblocks the AECO industryhas yet to overcome even with the breadth oftechnologies available.By Phillip G. Bernstein September 16, 2019
Project Delivery Workshop
Courtesy Autodesk Boston skyline
This is the authorʼs first post in a five-part series covering six Autodeskworkshops that explored the relationship between emergent digitalcollaboration technologies and the challenges in project delivery.
Despite all the digital design, analysis, and communication tools at ourdisposal, the AECO (architecture, engineering, construction, and operations)
Sean Airhart/NBBJ Phil Bernstein
sectors have yet to improve significantly. How can technological, procedural,and cultural transformation combine to make the building process better?
Over the past 18 months, Autodesk (whereI was previously a vice president and amnow a consulting fellow) sponsored aseries of six workshops around the globeto explore the relationship betweenemergent digital collaborationtechnologies and the challenges ofimproving the delivery of the builtenvironment. With nearly 100 industryprofessionals—architects, engineers,builders, and owners—in attendanceacross the sessions, these day-longconversations explored the opportunitiesand challenges presented byfundamentally changing the way projectsare organized and executed via deep
process transformation and the disruptive potential of internet-enabled digitalcollaboration.
Invited by Autodesk to provide my expertise in the nexus of project deliveryand new technology, I participated as both observer and provocateur in eachof these sessions, which were professionally facilitated to guide—but notinfluence—the discussions, and learned a tremendous amount about howexperienced industry leaders see how the AECO industry actually works.
And while these sessions occurred in places as different as London and CostaMesa, Calif., the messages and conclusions were surprisingly consistent,derived from a shared sense of frustration about AECO s̓ unrealized potentialand from a real optimism that change was indeed possible.
In a series of five articles over the next several weeks, starting here, Iʼllsummarize the observations and insights of this collective effort, and outline
the most important ideas that arose consistently across the six sessions.
It wasnʼt difficult to arrive at the common and well-understood trope about thecurrent state of the industry: Players operate in silos, work is rarely efficient,and the resulting operations are risky—and frequently unprofitable. It wasimportant to get that out of the way early to move ahead to a deeper analysis.At the heart of these albeit well-founded concerns, however, was an obviouscharacteristic of information and data exchange within the AECO enterprise,which I will call transactional incompatibility. Projects are delivered with aheady mixture of various tools, standards, data types, and formats, none ofwhich are vaguely compatible, and this disaggregation mirrors—and in manyways is worse than—the structure and protocols of the industry itself. Ofcourse, tools from Autodesk play directly into this mix, augmenting the digitalcapabilities of the industry while adding to the collection of formats andplatforms.
An ideal state, however, would be characterized by information that is clear,compatible, transparent, and consistent—in other words, trustable. This ismore than a technological problem, however, and was characterized in thepast as “the challenge of interoperability”: “If only all the software were justcompatible, all industry problems would be resolved!” is a frequent plea. Butas discussions among workshop participants made abundantly clear, dataincompatibility is a symptom of a larger disease—one that is characterized bytechnical, procedural, and cultural roadblocks.
Courtesy Autodesk Beijing skyline
Technically, the AECO supply chain is just starting to be digitized, anunsurprising observation given that McKinsey Global Institute hascharacterized construction as one of the technologically slowest moving, leastproductive industries on the planet. Lacking a broad organizing force ordominant player, a panoply of applications, formats, and exchange protocolshas evolved, optimized for individual parts of the supply chain, but bydefinition suboptimized for collaboration or connection. The technologicalhurdles, resulting in a data “Tower of Babel,” are significant.
Even if an imagined technological state were completely seamless, industryprocesses for transparent, trustable interaction are far from the norm. Deliverymodels are based on mutual suspicion and inequitable distribution of risk, aswell as lowest first-cost, commoditized compensation structures. Rewards fordoing well are limited, while punishments for failure are manifold. Desires forcooperation—manifest in proper data exchanges—have limited contractualenablers and, when attempted by the brave, have no support from insurance
carriers or bonding agents. Teams looking to work closely together have fewexamples to turn to, and standards adopted by each industry segment oftenbattle each other.
