...reduced owner-directed changes in the field. Holding those meetings around 3-D models “helped us get rapid and high-quality feedback during the design process,” Robinson says. Creating and merging models of existing underground utilities into structural models for new buildings also paid off: In one case, a dozen conflicts were found, leading to redesign of the structure.

Another graduate is John Robison, director of information technology at integrated design firm LPA Inc., Irvine, Calif., and one of three LPA employees to take the course. He says although LPA has an inclusive design process, working with owners and builders in the VDC program helped him “realize more completely” where the big benefits are and has him looking to formalize processes for reducing waste and uncertainty and improving project performance.

Some examples derived from LPA’s projects draw incident data from a building information model. One captures the way requests for information tend to spike around major project or trade deadlines. Robison says seeing this graphically helps LPA not only predict the internal effort that will be needed to respond at various stages of work, but also helps track and analyze RFI origins, which should help reduce them.

Another graphical output tracks the collisions found in the model and the impact across the project team. Robison says LPA is using that feature to generate standardized interference reports at defined project milestones. “This is new,” he says. It will help the team set expectations, identify the source of discrepancies and tag those responsible for resolution as quickly as possible, he says.

Parsons Brinckerhoff was another firm well represented by teams from its offices in Seattle and San Francisco.

“It was good to see all the 3-D, 4-D and n-D modeling, but I was more intrigued by the process and organizational modeling,” says Jay Mezher, PB manager of design visualization, virtual design and construction, in Seattle. “It’s something I haven’t worked with before. The course opens your eyes and makes you evaluate and question the design process.”

“I see this VDC certification as an opportunity for greater clarity across the entire industry,” adds Robison. He says he hopes a VDC standards-setting body will emerge to award accreditation for individuals and firms.

All the engineers ENR contacted reported good results with their projects, but graduate Josephine “Jo” V. Valente, director of virtual building technologies at Rosendin Electric Inc., San Jose, Calif., had one of the most directly gratifying stories of all. She went back to her specialty contracting firm and used the VDC approach to help develop a bid to fit out a large solar-cell manufacturing plant.

“We got all our team members together, so I educated them,” she says. “They were all in there, asking, ‘Why do we have to do it this way?’ ” Valente says they had meeting after meeting around the model to deeply analyze the project, organization and process.

“We collaborated, put together a presentation for the project, and we won it last week. We’ve moved our design team there, our construction team there, the detailing team—and this is new to our folks. I thought it was pretty exciting to have received my CIFE certificate and then we—the entire team—accomplished this.”