The old RAIC Document 6 fee breakdown of 25% design, 50% construction documents, 5% bidding and award, and 20% site review and management, needs to be totally reconfigured. I have heard of an AIA proposal that proposes an adjustment of the fee distribution to recognise a front loaded design process. It is necessary to gut the value of construction documents and add the proportion of the fee to the design and design development stages. ‘Design’ then, needs to be expanded to explicitly identify a whole range of predesign features that clients often don’t realize they need. Participation in budget setting is one obvious point. Many initial budgets are set on too little information, and working out the real one during design can delay the project significantly, in addition to souring a relationship between the owner and the designers. Even a very engaged client often has knowledge gaps that put parts of the information flow that represents a project out of sequence. The issue of sequence is huge! It is also explicitly recognised in integrated, or green, design processes. Recognising information gaps or sequence issues is a huge opportunity for architects to deliver better value to clients and move up the time line in the decision chain.
Getting Green a temperature check
Stephen Pope
In addition to reviewing the kinds of mid-1990s discussions of how one establishes an architectural practice that can concentrate on full value, we need to look also at what parts of practice are commodities, and then deliver those commodities in a smarter way. Some are afraid of India and China in this regard but I am much less concerned, as there is always a significantly local kind of knowledge that needs to be brought to bear if the whole project flow is going to be efficient. I am suggesting that there needs to be a renewed effort to automate much of what is done for production of the construction documents. Improved 3D design tools (when are we going to figure out that AutoDesk bought REVIT for a good reason and dump the old stuff!) including the use of rapid prototyping tools need to be brought forward. Better information management and linked information flows between all aspects of design must be present if the designer is going to have good project control. An example of information flows can be simply recording design areas on spread sheets. A list of building assemblies and their components is a feature of budgeting and cost control, energy performance analysis, embodied effects calculations, maintenance scheduling, and construction materials procurement. Designers (architects and engineers included) currently do not do a good job of extracting the most value from the information produced in the process of design. Timely information handling at the design stage makes a lot of detailed building performance analysis much less time consuming. Better information management makes green design much more obvious, not to mention easier.
onsite: very nice Stephen. thank you.
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Stephen Pope is an architect licensed in Ontario and a researcher on high performance building tech- nologies and design process at the Sustainable Buildings and Commu- nities group of the CANMET Energy Technology Centre, part of Natural Resources Canada.
A change in production methods and an embrace of the reality that construction documents are commodities needs to be supported by changes to our business arrangements and contracts.
http://www.sbc.nrcan.gc.ca
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