Rewards for doing well are limited, while punishments for failure are manifold.
Perhaps most challenging are the underlying cultural inhibitors to trustabledata. Industry professionals are trained in silos, rarely interacting with otherdisciplines until their first project, and prioritize different objectives for thatwork. It is an understatement to suggest that architects and contractors inmost instances see the world in fundamentally different ways. Rather thancombining that insight to mutual benefit and reward, the players bludgeoneach other to protect design, schedule, and budget interests. Clients eitherdonʼt understand the attendant risk, or they use disproportionate bargainingpower to shed that risk onto their project teams. Trust is almost never part ofthe equation, and these misaligned goals make coherent, integrated processimpossible.
The industry must understand, evaluate, and solve the challenges in each ofthese categories—technical, procedural, and cultural—in order to make realprogress, and the answers depend on looking comprehensively across allthree.
It was clear from the results of the project delivery workshops thatparticipants understood that information is a vector for trust. It is necessary toalign goals, risk objectives, and ultimately the value delivered to projects byremoving inhibitors and building strategies that foster that trust. Therefore,information systems that support project delivery must achieve these ends toengender team, firm, project, and industry success.
In the next installment of this series, I will delve more deeply into thoseindustry inhibitors and define how industry experts in the workshops perceivewhat s̓ getting in the way of trustable data and coherent, information-basedproject delivery.
Most of the Autodesk project delivery workshops were facilitated by
Inhibitors of TrustIn his second post examining inefficiencies in projectdelivery, Phil Bernstein details the obstacles toimproving workflows in the AECO industry—andthere are many.By Phillip G. Bernstein September 30, 2019
Project Delivery Workshop
Courtesy Autodesk Phil Bernstein (standing, right) at one of the Autodesk project delivery workshops
This is the authorʼs second post in a five-part series covering Autodeskworkshops that explored the relationship between emergent digitalcollaboration technologies and the challenges in project delivery. The sixworkshops were held worldwide over 18 months in 2018 and 2019.
Data-driven project delivery models could dramatically improve the design,
Sean Airhart/NBBJ Phil Bernstein
construction, and operation of the built environment, but we haven't achievedthat idealized state. In this article, Iʼll examine the key issues and perceivedinhibitors to change in the AECO (architecture, engineering, construction, andoperations) sectors.
At each of the Autodesk project deliveryworkshops I described in my previouspost, the following statement was thecentral provocation: Enhanced informationexchange in AEC improves project deliveryand therefore project outcomes.
Implicit in this declaration was the ideathat information flowing across the variousconstituent boundaries was appropriate,useful, compatible, and current—in short,trustable. Participants across the supplychain agreed that the challenges herewere a combination of impediments thatfell into one of three categories: technical,procedural, and cultural.
Technical ChallengesThe first general theme was related to the technical challenges of dataexchange, the “Tower of Babel” problem. The wide array of software systemsand platforms deployed by the various AEC players creates a sizable structuralimpediment to information flow. These systems may produce data fromdifferent operating systems (PC versus Mac), be based on different workflowsand outputs (say, structural engineering analysis software versus fabricationsoftware), or manage versions badly, failing to integrate the progress of thework in concert. The resulting cacophony of data generated by myriadsoftware products for a single project can be, to put it mildly, deafening.
The most profound technical challenge lies in the space created by thetradition of AEC deliverables as 2D output (think drawings) and the potential
of 3D information. Many firms work in 3D modeling platforms—and often inBIM—but few, if any, standards for exchange of that 3D information exist,particularly if firms work on disparate platforms. This complicated issue isnʼtjust technical, although the creation, transmission, and consumption of suchdata is first a technological compatibility/interoperability problem. And sincethe days of a single, teamwide authoring platform, such as AutoCAD, are longgone, data compatibility will need more than just a global theory ofinteroperability that governs every byte.
Each player in the chain is optimizing for a different objective and theincompatible morass of competing expectations and goals makes datachallenges even worse.
