BIM + Lean + Green

Vijay Govindarajan recently caught attention for his recent book "The Other Side of Innovation: Solving the Execution Challenge" published by Harvard Business Review and his work on " Designing $300 Home ". He is called the strategic innovation Guru and he is also the Earl C. Daum 1924 Professor of International Business at Dartmouth’s Tuck School in US. He believes that perspiration is more important than innovation i.e. execution of an idea is more important than only coming up with the idea itself. I will try to explain the advantages of BIM, Lean, Green and IPD by his theory of strategic inovation. He talks about three boxes that large organizations operate into (or where organizations' projects fall into)- Building Lean and Green using BIM and IPD fall under Box-2 and Box-3 that is selectively forgetting the past practices and creating the future (and here we are talking about 20 years from now i.e. about 2030). Hear is his talk with Harvard Bus...

The rise of BIM, Lean and IPD in construction industry during last 2-3 years shows that industry is desperately changing its work practices in these tough economic times. My belief that the tough economy attracted industry's focus towards productivity improvement grew stronger and stronger over last couple of years and especially after seeing the wave of change in the capital asset management practices in public sector. Major government institutions such as General Administration Services (GSA), US Coast Guard, and public works in Wisconsin, Texas, Finland and Denmark made BIM compulsory over the course of last 3-4 years. UK government is also talking about making BIM compulsory for all public projects according to this article - " The use of force: Building information modelling " on building.co.uk If you are looking for a similar pattern in Lean Construction growth than look at London Heathrow Terminal 5 Project and Sutter Health Projects in California. Both are multi b...

Stephen A. Hilger discussed the legal merits of Integrated Project Delivery ( IPD ) contract in ENR article " The Legal Worries Raised by IPD ." His major concerns involve: 1. Design and Financial Risk 2. Loss of the Spearin Doctrine 3. Sharing in Means and Methods 4. Losing the Economic Loss Doctrine 5. "Fluff" Language 6. Third Party Design Liabilities 7. IPD Team Members Can't be Sued and 8. Impact on Indemnity Clauses

AGC recently released the white paper " Integrated Project Delivery for Public and Private Owners ." Lean Project Delivery is mentioned as a related industry trend. Following is the excerpt from the white paper: "Lean Project Delivery: Another term often used to refer to a form of Integrated Project Delivery is Lean Project Delivery System ™ ( LPDS ), a term developed by the Lean Construction Institute ( LCI ). Many of the principles attributed to Lean Project Delivery are similar to those attributed to IPD . In fact, in this era of evolving terminology, many refer to IPD as ―Lean Project Delivery‖ where the application of ―lean thinking‖ and lean principles are applied throughout the project.Followers of IPD treat lean principles along with the resulting efficiencies and elimination of waste as givens. Followers of lean treat collaboration and the use of technologies as givens. In the end, lean and IPD are both striving for the same ultimate outcome, just two differ...

Howard Rheingold talks about the coming world of collaboration, participatory media and collective action -- and how Wikipedia is really an outgrowth of our natural human instinct to work as a group. Interestingly Howard Rheingold gave the examples of Toyota, Google, Wikipedia, Amazon and Ebay - companies that are enriching others to enrich temselves. By doing lean construction and integrating the whole project team into one, and training them, companies will enrich themselves in this new world of collaboration.

Tim Brown says the design profession is preoccupied with creating nifty, fashionable objects -- even as pressing questions like clean water access show it has a bigger role to play. He calls for a shift to local, collaborative, participatory "design thinking." Lean Project Delivery System (LPDS) /Integrated Project Delivery (IPD) calls for collaboration from all project stakeholder -owners, architects,engineers,general contractors, subcontractors,suppliers ......... Tim Bron's idea on "Thinking Big" calls for the same in every design. Tim Brown's generic idea about importance of participation in design (product design or process design or service design or .... any other design) spells out clearly that greater participation brings better products and same is true for collaboration in construction. Collaboration during design and delivery of any construction project brings new ideas on table and discussions among participants makes them more open about the...

The American Institute of Architects (AIA) today announced the release of the new C191™-2009, Standard Form Multi-Party Agreement for Integrated Project Delivery (IPD), which provides for a collaborative working relationship among parties involved in a design and construction project and utilizing the IPD delivery model. With this new agreement the parties execute one coordinated and integrated agreement that clearly sets forth the parties’ roles and responsibilities in delivering a project consistent with the principles of IPD. Unlike the C195™-2008, the parties do not form an LLC under the C191-2009 framework. In addition, the AIA released B108™-2009, Standard Form of Agreement Between Owner and Architect for a Federally Funded or Federally Insured Project, and a new document, B202™-2009, Standard Form of Architect’s Services: Programming. Collectively called the “4.2 Release,” these three documents expand the extensive library of AIA Contract Documents and build on more than 100 ye...

This article by George, that discussed very much the same buzz words in which everyone from AEC industry is interested today, is a good explanation of all the terms together. All these tools, practices and methodologies of construction (BIM, LEAN and IPD) are often being discussed in the industry now a days. But the only eye to see all these together is seeing future. LEAN, BIM, GREEN and IPD are going hand in hand in US building construction industry. In one way or another they are associated to each other and successful AEC professionals are practicing it right now on actual projects. George in his article discussed all these inter-relationships and brought a worth reading article.