The Purpose-Driven Exchange of Project Information

Introduction

Despite the successful track record of design-build as a significant improvement upon traditional project delivery methods, design-build organizations use the same technical, project management, and design software applications as the rest of the building industry. In fact, according to the U.S. National Institute of Science and Technology (NIST), inadequate interoperability of these applications is a key contributor to the inefficient work processes and lack of coordination that cost the U.S. building industry $15.8 billion annually.¹

Like many other stakeholders in the building industry, design-build organizations are subject to a barrage of marketing from technology vendors, promoting Building Information Modeling (BIM) as a panacea for these challenges. However, our research findings suggest that, while BIM is an important new technology, it falls far short of easing the cost burden associated with inadequate interoperability.

Our analysis leads us to conclude that rather than creating an all-inclusive model of a building and reinventing key work processes around a model-centric view of a project, as some BIM proponents contend, what is actually required is an approach that focuses on established work processes and the key sources of information associated with them. This process-centric view enables us to identify the information required to drive each process and to provide the precise package of information required from the available sources of project information — the right information to the right people at the right time.

We call this approach the Purpose-Driven Exchange of Information and believe it holds the key to meaningful progress toward greater efficiency in the design, construction, and management of complex building and infrastructure projects.

The Challenge of Managing Complexity

Certainly, BIM is a powerful concept, promising to capture all of the relevant information about a proposed building project in a single, fully descriptive model. (See Figure 1.)

Ideally, a BIM system should allow project team members to focus on the building elements that are relevant to their role as architect, engineer, contractor, or owner/operator. Details that are relevant to one project team member, however, may be nothing more than needless complexity to another. When complexity overwhelms the potential benefits that project team members might gain, it is unlikely that a single building model will be adopted successfully. Furthermore, when this approach also requires significant changes to established work processes, adoption will be predictably slow and the risk of failure high.

In reality, it is incredibly difficult to capture the appropriate level of detail for the many systems, assemblies, components, and sub-components of a building in a single building model. Steel reinforcement is a good example. Rarely, if ever, would a design-build firm “model” the location of every of piece of rebar, each hoop or wire-tie in a building. Yet, information such as the size of the rebar, its detailed geometry, and its piece mark are all needed to support fabrication and erection. For the architect, this is irrelevant detail; for the rebar detailer and steel erection foreman, it is mission-critical information. If all of this information is represented in a single building model, however, both team members will bear some burden of the model’s complexity.

Taken to its extreme, we could argue that most of the details in a fully descriptive, single building model would be extraneous to any one project participant, and impose needless complexity on the Architect, Engineer, Construct, Own/Operate (AECO) project process. To be sure, BIM still plays an important role in the industry, as discussed in our related whitepaper, “Building Information Modeling Two Years Later.”² The fact is, leading BIM systems now offer compelling functionality for capturing a building’s architecture (spatial) design, as well as coordinating its horizontal and vertical planning with a space program, structural elements, and building systems. Our contention is simply that BIM is not at the center of the AECO project process, as some of its proponents suggest.

The Challenge of Servicing the Building Information Needs of the Extended Project Team

Nearly all participants in the AECO project process today use a variety of well established and proven software applications that create or are built upon an information model of their portion of a building, or, in other words, their sub-set of the AECO project process. Often, these models are not explicit, in the sense that the person using the tool doesn’t think in terms of creating or modifying an information model, but a model exists nonetheless.

The tools that create these models, such as BIM systems, as well as the tools that interact with them, such as finite element analysis, are highly adapted to their specific tasks. In fact, it is useful to think of these models as “Purpose-Built Models” because each contains a specific subset of information pertinent for each team member to fulfill his or her purpose in the AECO project process. (See Figure 2.)