Procedural ChallengesThe technical compatibility problems outlined above may, in fact, be asymptom of larger procedural challenges that face an increasingly digitizedAEC supply chain. Different software platforms, algorithms, data types andformats, and workflows are as much a product of software engineering designas they are manifestations of different and incompatible disciplinary standardsbattling one another. The canonical example of this challenge is the standardtrope that “the architect s̓ model isnʼt suitable for construction.”
By tradition, contract, or legal standard, architects and engineers are notcharged with creating “construction-ready” information but rather with what iscalled in legal parlance “design intent deliverables,” which describe the end-state of construction prior to the instantiation of the contractor s̓ knowledge.(Construction strategy, means and methods, material selections, and specificdetailing often manifest in shop drawings.) It s̓ not the intent here to argue theefficacy of this particular structural process challenge, but rather to suggestthat as digital tools are built—bespoke—for different players in the AEC supplychain, these tools will, absent larger theories of new interactions andstandards, be, by definition, incompatible.
Our workshop participants saw procedural inhibitors to smooth informationflow in many forms: getting the wrong data at the wrong time; communication
lags as information is translated and transmitted; competing—or missing—data and exchange standards; and even confusion about the meaning andimplementation of LOD (level of detail). But at the heart of these issues is afundamental characteristic of most AEC delivery teams comprising owners,designers, and builders: incompatible business models. Each player in thechain is optimizing for a different objective and, when linked together, theincompatible morass of competing expectations and goals makes datachallenges even worse.
Source: Architecture Design Data: Practice Competency in the Era of Computation, by Phillip G. Bernstein
(Birkhäuser, 2018) AEC value exchanges
A brief exploration of a traditional design-bid-build project illuminates thischallenge. The client wants to get the maximum scope and quality of workwhile paying the lowest possible price. Designers, without any help from abuilder who wonʼt appear on the project until after 80% of their work iscomplete, are trying to create a building that meets these client objectiveswhile protecting their small, fixed fee. Builders consume technical documentsproduced without their input and then are asked to assume enormous risk,
essentially promising that the resulting building can be built within owner s̓and designer s̓ constraints—about which they had no insight nor input. It s̓ nowonder that everyone has their own standards, protocols, data requirements,and, worst of all, expectations for the work of others.
Cultural ChallengesOur workshop participants suggested that there was a third category ofinhibitors to streamlined information exchange: culture. Within a project team,often formed for the one-off job, there are disparate levels of training,knowledge, and skills in the use of technology, exacerbated by the range ofdigital prowess across generations; baby boomers know how a building goestogether, but are far less knowledgeable about the technology to produce theinformation necessary to build it. Their millennial staff are skilled with digitaltools but have little idea about what exactly theyʼre modeling with thatsoftware.
At a higher level, it is difficult to find the critical leadership—at the firm,project, and industry levels—to attack these issues. When projects operatewithout even basic consensus about the goals of the players, varying businessobjectives stand in the way of progress. A gap in leadership only lessens thepossibility of working out any of these technical, procedural, or cultural issues.
Having systematically detailed the inhibitors to progress, Iʼll examine theunderlying causes inhibiting the improvement of digital information flow inproject delivery in my next article and begin to develop an argument for how tosolve these daunting problems.
Phil Bernstein's Project Delivery Series
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Home > Technology > The Roots of MisalignmentTECHNOLOGY
Posted on: October 15, 2019 ! 0
PROJECT DELIVERY WORKSHOP
The Roots of MisalignmentIn his third post analyzing project delivery, Phil Bernstein discusses its tenuous nature as well as theunrealized potential of BIM.
By PHILLIP G. BERNSTEIN
This is the author’s third post in a series covering an Autodesk project delivery workshop series that exploredthe relationship between emergent digital collaboration technologies and the AECO sector. The six workshopswere held worldwide over 18 months in 2018 and 2019.
