BIM, BCE & Data Mining

This post is the first in a series of posts that will explore the requirements that must be met for the potential hopes of big data in the world of building to become a reality and what that reality will look like. 

---

Innovation in building is surging, and there are certainly an unlimited number of areas that deserve attention and innovation. Several earlier blog posts have outlined the current approach of innovation, its potential and challenges.   

1. Building Punches Above Its Weight 

2. BuildUSA-The Business Opportunity 

3. The Changing Basis of Design 

4. What is Building all About? 

5. What is BuildUSA all About? 

6. BuildUSA – Big Data 

7. The Fed, Treasury, Monetary Policy and BuildUSA 

The intent of this series of posts is to paint a more detailed description of what the building industry must do, to accomplish visions of a brighter future. 

In an early Build Blog post, the importance of data structure was illustrated via the phone book. If you take this example and expand the database a million times this is a reasonable analogous scale for building project database. They contain an immense variety and quantity of data. The central issue to all project data is how to balance the real need for flexibility and personalization for individual users during a project as they create and utilize project data. Then balance this with the absolute necessity of having a structured, clean database that can provide accurate and useful analysis, reports and predictive analytics. 

How this tension is resolved is at the heart of what will make this evolution in building successful! 

 Today’s world of innovation creates hundreds of new Apps. Each with their own data structures and file types. Each with their own myopic solution for a narrowly focused transactional challenge. This is NOT a path that will lead to success. Perhaps it was an important and necessary step that needed to be undertaken, to develop the necessary insight, resources and skills to do it right. But perhaps not! 

In building, it is important to get the foundation right. If the foundation is placed incorrectly, the entire project becomes a series of corrections. This exhausts and frustrates everyone impacted by the process financially, professionally and emotionally. It is reasonable to ask what the foundation of the building process is. I would argue that this foundation is the “data structure and data that comprises the construction documentation”, namely the A/E drawings, specifications and addenda that define the design project’s intent. The data structure is defined as the “Standards, Templates and Workflows” (STWs for short) that provide the parameters within which all project data Is created. The STWs must be clear, industry accepted and accessible to all industry players.  

Now, we all understand this is a big ask. Everyone over the age of 50 has spent most of their career trying to create, learn and relearn, being frustrated by trying to implement an ever-changing number of company standards, let alone industry wide standards. So, if one argues that this is a bottom-line necessity for the sought-after benefits to be realized, the only way this will happen is a combination of two motivations: 

• The benefits and payback for adopting these STW’s must be clear, financially lucrative and provide improvements in staff daily work operations, customer satisfaction and product quality.  These benefits must be experienced by the company, the staff, the vendors, and customers. In brief, the benefits must be a big impact on the entire eco system. 

In developing a strategy for BuildUSA that could accomplish this, the following questions and answers evolved. 

1. What is the future vision for how the building industry will operate? 
   • “Higher Quality, Higher Performance Buildings, delivered to market in a shorter period of time at a lower cost”, with a less frustrating project process for project team and owners. 

2. What are the benefits this future vision will bring to the entire building eco system? 
   • The benefits include but are not limited to: 
     • Higher quality and performing products
     • Faster product delivery
     • Lower costs 
     • Greater project team and client satisfaction  

3. What are the specific features of this future vision and how will they impact the industry in the following categories: 
   • Human resources:
     • Although greater efficiency is a feature of future innovations, the goal requires improvements in the quality of the process as well as staff and client satisfaction. It is NOT only a means to cut costs by replacing staff with algorithms. 
   • Technology:
     • Both hardware and software technology will provide powerful tools that when implemented properly will enhance staff and client experience, improve trust and quality, and provide insights, reporting and analytics for all phases of a building’s life cycle.
4. Building Quality and Performance: 
   • With better access and information structure, the ability to design, analyze, construct, operate, test and maintain buildings will move into a virtuous cycle of improvement. Every new generation of building will have a greater capacity for learning from previous building versions. 
5. Building process and the building operation/maintenance experience 
   • With better access and information structure, the ability to design, analyze, construct, operate, test and maintain buildings will move into a virtuous cycle of improvement. Every new generation of building will have a greater capacity for learning from previous building versions.
6. Timing and cost to market: 
   • Timing and costs to develop, design and construct buildings has become unaffordable to  a growing majority of people. There are multiple constraints that need to be improved to substantially improve timing & costs; including regulatory oversight, increased use of construction assembly modules and optimized building processes to name but a few. But at the heart of all the necessary changes is an agreed upon industry standard, “data structure.” 
7. Safety and Health: 
   • Safety and health have many components.  
     • It applies to the building process of constructing the building.  
     • The building operational environment that users live and work within.  
     • Finally, the ongoing impact the building exerts upon the surrounding environment and community.  

Clear understandings must be clearly understood and built into the standard design and practices of the industry, so they are not reinvented on a project-by-project basis. 

Of course, these are high level overviews of what the future building eco system needs to achieve. Over the course of the next 3 or 4 posts they will be explored in more detail.