BIM + Lean + Green

Randy started a new blog  that will focus on Data Driven Design and Construction. He asked few questions in his first post. Here is my take, feel free to comment. I recommend you should follow his blog. He will be coming up with a book on this topic next year some time. I can't wait to read it. Here are his  questions  and my answers -  How do we, as a discipline, capitalize on data and metadata to drive innovation in architecture and construction, just as other disciplines and industries have? Evidence based design is one of the leading fields of research that will eventually result in data driven design and construction. Understanding the end user requirements better and designing products that reach to the highest level of customer satisfaction would require data driven design. On technology front, building information  modelling  (BIM), virtual reality and augmented reality will help collect the data related to cu...

I feel fortunate to be living in an era when there are Computers, iPhones, iPads, Androids, Google Glasses, Google Earth, Facebook, Twitter and Broad Sustainable Construction. All but the last one out of my list are pretty obvious and I do not feel explaining why they are awesome.   However, I feel like talking a lot about Broad Sustainable Construction, a company which is based out of China and doing miracle after miracle and revolutionizing what world calls development. As a matter of fact, China is doing great with several other things too. But this blog won’t be talking about that. At this very moment (January 5 th 2013) Broad Sustainable Construction is building world’s tallest building – Sky City –1, which is almost a kilometer high (838 m/2749 ft to be precise) with 220 floors. They are set to complete the construction of this building within 90 days. This is remarkable and revolutionary. They claim to prefabricate 95% of building off site. Guess what, whole world is t...

A 30 story, 17,000 square meter hotel - T-30 is built in 15 days in Changsha, China. Building foundation was laid ahead of superstructure construction and superstructure was built with prefabricated components. These ultra fast construction schedule was only made possible with the help of prefabrication technologies. Prefabrication is changing the way buildings are constructed.    It will be interesting to look at the level of coordination and collaboration needed for this sort of perfection. Tools like Building Information Modeling (BIM) and Last Planner System (LPS) become even more important for achieving this level of perfection in coordination. Making sure that each component fits on site as intended and functions as designed would be only possible with 3D coordination and 4D schedule visualization. Coordination in fabrication facilities will be efficient with the application of Last Planner System. Moreover, effective supply chain management during construction wil...

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...

This video titled "Ark Hotel Construction time lapse building 15 storeys in 2 days" surfaced only last month on the internet and it was seen more than 3.8 million times on Youtube alone. And there is a reason for that. It took just six days to build the Ark Hotel in Changsha, China. According to the video, no stationary cranes were used in construction and there wasn't single injury among the site's workers. The 15-story sustainable hotel already had its foundation but using pre-fabricated columns and modules as well as modern construction techniques, construction workers took just 46 hours to finish the main structural components and another 90 hours to finish the building enclosure. Construction Details: Level 9 Earthquake Resistance: diagonal bracing structure, light weight, steel construction, passed level 9 earthquake resistance testing 6x Less Material : even though the construction materials are much lighter(250kg/m2) than the traditional materials(over 1500kg/...

On November 19th, 2010, I got a chance to visit Toyota Texas Plant . It was truly a great experience. One because it was a Truck Manufacturing Plant and second because I got to see Toyota Production System (TPS) in action. Toyota is where the concept of 'lean' was first born in 1930's. This visit was very significant for me as I was reading about lean in manufacturing throughout my masters at Texas A&M and this was a time to see how things actually get done at Toyota plants. We were very well received by the plant management at the Visitors' Center and taken to the assembly lines later after a short presentation on Toyota Texas and TPS. This plant started manufacturing trucks (thats what Texans like the most) called "Tundra" and "Tacoma" in year 2006. Both trucks are manufactured on the same assembly line with the help of automatic changing dies (that typically take 5 min on avg) and about 400 robots. The plant works in 2 shifts and produce aroun...

Highlights: Lean construction in home building, concepts of "value" in Lean construction thinking, specific examples of "waste" and "value" in construction industry. New Construction Strategies with Ted Garrison Dennis Sowards has over 25 years of senior level experience with a record of achievement in Continuous Improvement, Total Quality Management, Industrial Engineering, and Management Consulting. His strengths include proven leadership and technical analysis in problem solving and group facilitation and the ability to function effectively in a rapidly changing technological and organizational environment. Listen by clicking on play button.

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...

New Construction Strategies with Ted Garrison Greg talks about lean construction principles and its real time applications in the industry. He also talks about the critical role lean construction can play in today's economy. Listen by clicking on play button.

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.