Can a given set of data be trusted by both its creator and its users across the complex transactions that
comprise the delivery of a construction project? Information reliability was a core theme that emerged
throughout our project delivery workshops series. Technical, procedural, and cultural roadblocks combine to
interfere with opportunities for substantial improvement in building this trust. In this article, I investigate the
underlying causes of these roadblocks.
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Phil Bernstein
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In modern design and construction, almost all information is developed on digital platforms. It is not
surprising, then, that an underlying anxiety about technical problems and their root causes exists among
designers, builders, and building operators. Multiple incompatible platforms for generating data in a variety of
formats proliferate in the industry. Given that the building industry is one of the last enterprises to digitize, the
development of these tools and their outputs seems to be moving far faster than users can adopt them—much
less keep track of them and their subsequent updates. Developing “industry standard” formats for
compatibility and interoperability, however, would slow necessary innovation. The Tower of Babel continues to
grow accordingly.
The potential of BIM, touted since the approach reached widespread adoption in the U.S. market in the years
following the global financial crisis, has hardly been realized. Everyone has a lot of interesting 3D data and
accompanying metadata, but hardly anyone knows how to share the information in a meaningful, safe, and
profitable way. Even when model-based data is generated in the same so!ware tool, significant effort is
required to establish the workflow protocols, sharing approaches, and levels of resolution necessary for
trustable exchange. Digital deliverables derived from models are infrequent. As a result, BIM is o!en reduced
to a sophisticated drawing management system, as drawings are well understood and present few technical
challenges—their lack of detail, fidelity, and precision notwithstanding.
The real question posed here is one of chicken and egg: the generation of digital data and its proper use. As
Barbara Heller, FAIA, president of Washington, D.C., firm Heller & Metzger, described in a 2008
DesignIntelligence article, buildings are delivered by an “immense aggregation of cottage industries,” where
developing standard workflows, protocols, or even compatible business models is a challenge. Procedural
incompatibilities at all levels are the result: Architects, builders, and facility managers have different needs and
uses for data, making its coherent flow from design to operation almost impossible. This challenge is
traditionally “solved” by re-representing that information in each subsequent interaction of the design-to-build
process: concept drawings, construction documents, shop drawings, and then whatever hybridized or
bespoke format a building owner creates to manage the resulting information flow a!er construction
completion and the departure of the design-build team.
Further calcifying information flow is the structure of typical delivery itself, presupposed to be a strictly linear
process of phases that accompany each of the deliverables described above, from schematic design through
construction administration. Process loops—where insights from, say, construction logic might inform a
design strategy—do not exist, so important information has no route to swim upstream against the current.
While iteration of alternatives does occur within each phase “process silo,” opportunities for design strategy to
inform construction or for technical insight to improve cost estimating are made almost impossible by both
procedural and technical incompatibilities.
Even when model-based data is generated in the same so!ware tool, significanteffort is required to establish the workflow protocols, sharing approaches, and levelsof resolution necessary for trustable exchange.
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At the foundation of this tower of process-disconnects is a misalignment of management approaches. The
overarching goals of a given project, established—one hopes—at the onset of design, rarely govern the
operations or objectives of the various businesses (including design firms, construction managers,
subcontractors, and material suppliers) that comprise the aggregation. This leaves each player with the
primary goals of protecting profit margins and dodging risk, and relegates accomplishing project goals to
second place—if it makes the list at all. Information sharing is o!en incompatible with the primary goals and
perceived not as reducing risk (though it might for the overall project), but rather increasing risk to an individual
firm. Management strategies are by definition inevitably out of sync.
The resulting culture of the building project enterprise inherits these challenges: It’s hard to optimize the
management or integration of the supply chain in cottage industries, and the links in that supply chain are
tenuous and temporary. When standards between processes are established, they are o!en le! behind at the
end of a given project and reconstituted from scratch at the next. While some firms may have repeat client or
contractor relationships, the general lack of vertical integration in building makes consistent, clear information
links inchoate at best.