Users of purpose-built models benefit from having complete, relevant information for the process at hand, without needless complexity. Our research indicates that it is just not realistic to expect all participants in the AECO project process to abandon their time-tested, purpose-built tools to adopt a homogeneous and overly complex single building model. Additionally, there is no single set of tools that can adequately represent all salient aspects of a sophisticated facility in a single information model.

By choosing tools and purpose-built models that are so highly adapted for specific tasks, the building industry has paid a price in terms of interoperability. This point is keenly understood by the Turner Construction Company. “At Turner we have invested strategically in applying technology to key business operations such as cost estimating, project scheduling, contract management, etc.,” says Doug Nies, Turner’s CIO. “We have painstakingly avoided the pitfalls of custom development and selected only best-in-class software applications that are generally available and fully supported. The result is tremendous savings to our bottom line; however at the same time we have inherited ‘islands of information’ with project data tied up in proprietary file formats from a number of different vendors. We know we can do better — and must do so in a truly collaborative environment. To achieve greater gains in productivity, it is imperative that we unlock the value of the information trapped in these ‘islands’ and allow it to be openly shared between software applications across the entire project team.”

Purpose-Built Models as a Network of Shared Project Information

It is important to note that each purpose-built model does not stand alone — each is related to another at some level. In aggregate, these models do, in fact, represent every aspect of a real-world “physical” facility. Therefore, if we think of the collection of purpose-built models as a network of information, there are connection points, common elements and descriptions that can be leveraged to streamline the flow of information between existing work processes. (See Figure 3.)

The AECO industry today has strongly established work processes that use many purpose-built models. The problem, however, is the effort required to represent the common set of building information in each of the different purpose-built models that is necessary to support the complete AECO project process. This replication is a key source of inefficiency and, in our view, the largest single contributing factor to the cost of inadequate interoperability. Additionally, the opportunity for errors associated with redundant data preparation and data re-entry is a key source of inconsistencies between models, resulting in errors, omissions, and field rework.

It is our contention that inadequate interoperability can best be addressed by managing the exchange of information between purpose-built models more efficiently. Doing so readily provides two primary benefits:

• Reduced time/effort of data preparation in creating purpose-built models by re-using appropriate subsets of information that are available from a related model.
• Consistency of information that is shared between purpose-built models.

The process-centric nature of the Purpose-Driven Exchange of Project Information identifies the information needs of each process and the available sources of information to support that process, connecting purpose-built models into a network of shared project information.

Successful Examples of the Purpose-Driven Exchange of Project Information

Green Building XML (gbXML) is a leading industry example of how the Purpose-Driven Exchange of Project Information can enable interoperability between existing software applications.³

“GbXML provides a standard exchange mechanism between sources of building model information (including Architectural Desktop, REVIT, Building Systems, and ArchiCAD), and energy analysis and simulation products (including Green Building Studio, EnergyPlus, DOE-2, and TRACE),” explains John Kennedy, President and CTO of GeoPraxis. “The success of gbXML stems from its focus on a clearly defined, high-value process that it seeks to enable, its use of an open data standards approach, and the availability of software development tools to facilitate adoption.”

Experience on live projects has demonstrated that using gbXML can dramatically streamline the transfer of building information between architectural and engineering models, eliminating the need for time-consuming plan take-offs. As a result, this approach removes a significant cost barrier to designing resource efficient buildings and specifying associated equipment.

The Role and Opportunity for Industry Standards

Without an appropriate common language to support interaction between different models and software applications, the Purpose-Driven Exchange of Project Information has the potential to devolve into a series of specialized, point-to-point interfaces connecting the most broadly used tools. Open industry data standards provide a vocabulary for the Purpose-Driven Exchange of Project Information, enabling a specific work process to be leveraged by a choice of software applications.

But, just as no single model will ever fully represent the variety and complexity involved in a building, no one standard will ever fully address the comprehensive needs of inter-operability. In fact, for a standard to be generally applicable, our research shows that it must be very focused and deeply defined to be effective in sophisticated real-world projects.

