How to Maximize VDC in Design-Build

Hint: Stop Chasing the Shiny New Thing

Every day we’re seeing significant advancements in how technology is impacting our personal lives as well as the entire AEC industry. With so many new technologies constantly evolving, it’s important not to get caught chasing the newest and shiniest tech tools available. Instead, design-build teams should focus on applying these tools to new processes to solve the challenges ahead while also hiring the right people to do the job. History has shown that embracing technology for technology’s sake won’t deliver the project success we desire.

Companies are digitizing their process across the design and construction landscape; however, simply changing from analog to digital, like the past migration from hand drawing to computer-aided drafting (CAD), is not enough. The real power of new technologies occurs when design-builders embrace the idea of digitalization. The use of digital technologies should unlock new thinking and approaches that evolve business models. At the same time, we must realize that digitalization is not simply a matter of more technology. Technology is not an end in itself.

When looking specifically at the design and construction industry, we’ve seen the adoption of Virtual Design & Construction (VDC) as the fusion of people, process, and technology. A Building Information Model (BIM) is a tangible object created through a model-based approach that allows integrated project teams to speak a common digital language. It optimizes the design and construction process while providing certainty of the outcome by building the project virtually before work commences on site.

When citing VDC as the fusion of people, process, and technology, it’s very deliberate that we follow this order. Technology first approaches (chasing the shiny new object) are difficult to successfully implement if you don’t know your staff’s challenges. So first, it’s important to understand the challenges, define a process and then identify the appropriate technology to fit your specific needs.

While it is important the AEC industry has digitized its process, being selective about the technologies in your toolbox is just as important. At the same time, understanding how people and processes fit together is how successful digitalization can truly be realized. After all, if you digitize a broken process, you’re left with a digitized broken process.

Even though we’re more than 20 years into the adoption of BIM-based technologies, two-dimensional paper documents are still the contractual deliverable and primary mode of formal communication for project teams, agencies, and Owners. Our technological goal should be using models as contractual deliverables, removing the need for paper and allowing us to digitally fabricate our buildings, bridges, roads and water treatment facilities. By ultimately creating a digital twin, we also enable our clients to oversee the project and manage their assets post-construction more effectively.

The Design-Build Institute of America has seized this opportunity in time to educate and elevate our membership and industry on the importance of VDC Done Right. The ‘whole team approach’ inherent in designbuild is an ideal environment for VDC to flourish, especially when an integrated project team embraces the client’s goals from the outset. This is how design-build teams can super-power their collaboration and communication while increasing efficiency. In addition, the right tools can eliminate redundancy and the need to constantly reproduce information due to the contractual silo of traditional delivery models.

VDC is an important tool for design-build teams. But let’s not forget that, just as in design-build project delivery itself, it’s the people and processes that can make or break a team’s success. Leveraging people, process, and technology for maximum collaboration will take our industry to a future we can scarcely imagine today. The design-build industry is uniquely positioned to define project success for future generations of AEC professionals by focusing on our fundamental belief in the importance of people and process to maximize project collaboration. In other words, let’s stop chasing that shiny new thing.

As DBIA’s Director of Virtual Design & Construction, Brian Skripac, is helping design-build teams maximize the power of digital transformation by embracing innovation and technology to super-power project collaboration. Find out more on DBIA’s website.

Information Modelling (IM) is concerned with the construction of computer-based structures which model some part of the real world. Traditionally this means ‘atoms’ or ‘components’ that represent a physical structure, that communicate with each other to pass information and that can represent themselves differently depending upon need. Building Information Modelling (BIM) is an instance of a successful application of Information Modelling in the Construction Industry. The first BIM system was in launched in1985.

The concept of BIM or more generically Information Modelling (IM) can be applied to a wide range of disciplines, such as Retail, complex engineering and Town planning (City Information Modelling). Extending the concept to include the ideas of live information, control systems, feedback, simulation, integral analysis and interaction with customers brings powerful new opportunities crossing the traditional disciplines. Computer science, engineering, physics, medicine, architecture, project management, retail, social engineering and many other areas can all to be represented to build systems that fully release the potential of Information Modelling. Extensions can also be found in technology, from AI to algorithms, data gathering, to databases and data representation. These ideas, together with data structures, databases, systems, interfaces, and research requirements with the idea of outlining basic principles for several new systems.