Managing the inherent risks of project delivery in quality, schedule, and cost should be the fundamental value
proposition of the building enterprise—to deliver a product that meets all of these goals. The return on
investment in anything that improves that proposition should be apparent when viewed through the lens of an
entire project. But since the available risk mitigation strategy in a disaggregated supply chain is to diffuse it
across as many players as possible, realizing the potential returns of reducing that risk by collective effort
becomes nearly impossible. Sharing information in any form is then filtered through that sensibility.
Source: Architecture Design Data: Practice Competency in the Era ofComputation, by Phillip G. Bernstein (Birkhäuser, 2018)
Self-reinforcing data flows between design, construction, andoperation
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Clients, hardly mere consumers of design and construction, bear some of the responsibility for this culture of
informational distrust, beyond their desire to shed risk. Design is not the proper locus for establishing the
overarching goals for a project, nor is construction the place to realize that spaces or systems have somehow
failed to meet expectations. Where BIM has dramatically reduced coordination change orders, owner-driven
changes in construction remain a serious challenge for project delivery. The inability to establish, articulate,
and reinforce project goals during project development—and to reward project teams for accomplishing those
goals—is the background against which information incompatibilities continue to fester. Information trust is a
proxy for deeper pathologies across the building supply chain.
Alas, so much technology and so few process improvements! Having set what seems to be a grim stage in this
discussion, I’ll introduce in my next post provocative proposals for solutions from the approximately 100
workshop participants.
PHIL BERNSTEIN'S PROJECT DELIVERY SERIES
Source: Architecture Design Data: Practice Competency in the Era ofComputation, by Phillip G. Bernstein (Birkhäuser, 2018)
Information uses across the delivery spectrum: Air handler example
Transactional Incompatibility
Kicking off a new series of articles, Phil Bernstein, FAIA, identifies major roadblocks
the AECO industry has yet to overcome even with the breadth of technologies
available. >
Inhibitors of Trust
In his second post examining inefficiencies in project delivery, Phil Bernstein details
the obstacles to improving workflows in the AECO industry—and there are many. >
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Home > Technology > Moving the Building Industry to AlignmentTECHNOLOGY
Posted on: October 28, 2019 ! 0 Like
PROJECT DELIVERY WORKSHOP
Moving the Building Industry to AlignmentIn his fourth post examining the inefficiencies of project delivery in the AECO sector, Phil Bernstein offersideas for an improved process.
By PHILLIP G. BERNSTEIN
This is the author’s fourth post summarizing a series of Autodesk project delivery workshops that explored therelationship between emergent digital collaboration technologies and the AECO sector. The six workshopswere held worldwide over 18 months in 2018 and 2019.
A recurring theme at building industry technology events is the efficacy of new tools and the willingness of
architects, engineers, builders, and clients to adopt them. Discussions are o"en accompanied by frustration
and despair.
Despite expressing similar concerns, the approximately 100 participants in the Autodesk project delivery
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workshops did an admirable job of setting up the challenges of trustable information, systematically describing
the barriers to information coherence, and unearthing the reasons behind these challenges.
What differentiated the workshops from the everyday conference was
the attendees’ willingness to propose solutions to attack the endemic
problems of disintegrated information in project delivery. They did not
fall prey to technologically deterministic arguments, where “if only
this or that technology worked better, all would be solved.” Rather,
they argued for a combination of strategies across three general
categories: technical (so"ware, hardware, and related data);
procedural (standards, measurements, principles of collaboration,
and contracts); and cultural (industry and management stance).
When the building industry settled on AutoCAD as a computer
dra"ing standard a quarter century ago, the file format (DWG) was as
important as the so"ware platform itself. With drawings—2D
abstractions of construction, o"en plotted on paper—as the common
denominator of interaction among clients, designers, and builders,
the move to digital exchange was smoothed by the ubiquity of DWG.
However, with the digitization of multiple AEC processes, a slew of file formats, versions, organizational
strategies, and so"ware platforms has proliferated.
