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By Ken Sanders, FAIA

New perspectives

Phil Connors escaped Groundhog Day by gaining new perspectives and discarding old habits. Many in our industry should follow his lead. The AIA and Association of General Contractors (AGC), for example, should expand their collaborative relationship, focus on their shared interests, align their lobbying efforts, and work together to dismantle the legal and institutional barriers to integrated design and construction. As a first step, the AIA and AGC should work closely with insurance providers and client groups such as CURT and merge their competing design-build agreements into a single, unified standard.

CAD software developers, including Autodesk, Bentley, and Graphisoft, should also establish new collaborative partnerships and develop consistent, reliable methods for sharing 2D and 3D data among their programs. Earlier this year, after 15 years of bitter rivalry, Microsoft and Sun Microsystems set a great example by agreeing to a new framework of interoperability between their products. Both companies responded to customers no longer willing to shoulder the cost of integrating incompatible technologies, and it’s time for CAD vendors to do the same.

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The leading candidate for standardized digital building descriptions remains the Industry Foundation Class (IFC) standard, developed by the International Alliance for Interoperability (IAI). [Note: record publisher McGraw-Hill was a founding member of IAI.] The IAI needs to focus on implementing standards they’ve already proposed, and recognize that rigid compliance with a one-size-fits-all solution is less important than the adoption of well-documented, flexible data-sharing protocols (“digital handshakes”) among multiple software programs.

In the meantime, architects shouldn’t wait for any of this before collaborating with their clients, consultants, and contractors to develop streamlined delivery methods using existing technology. BIM and 3D CAD aren’t necessarily prerequisites to doing so; a substantial volume of reusable data can continue to reside in 2D representations of buildings. The critical path isn’t BIM, but rather process innovation squarely focused on people, partnerships, shared expertise, and timely decision making.

With the economy on the rebound and the construction market holding steady, there has never been a better opportunity for architects, owners, and contractors to work together to reinvent and streamline the building design and delivery process. The remaining question for architects is simple: Will you lead or will you follow?