Design-Build, BIM, LEED and the Transformation of Design and Construction

The times, they are a changing,” Bob Dylan soulfully sang in the 1960s. The pace of change seemed to have quickened during that turbulent decade. Similarly, the recent past has brought significant alterations to the design and construction industry. Just as the independent cowboy gave way to more rational and integrated herding and farming systems, our industry professionals are discovering that the future of building will be governed by a very different mindset.

Over the past 10 to 15 years, a paradigm shift has profoundly transformed the design and construction industry, consolidating the design and construction team and the processes they use to get the job done. Owners have been equally affected: Their project goals have never been more ambitious or more clearly articulated.

Beginning in the 1990s, design-build, green design and integrated design were three strong forces separately gaining momentum. Both the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) and DBIA were formed in 1993, and the rise of design-build was aided by the sustainability and integrated design movements, all of which shared mutually reinforcing methodologies. Together they propelled the design and construction industry forward, ultimately changing the way buildings are conceived and created.

A key impetus for change was the Leadership in Environmental and Energy Design (LEED) program. In 2000, USGBC’s LEED Green Building Rating System introduced a metric for sustainable construction. By providing a way to measure the direct and indirect benefits of sustainable design, the Council persuaded public and private sector clients to go green. Simultaneously, fears of global warming pointed a finger at buildings as a primary contributor (40 percent) to the world’s greenhouse gases — twice the amount of the next highest category, agriculture, and more than the combined sum of industry or transportation.

Design-build and sustainable design share critical elements that naturally reinforce each other. Typically, both include:

1. The entire design and construction team, including critical subcontractors, are assembled before design begins and these team members share a mutual understanding of the owner’s goals and objectives.
2. The design process, and therefore decision-making, is front-loaded, requiring the team to work in unison to determine the best design and construction approaches to the project.
3. Early and repeated pricing allows the team to keep the project on budget and the owner to make informed choices before the design is fully developed.
4. Early cost/benefit analyses are usually part of this pricing so the owner can understand the monetary and environmental paybacks that will be received.
5. Both initial costs and lifecycle costs are accounted for.
6. Early subcontractor involvement in design is essential for both green design and design-build. The major trades must have a place at the table; they are important in determining the best design, construction and operating strategies. For example, MEP contractors are vital for both operating systems options and green energy analyses.

Of course, there are some variations. LEED certification has specific requirements for the documentation of sustainable elements in the buildings that go beyond normal shop drawing submissions and all team members contribute to LEED technical submissions.

Integrated design, the process of methodically and carefully coordinating the design process and design documents through computer programs, was also moving forward, underscoring many of the principles inherent to both design-build and sustainable design. These days, integrated design is often defined by the use of BIM (Building Information Modeling) computer programs. BIM assists in visualizing the design in three dimensions and provides a huge database that is shared by all team members. As a result estimators, for example, can make faster, more accurate take-offs and interferences between the numerous building elements are eliminated.

For both successful design-build and sustainable design, a comprehensive approach to the development of the projects’ documents, submittals, maintenance manuals, owner’s personnel training and performance records, is imperative and can be achieved only through the full integration of all team members. Construction professionals should not be fooled by thinking that old-fashioned human coordination can match the detail and thoroughness of computer simulation.

In summary, design-build challenged the traditional and comfortable design-bid-build approach by consolidating project responsibility under a single entity. LEED certification provided owners, designers and builders with specific, measurable and mutually agreed upon project goals. BIM placed the owner, the designers, the general contractor and the subcontractors in on a single platform at the commencement of design to mutually share and develop the project’s design and complete its construction.

As the first decade of the 21st century draws to a close, owners enjoy improved service and a better product that fundamentally enhances buildings’ environmental performance while providing healthier indoor space. This new paradigm naturally favors design-builders who are experts at managing the entire design and construction processes.

The U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) is the best current example of a new breed of owners who have already codified LEED design into their basic program imperative and are also starting to require an Integrated Project Design (IPD) methodology and BIM software
processes for their projects.

The GSA, often a friend to design-builders, understands that single responsibility, sustainable design and integrated delivery go hand-in-hand to produce not only most cost effective, environmentally responsive and best coordinated projects but, equally important, buildings that operate at the highest performance levels and can be maintained or improved by their staff based on the information supplied to them in IPD.

The emerging strategies of integrated design are proving that:

1. IPD and BIM technology improve owner satisfaction, building quality and productivity improvements.
2. Owners are valuable and active participants on the overall project team.
3. BIM can and will evolve, but its accuracy and productivity record is very encouraging. It may be that the design-builder will need to make BIM technology available to all team members to achieve its full potential.
4. IPD and BIM make design and construction of a project a single, uninterrupted process that uniquely empowers the design-builder to manage and control the process.

So where are we going? First, national and local codes are requiring higher and higher levels of sustainable design and LEED certification is increasingly required by owners. And, as design-builders and specialty contractors are learning, existing buildings are equally fertile ground for sustainable design-build. Design-builders will have the opportunity to improve the environmental performance of older buildings — by far the largest contributors to greenhouse gases, water use and toxic interior pollution.

I suspect design-builders will increasingly have LEED professionals on staff with day-to-day project responsibilities. The green design mentality must be engrained at all levels in the design-build team and it will be required by sophisticated owners.

In summary, the design-builders of the future will:

1. Understand that design-build and sustainability are natural partners and design-builders the best and most logical leaders of the green building movement.
2. Recognize and respond to owners’ assumptions that green design has financial, social and environmental value.
3. Adopt a business strategy based on a rising threshold of environmental responsibility.
4. Recognize that distinct project phases such as SD, DD, CD and CA will be obsolete and replaced by a single, continuous process that lowers costs and shortens time.
5. Know that sustainable initiatives for renovating existing buildings and interior construction will be their largest market.

As the bard sang, we will be left behind and look foolish if we do not see the future before us.