Our participants argued not for a reduction in the current heterogeneity of tools, but rather a common data
environment—a cooperative sandbox—in which these tools could work logically together. They expressed
strong interest in the careful consolidation of workflows and the ensuing connections between the data
exchanged among project designers, builders, and operators. In a repeat of past crimes—the creation of
unique, non-exchangeable information—data standards and protocols are evolving rapidly within these silos,
but not between them. Given that the needs and desired results of each discipline vary, so"ware providers
should build flexible communication protocols allowing different data types to interact and relate, rather than
requiring that they be collapsed into a single common format.
An argument for more public forms of information and process creation—along with increased accessibility to
disparate data sources—accompanied ideas about common data formats. Everyone is demanding and
generating a lot of data, but the United States has few examples in which such data is organized, checked for
quality, and made broadly available to the design and construction community. Similar challenges exist for
workflow protocols; several workshop subgroups suggested public data and process hackathons to allow the
AEC world to work collaboratively on these issues.
At the core of the second (procedural) set of recommendations was the concept of performance—establishing
commonly understood protocols for measuring success. This idea was sidestepped in the early days of
digitally enabled project delivery by a lack of innovation in process: AEC players continued to work in lowest
first cost, commoditized models where measures of success were survival and slim margins, in that order.
Technology has enabled new definitions of success—lowered risk, improved building performance, less
embodied carbon—but the industry must identify and develop common metrics. These indicators should
migrate into more sophisticated digital performance agreements that bind delivery players together and
establish working protocols that can be iterated and refined. One workshop group summarized this idea as
Sean Airhart/NBBJ
Phil Bernstein
Given that the needs and desired results of each discipline vary, so"ware providersshould build flexible communication protocols rather than requiring that they becollapsed into a single common format.
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“digital performance axioms” to be shared across the delivery chain.
An illuminating example arose from discussion on BIM execution plans. BEPs are increasingly common on
BIM-enabled projects where team participants convene to establish common work patterns, data exchange,
format standards, and BIM procedures. Workshop participants argued that these protocols, currently invoked
by consensus, should be formalized and instantiated by contract, assuring that BIM projects have clear and
enforceable frameworks for execution. A good BEP can also smooth the transition of digital construction
documents to useful fabrication data.
The final solution stack examined underlying cultural barriers to information integration, which arise from the
lack of coherent relationships or shared goals across the building supply chain. At the highest level, attendees
wondered why the AECO industry—likely channeling the zeitgeist of project delivery itself—fails to collaborate
on standards or even on sharing best practices. (Participants in the London workshop did not hold this view:
The U.K. government, by virtue of its BIM requirements, has forced cross-industry integration, at least with
respect to the development of digital standards. See the so-called Level 2 BIM mandate.)
At the project level, participants suggested that the inherent values of technology and information sharing
should be declared, articulated, and converted to value during business development and marketing activity.
The opportunity to define a project with these objectives must begin not a"er the rush to mobilize, but rather
before the design and construction teams themselves are selected. The value propositions of information
coherence—efficiencies, better resource utilization, error reduction, and, in short, better work—can come to
the fore when they are most likely to become part of the DNA of the project: at its origination.
Finally and perhaps most profoundly, workshop participants discussed the need to redefine risk standards in
information-driven project delivery models. When BIM concepts began percolating around 2004, a parallel
discussion emerged about new models of integrated delivery, partly based on the collaboration potential of
Source: Architecture Design Data: Practice Competency in the Era ofComputation, by Phillip G. Bernstein (Birkhäuser, 2018)
Information uses across the delivery spectrum: Air handler example
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Troubleshooting CommonSlab Problems >
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robust and transparent model-based data. It quickly became clear, however, that this data could not be fully
leveraged unless the traditional sorting of project information and insight between designers and builders—
intended to shield each respective party from liability—was abandoned. Radical “shared risk” models emerged
as a result. But radical change is rarely a good strategy in an industry that is characterized by conflicting
narratives of high risk and thin margins—and is continuously wary of lawsuits.
