BIM + Lean + Green

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...

The Dow Chemical Co. has developed a new roof shingle that doubles as a solar panel. The shingles, which can be incorporated into rooftops alongside traditional asphalt shingles, use low-cost thin-film cells of copper indium gallium diselenide. While Dow expects to profit greatly from the Powerhouse Solar Shingle — the company predicts it will bring in as much as $10 billion in revenue by 2020 — there will be significant benefits for consumers too. The innovative shingle is expected to cost 10% to 15% less than traditional solar panels and will be cheaper and quicker to install. Read more here at TIME

William McDonough, founder of design firm William McDonough + Partners and author of Cradle to Cradle, discusses environmentally friendly design. Insightful thoughts on sustainability and design.

"Danish architect Bjarke Ingels rockets through photo/video-mingled stories of his eco-flashy designs. His buildings not only look like nature -- they act like nature: blocking the wind, collecting solar energy -- and creating stunning views."-TED

USGBC promoting Green Building Movement.

Excellent Video portraying the future of BIM+Green

It seems that recession is bringing new opportunities to test and practice emerging technologies in AEC industry. Having lesser projects in hands, AEC professionals and owners are looking towards experts and academicians to come up with innovative solutions to effectively implement new technologies and management philosophies to increase efficiency, increase labor productivity, reduce waste  and decrease environmental impact in the overall life cycle of a project. In order to achieve this milestones contribution of BIM, LEAN and GREEN movements appears appreciable.  Building Information modeling (BIM) is helping project participants collaborate and at the same time it is helping to reduce waste (by conflict detection), increase performance (by energy analyses) and visualize the project. BIM is emerging as a tool that is  helping integration of overall project delivery. Lean production system introduced first time by Onho in Toyota car manufacturing unit is emerging as a management phil...