A Change of Plans
Hurrah for today’s new generation of CAD programs. With them, architects and contractors can design marquee buildings more accurately than with conventional means. So how come everyone isn’t jumping on board?
by Malwina Gudowska
Boutin knows BIM’s advantages. One of the greatest, in his opinion, is that it allows the architect to go beyond just the esthetics and have a direct relationship with ideas, geometry and even fabrication – something that has been absent in the last few decades. “Architects were disconnected because of specialization in the field. You had the engineers and the consultants and you had programmers. We were really disconnected in terms of the overall product,” says Boutin. “Now with these digital platforms, we can use virtual environments to test things structurally.”
However, he does caution that if the shift to BIM happens too quickly, it can create a division in some cities that already have a reputation for making it difficult to push through innovative ideas. “It’s going to create a hierarchy – which firms can actually consult in order to obtain those projects,” he says. “It doesn’t mean those architects are going to do better work. It just means that those architects can afford those platforms.”
The solution, says Boutin, is to recognize that BIM is only a tool and should be used responsibly. “If you have a platform that allows you to manage information well and efficiently, conceivably you have more time to concentrate on those things that make environments meaningful,” he adds. “If you’re lazy about it, it won’t be meaningful. It’s up to the architect to navigate that ground.”
Edmonton’s HIP Architects navigated the BIM ground long before most of its peers. The 25-person firm adopted Autodesk’s Revit in 2002, doing the bulk of its training in-house. For partner Allan Partridge, it was a “cost-neutral” decision for the firm and he recommends it to all offices, big or small.
“When we did the analysis looking back, there was so much inefficiency in 2-D and using 2-D programs that you were doing things inefficiently anyways,” says Partridge. “When BIM came along, yes, there was more of a learning curve, but there were immediate benefits that you were accruing right out of the gate.”
Those benefits included a drastic drop in co-ordination, dimensional and scope errors and many time-saving benefits. “Traditionally, you have to draw a floor plan and then you have to draw an elevation of a building and then you have to draw details and then you have to draw sections,” says Partridge. “But in BIM, once you set a wall, you already have an elevation.”
The Shaw Auditorium at the Mazankowski Alberta Heart Institute, a recent project by HIP, wouldn’t have been possible without BIM or, at least it wouldn’t have been built in the past 10 years, says Partridge. The medical teleconferencing facility was fabricated entirely in Toronto and then shipped and assembled in Edmonton. Working with a production architecture firm out east, it was easy for HIP to share information using BIM. The Toronto consultants involved could see the entire building on-screen, identify and price materials and then fabricate sections.
Doing the bulk of the work with BIM also reduced the amount of human energy needed on-site. And that, says Partridge, addresses a pressing issue in Alberta: the lack of trades. “If we can optimize the
design to reduce the amount of trade involvement, then they can go off and, instead of spending a week on a job, they can spend a half a week on one job and a half week on another,” he says.
For all the good that BIM brings, it also dramatically changes the rules of engagement. “There’s an assumption in BIM modelling that everyone is going to share all their information,” says Zeidler Partnership Architect’s David Jefferies. “We are somewhat careful in how much of this modelling we are going to share until we are sure that the intellectual property rights are there.” There are still unanswered questions when it comes to copyright, says Jefferies. The BIM model can be used long after a building is finished for long-term management such as the monitoring of energy performance and the durability of the materials. Down the road, there may be many more parties involved than those initially at the design table.
Another major thing to consider when adopting a relatively new program is the poaching of professionals who are highly proficient in programs such as Revit. Not everyone plays fair. Zeidler Partnership Architects has had other firms attempt to lure away its already trained staff. “The great risk of course is that your staff will be poached by other firms trying to find a leadership person to get their system up and operating,” says Carruthers. “We have been fortunate in not allowing it, but you have to be very conscious of that possibility.”
One of the initial concerns with BIM was that lines would be crossed and roles might become blurred if all parties were able to access the model and add their own two cents. If architects can check the work structural engineers are doing, why wouldn’t they just do it themselves? This hasn’t been the case so far. The experience by many firms, including Zeidler and HIP, is that a close working relationship on key decisions is still vital, and professional responsibilities are not only a liability issue but respected by most parties involved. “There’s got to be people on the owner’s side who are going to have to make judgment calls, the same on the contractor side and the same on the mechanical, structural, architectural side,” says Jefferies. “Those are things that have been built up over hundreds of years of legal precedent, traditional ways of working with things, what investors in building expect, what contractors and builders expect.” The fundamental aspect in design remains communication, and this is just another communication tool, says Jefferies.
When it comes to communication, even two firms working together who are both using BIM can have issues. Remember, there are many different BIM versions, so firms still have a lot to choose from. Zeidler and HIP architects both use Revit, but Foster + Partners, which is collaborating with Zeidler on the Bow, are Bentley Architecture users.
“This is the crux of the essential problem,” says Jefferies. “We’ve had to take a lot of their modelling and recreate it in Revit. There’s not an immediate extraction and re-implementation that is required or possible under the current system.” Although Zeidler did consider making the switch to Bentley Architecture for the Bow project, Carruthers says they had no evidence that it was better than Revit and decided to stick to their original system.
The answer to the miscommunication will most likely materialize in the next decade, says Partridge. The International Alliance for Inoperability (IAI) has already developed Industry Foundation Classes (IFC), a global industry standard for sharing design, construction and facility management information across BIM applications. Programs will need to achieve IFC certification that will then allow them all to have a common exportable language.
The IFC will become increasingly important in the next few years. Already, the U.S. General Services Administration in 2006 mandated that all major projects receiving design funds for the following year and beyond must incorporate BIM on a schematic level. Although Canada is not there yet, Partridge, who is an advisor to Public Works and Government Services Canada, says he expects that within two to three years the provincial government will also move to mandate BIM through design development. “If firms are not on it in the next two or three years, they are going to be left far behind, says Partridge, calling the movement to BIM “massive.”
“This is a bigger shift than going from manual to CAD… and sadly there will be casualties.”
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