Thus new models of risk and return are required, perhaps generated by newly inspired cooperation among
industry associations, since innovation in risk management is unlikely to emerge from the insurance or
underwriting industries. When embraced, information sharing has the counterintuitive outcome of reducing
risk by increasing clarity.
Perhaps only ambitious and innovative clients can start this ball rolling. The delivery chain would likely and
willingly follow along.
In the fi"h and final installment of this series, I’ll describe how the workshop participants envisioned the end
state of digitally-enabled project delivery, and its implications for the future of design and construction.
PHIL BERNSTEIN'S PROJECT DELIVERY SERIES
Transactional Incompatibility
Kicking off a new series of articles, Phil Bernstein, FAIA, identifies major roadblocks
the AECO industry has yet to overcome even with the breadth of technologies
available. >
Inhibitors of Trust
In his second post examining inefficiencies in project delivery, Phil Bernstein details
the obstacles to improving workflows in the AECO industry—and there are many. >
The Roots of Misalignment
In his third post analyzing project delivery, Phil Bernstein discusses its tenuous
nature as well as the unrealized potential of BIM. >
The End of the Data Rainbow
In his final post on project delivery in the AECO sector, Phil Bernstein envisions a
digitally integrated, transparent process that could operate as efficiently as the
internet. >
Phillip G. BernsteinPhil Bernstein, FAIA, RIBA, LEED AP, is an associate dean and senior lecturer at the Yale School of Architecture, and anAutodesk fellow. He was a vice president at Autodesk from 2000 to 2016, and is the author of Architecture Design Data:Practice Competency in the Era of Computation (Birkhäuser, 2018).
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
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Autodesk PD Workshop
The End of the Data RainbowIn his final post on project delivery in the AECOsector, Phil Bernstein envisions a digitally integrated,transparent process that could operate as efficientlyas the internet.By Phillip G. Bernstein November 12, 2019
Project Delivery Workshop
Cristian Oncescu Phil Bernstein teaching graduate students at Yale University (not part of the Autodesk project
delivery workshop series)
This is the authorʼs fifth and final posting summarizing a series of six Autodeskproject delivery workshops that explored the relationship between emergentdigital collaboration technologies and the AECO sector. The workshops wereheld worldwide over 18 months in 2018 and 2019.
Over the course of six Autodesk workshops on project delivery, more than 100
architects, engineers, builders and clients from around the world
systematically unpacked the challenges and opportunities of technology-
enabled design, construction, and building operation. They work in an
unevenly digitized market filled with disparate solutions that reflect the
disaggregation of the industry itself, and with an abundance of digital data
that is rarely used—particularly across disciplines and silos. This transactional
incompatibility, where data suited for a specific use is hard to exchange,
makes achieving trust between processes and relying on digital exchange
difficult.
The causes of these challenges run the gambit from a bewildering array of
systems and software, incompatible business models across the supply chain,
and a misalignment of goals and expectations among co-dependent players
on projects. These symptoms arise from the acceleration of technology
vendors deploying solutions faster than they can be absorbed and a lack of
standards with which everyone can agree to use the resulting data. Prioritizing
the avoidance of risk—and sidestepping ambiguous decision-making by
clients—means that necessary conceptual and operational links in the supply
chain are missing.
An array of possible solutions might be the balm for these ills. These could
take the form of single data environments where information is trustable,
digital performance agreements that augment traditional contracts, and new
risk standards. But what might the world of trustable, digital delivery look like?
The ideas that emerged from workshop participants can be synthesized in
three themes: technical integration, procedural flexibility, and cultural
alignment. When considered together, these themes coalesce to create
trustable processes and information.
Technical integration is the first step toward this goal. The internet is a good
example of a desired end state of seamless tools and data. It is populated with
a vast array of data types, interaction protocols, interfaces, and workflows. Yet
somehow, through HTTP, indexing, and other underlying platforms, disparate
—and untrained—users can find what they want.