The psychological framework on which Last Planner System is designed could be explained by looking at the methods Phil Zimbardo and John Boyd recommended in their book " The Time Paradox ." People having Future perspective are reported to be having higher success rates in their lives as compared to extremely present oriented individuals. Finishing the project on time is very critical for both the client and project team in the construction industry. On schedule project delivery and future and past positive orientated people can make a project successful on all dimensions (time,quality,cost,safety etc.). Last Planner System is a tool that makes project team future oriented by embedding reverse phase scheduling, 6-weeks look ahead and weekly work plans in its planning process. This exercises orient the whole team to future and as Zimbardo and Boyd write in the book, project participants' attitudes towards time can be changed, Last Planner can change the time perspectives in...

Lean construction community sees target value design as a value generation tool. That could be useful to produce value for the client and reduce wasteful outcomes. However, target value design is not seen as a convenient tool and blamed to be hindering creativity and innovation in design. Honda Motor's "Kick Out the Ladder" philosophy inspires to "do the impossible" and thus inspires to achieve seemingly impossible results. This video produced by Honda illustrates this philosophy and employees' thoughts about achieving the desired outcomes successfully.

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...

At the 2008 Serious Play conference, designer Tim Brown talks about the powerful relationship between creative thinking and play -- with many examples you can try at home (and one that maybe you shouldn't). First run studies (as lean construction defines) are " used to redesign critical assignments, part of continuous improvement effort; and include productivity studies and review work methods by redesigning and streamlining the different functions involved. The studies commonly use video files, photos, or graphics to show the process or illustrate the work instruction. The first run of a selected craft operation should be examined in detail, bringing ideas and suggestions to explore alternative ways of doing the work. " Tim talks in this video about the importance of role play and creativity. Same concept is true for 'first run studies.' The first run of the craft operation or design done in a playful manner may create innovative solutions. Lean community, by b...

Last Planner® System (LP®S) reduces uncertainty and brings stability. However, when we put LP S in a problem solving framework we realize that the core of LP®S is based on two problem solving techniques: (1) Root Cause Analysis and (2) GROW model (Goal-Reality-Obstacle/Option-Way forward). During the LP®S use- We set milestones for an activity - We set goal (G) We do the reality (R) check during the brainstorming sessions and look ahead planning We look for obstacles (O) i.e. constraints analysis and find options (O) to deal with the constraints We go ahead and execute the plan that’s our way forward (W) Next we ask "why" five times which is a popular root cause analysis technique LP®S planning protocol can be explained using these two problem solving techniques and they encompass George Pólya's method in "How to solve it?” Pólya suggests the following steps when solving a mathematical problem: 1. First, understand the problem. 2. After understanding, make a ...

I will begin with discussing the history of lean thinking and then discuss the most compelling and promising tools enabling lean thinking. The very concept of lean construction originates from Taichi Ohno's innovative management philosophy - Toyota Production System (TPS). Precisely, the same Toyota Production System is known as "Lean" in western world. Ohno states in his book - Toyota Production System- Beyond Large Scale Production - the two most important building blocks of TPS are Just-In-Time (JIT) and Total Quality Management (TQM). JIT in a layman's words is an approach with the objective of producing the right part in the right place at the right time. And TQM is a management philosophy that seeks to integrate all organizational functions (marketing, finance, design, engineering, and production, customer service, etc.) to focus on meeting customer needs and other organizational objectives. Last Planner® System (LP®S) of production control is a tool based on J...

Recently I came across this article by Dennis Sowards "BIM and LPS improve project management". Dennis explained LPS-Last Planner System and Building Information Modeling (BIM) fairly well. However, in my opinion there is no point in asking the question "Should we choose BIM over Lean or Lean over BIM?" As Dennis explains in the article that before asking this question "you need to consider what each process offers before choosing one over the other", I would say: lean is a management philosophy and BIM is a technology for effective management of project information. In other words lean is a way of management and BIM is a tool for management. Lean construction is based on a simple principle "reduce waste and increase value." To reduce waste (of time, material, labor etc.) a number of initiatives have been taken, for example Last Planner System (LPS) of production control, Value Stream Mapping (VSM), Target Value Design (TVD) etc. If we closely l...

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.

Groundbreaking work on 250,000-sq.-ft. outpatient medical facility for Camino Medical Group showcases benefits of LEAN construction, paves way for new form of project delivery Rising from the debris of an abandoned department store is a new 250,000-sq.-ft. medical office building that will not only provide progressive outpatient healthcare services but also, according to DPR's Dean Reed, set new standards in the design and construction of facilities. The more than two-year project for Camino Medical Group (CMG), a division of the not-for-profit Palo Alto Medical Foundation, which is an affiliate of Sutter Health, is currently past the mid-way point and being delivered using LEAN construction techniques designed to maximize overall production value and reduce waste while maintaining the highest quality. Months before construction began in late February 2005, with the demolition of the vacant Emporium building on the 9.9 acre site in Mountain View, CA, the CMG project team, including...