An excellent example of this point is the CIMsteel Integration Standard (CIS) initiative by the structural steelwork industry.⁴ “At its simplest, the CIS provides specifications and guidelines for the development and implementation of translators that enable the users of engineering software to export data from one application into another,” explains Chuck Eastman, Professor and Director of the College of Architecture Ph.D. Program at Georgia Institute of Technology. “CIS/2, the second edition of this standard, defines how data is represented, shared, and managed between the myriad software applications used in the structural steelwork industry to facilitate better interoperability. The result of this industry-led and funded initiative is a more integrated method of working through the sharing and management of information within and between companies involved in the planning, design, analysis and construction of steel framed buildings and similar structures.”

Another example is the work of the International Alliance for Interoperability (IAI).⁵ The IAI is an international technical effort led and funded by a collaboration of industry leaders in 19 countries. Its mission is to define a comprehensive building information framework as one authoritative semantic definition of building elements, their properties, and inter-relationships called the “IFC Model.” This effort is described in our related whitepaper, “A Different Approach to Using Industry Foundation Classes to Facilitate Interoperability in the Building Industry.”⁶ The IAI has published the IFC Model in the public domain as a rich set of building element definitions designed specifically to facilitate the unambiguous exchange of data between software applications. Underscoring the significance of this effort, the IAI initiative has been recognized for its importance and adopted by the International Standards Organization (ISO) for use by industry stakeholders.⁷

Design-Build Organizations as Change Agents

The design-build community is well known for its dissatisfaction with the status quo of traditional project delivery methods. Design-build companies have demonstrated their ability to innovate and provide predictable, higher quality, lower cost project delivery.

In view of this history, we believe that the design-build community is uniquely positioned to embrace the Purpose-Driven Exchange of Project Information as a pragmatic approach to optimizing work processes and to sharing the key sources of information that drive those processes.

Specific actions that can be taken as next steps toward this goal include:

• Selecting software applications that support existing gbXML, CIS/2, IFC, and similar open (i.e., non-proprietary) information sharing protocols.
• Supporting efforts to create, refine, and promote the use of industry-specific and pragmatic purpose-driven project information exchange standards, such as CIS/2 and IFC.
• Insisting on a commitment from software vendors and technology suppliers to support interoper-ability via information sharing.
• Engaging the services of an Interoperability Consultant⁸ to evaluate project work processes and identify the project information requirements for maximizing timely information sharing between existing purpose-built models.

Design-build companies can, yet again, be the change agents for our industry. By recognizing the existence and ongoing role of purpose-built models, understanding their interdependencies, and pursuing interoperability via the Purpose-Driven Exchange of Project Information, the design-build community can be the first to realize the significant cost savings and work process efficiencies that result from this important approach to the AECO project process.

References:

1. “Cost Analysis of Inadequate Interoperability in the U.S. Capital Facilities Industry,” a study by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), August 2004. Report available at: http://www.bfrl.nist. gov/oae/publications/gcrs/04867.pdf

2. “Building Information Modeling Two Years Later,” a Newforma industry white paper, originally published in The Laiserin Letter, January 2005.

3. Green Building XML (gbXML) website available at: http://www. gbxml.org/

4. “CIMsteel Integration Standards Release 2: Second Edition,” 2003, available at: http://www. cis2.org/

5. International Alliance for Interoperability, websites available at http://www.iai-international.org/ and http://www.iai-na.org/

6. “A Different Approach to Using Industry Foundation Classes to Facilitate Interoperability in the Building Industry,” a Newforma industry white paper, originally published as an AECbytes Viewpoint article, April 2005.

7.  “IFCs Recognized by ISO,” IAI-NA News, Dec. 4, 2002, available at http://www.iai-na.org/news/120402.php

8. “Is There a Person Missing from Your Building Project Team - the Interoperability Consultant?” a Newforma industry white paper, published as a feature article by IFMA, April 2005.