Redrawn from a diagram by Phil Bernstein for screen viewing Summary of Autodesk project delivery workshop
content along the theme of technical integration
Of course, designing and building is far more complex than, say, ordering
laundry detergent online or requesting a ride to the train station—or is it? In
both cases, invisible technology intermediates simple user interfaces to
complex transactions with data structured in a way that is hardly apparent to
the end user.
What if AECO data had the same protocols for creation, deployment, and use?
Consumers donʼt really care about the formats of the information—price,
specifications, even images—that the manufacturer provided to Amazon when
they made their order, nor do they need to understand how Lyft s̓ platform
arbitrates ride requests, driver availability, or traffic conditions. The data is
seamless, indexed, and simple to use.
Redrawn from a diagram by Phil Bernstein for screen viewing Summary of Autodesk project delivery workshop
content along the theme of procedural flexibility
The work processes of building will always be particular to specific,
responsible parties in the delivery of a project—designers, builders, users—
but those workflows both generate and consume data along the way. In that
sense, workflows must both adapt to the particular responsibilities of one
party, and able to consolidate logically with dependent procedures for others.
For example, as an architect develops a building s̓ structural system using an
abstract, schematic version of steel framing, her structural engineer is
simultaneously sizing that frame and her fabricator is evaluating it for cost and
construction logic. Each process relies on—but is independent from—the
other, much like the factors arbitrated by a ride-sharing platform. The
integration of these factors depends on standards and protocols that exist in
support of this interdependence.
But none of these aspirations for the tools and processes of delivery are
meaningful, much less possible, without a change in the underlying culture of
the building sector itself.
Redrawn from a diagram by Phil Bernstein for screen viewing Summary of Autodesk project delivery workshop
content along the theme of cultural alignment
As was once described to me years ago by John “J.T.” Taylor
(then a doctoral candidate at Stanford University, now a professor and the
associate chair for graduate programs and research innovation at Georgia
Tech s̓ College of Engineering) early in his career, the construction supply
chain has evolved to “sub-optimization to the point of failure.” The objectives
of a project rarely align with those of the parties who deliver it. Similarly, the
resulting rewards are unrelated. Lowest cost selection, risk avoidance, thin
margins, and fragile business platforms prevail.
An industry aligned around building effectively—and being rewarded well for
doing so—would necessarily work from refactored, digitally integrated,
transparent project delivery models based on a new reliance on information.
Data environments that can engender that trust are accessible, secure, and,
most importantly, transparent.
Information is a vector for trust. It is necessary to align goals, risk objectives,and ultimately value delivered to projects. Therefore, information systems thatsupport project delivery must achieve these ends to engender team, firm,project, and industry success.
The workshop participants were cautiously optimistic about this projective
future. As a self-selected group of technology enthusiasts, they saw the
possibilities of a digitally improved supply chain and hoped progress would
accelerate as the industry embraces new ways of creating and sharing
information. They encouraged Autodesk to continue pressing ahead on data
platforms that achieve these goals.
It remains to be seen whether technology providers, ranging from AEC
stalwarts such as Autodesk and Trimble to bigger players like Google, can
create such places for AEC customers to work, and thereby catalyze industry
change in much the same way that early concepts of integrated project
delivery emerged from the informational transparency of emergent BIM. Or
perhaps the exigencies of modern construction—cost and schedule
pressures, labor shortages, climate change—will inspire the industry to
organize and collectively demand such solutions from the vendors, with the
best solution winning the prize as an industry standard.
Digitally integrated project delivery methods do not guarantee nirvana. But the
building industry, so long hamstrung, might bend toward efficiency,
effectiveness, and maybe even greater profitability. A new generation of
designers and builders could anticipate trust in information and a work
process that produces an industry that was responsible, productive,
respected, and dare I say, fun. We can only hope.
From the three workshop summary diagrams, the author concludes thatinformation is a vector for trust. It is necessary to align goals, risk objectives,and ultimately value delivered to projects. Therefore, information systems thatsupport project delivery must achieve these ends to engender team, firm,
project, and industry success. (See the original flowchart by the author here.)
Phil Bernstein's Project Delivery Series
