Change We Must, and Change We Will

By Dana Kennish ‘Deke’ Smith, FAIA Emeritus, FbSI

requires more upfront work, but has a longer history of being successful and remaining in place.

Some of the Architecture, Engineering, Construction, Owner Operator (AECOO) industry changes I have directly been involved with include the following:

• The National Institute of Building Sciences (NIBS) Whole Building Design Guide (WBDG) and Construction Criteria Base (CCB).

• The Department of Defense (DoD) triservice use of automated cost engineering

• Development of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) CADD Layering Guidelines

• Adoption of a common Uniformat through the National Institute of Science and Technology (NIST)

• Industry transformation to CAD

• Adoption of the United States National CAD Standard developed at NIBS

• Transformation of the US Army Research Laboratory (ARL) to use a Command Infrastructure Operations Center (CIOC)

• Development of the DoD Business Enterprise Architecture (BEA)

• Industry transformation to BIM

• The adoption of the Building Information Modeling Standard – United States (NBIMSUS) developed at NIBS

• The worldwide adoption of the International Standards Organization (ISO) Industry Foundation Class (IFC) with multiple software developers allows data interoperability between systems.

• Development of a Body of Knowledge (BOK) and Knowledge Skills and Abilities (KSAs) for developing BIM talent through the Academic Interoperability Coalition (AiC).

• The beginning of adopting a Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) standard developed at APPA.

Each had or has its level and speed of adoption based on the complexity of the effort and breadth of the user base. All were consensus approaches except the ARL CIOC. The change for ARL CIOC had a no risk failure option due to the requirement to support critical national security and defense capability, and really satisfied my desire to work on challenges.

As we move towards a new era for facilities professionals, I am most excited about Total Cost of Ownership (TCO), where an incredible opportunity exists to move