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Stanford CEE 243 - THE SCOPE AND ROLE OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY IN CONSTRUCTION

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1 THE SCOPE AND ROLE OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY IN CONSTRUCTION Martin FISCHER1 and John KUNZ2 1Associate Member of ASCE, Ph.D., Assoc. Professor, Dept. of Civil and Env. Eng., Stanford Univ., and Director, Center for Integrated Facility Engineering (Terman Eng. Ctr., 380 Panama Mall, Stanford, CA 94305-4020, USA) E-mail:[email protected] 2Ph.D., Sr. Research Scientist, Dept. of Civil and Env. Eng., Stanford Univ. and Executive Director, Center for Integrated Facility Engineering (CIFE) (CIFE, Building 550, 416 Escondido Mall, Stanford, CA 94305-4020) E-mail:[email protected] 1. CURRENTLY PREVALENT SCOPE AND ROLE OF IT To set the stage for the points in this paper we first summarize current use of information technology (IT) in construction. The last twenty years have seen dramatic improvements in and widespread use of IT to describe and document the work of the many disciplines involved in construction projects. Today, practically all project information is entered into software tools or generated by computer programs and is represented in the many different formats used by the many disciplines involved in a project. The software tools tend to be general purpose tools like spreadsheet and text processing software or specialized, discipline-specific tools like mechanical CAD programs or cost estimating software. As shown in Figure 1, the formats commonly used to represent information in construction include text documents, 2D and 3D drawings, schedules in bar chart and other formats, various diagrams and charts, tables, etc. For most decisions about a project, engineers from different disciplines like those shown in the picture of a typical project meeting (Figure 1) (a designer, project manager, cost estimator, scheduler, and MEP (mechanical, electrical, and piping) coordinator) need to share their information with others on the project team. The purpose of the meeting shown in Figure 1 was to coordinate the detailed design and construction methods, cost, and schedule for an office building. In this meeting, each engineer formed an image of the current status of the project and visions of future situations in his head based on his own interpretations of the documents from the other engineers. These interpretations formed the basis for discussions and decisions about the most appropriate design of the facility and its parts, when, how, and by whom it should be built, how long the whole project or a part of the project should take, how much things will cost, etc. In this way, a large portion of the planning and coordination on the project occurred primarily in the engineers’ heads and was not supported by IT. In our experience, this use of IT is typical on projects. Because decisions are mostly based on personal and human interpretations of information generated by many engineers from many disciplines the decision process and resulting actions and results are not consistent and repeatable from meeting to meeting and project to project. As a result it is difficult to predict the outcome of the current design and construction process, and IT contributes little to predict the outcome of projects more reliably. Since most of these discussions and decisions require the input of engineers from several disciplines, it is, of course of paramount importance that the information in the documents of the various specialists is based on the same information and that it is coordinated and communicated effectively. Coordinating and integrating information across disciplines and throughout several project phases has become increasingly difficult and costly as the amount of electronic information each discipline generates has increased.2 Fig. 1: On every project, several specialists from different disciplines come together to plan the project and move it forward. Each specialist documents his or her work using different IT systems and formats to represent the information they need for their work. At the Center for Integrated Facility Engineering at Stanford University, we have been working on methods and approaches to integrate project information and leverage information across disciplines and phases to create efficient work processes and enable better project decisions since 1988. There are certainly improvements necessary and possible in the software tools and underlying methods used by the individual disciplines today. However, in our opinion, the major opportunity for improving the design and construction of facilities lies at the interfaces between disciplines. Hence the remainder of this paper focuses on the role and scope of IT in support of multidisciplinary planning and coordination of construction projects. Finding a way to participate in such an integrated project design and construction process will be a key challenge and opportunity for individuals and firms in the foreseeable future. 2. EXAMPLES OF MULTI-DISCIPLINARY DESIGN AND COORDINATION To illustrate the issues outlined above and to set up the role and scope of IT in construction we will consider two examples of multi-disciplinary design and coordination from recent projects. (1) Renovation of a large office building A large public owner recently needed to plan the renovation of one of its largest office buildings. Several functional units of the owner (e.g., real estate, operations, human resources, project management, facility management) as well as an external design team consisting of several consultants (e.g., architect, various engineers, construction manager) considered several options for this renovation. In one approach, all the tenants in the building moved out temporarily while the building was going to be renovated. This approach gave the design team maximum flexibility and opportunity to redesign the layout, structural and mechanical systems, etc. of the building and organize its construction. In another approach, only half the tenants moved out in the first phase to make room for the renovation of half the building. After the completion of the renovation of the first half the tenants in the second half would move into the new part to make room for the renovation of the second phase, which, upon completion, would then be occupied by the tenants who had moved out originally. This approach provided significant savings in the cost of leasing temporary facilities and minimized the impact of the renovation and move on some building occupants. However, it required the careful coordination of the


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Stanford CEE 243 - THE SCOPE AND ROLE OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY IN CONSTRUCTION

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