On April 30 at its national convention in San Francisco, the American Institute of Architects released replacement construction manager documents and an updated version of AIA Contracts Documents software. The CM documents cover CM as advisor and CM as constructor. The CM documents replace those released in 2007 and 2008. They include dispute resolution check box that enables parties to select the method of binding dispute resolution. They incorporate the concept of an initial decision maker fill point where the owner and contractor may identify a third neutral party IDM other than the architect. The documents include digital data provisions
On April 27, the U.S. Green Building Council and the Green Building Certification Institute released LEED Version 3. The latest version of the green building rating system, in the works for more than three years, "sets the stage for the growth and improvement of the whole LEED program for the next several years," says Mike Optiz, USGBC's vice president for LEED implementation. The current release includes LEED 2009, LEED Online Version 3 and a new certification process based on ISO standards, administered by the GBCI. It also updates all the LEED categories at once. These include LEED for new construction,
Attention building-information-modeling rookies: Experiences of BIM veterans in the following pages of ENR may save you from reinventing many spokes on the still-rickety wheels of the wagon rolling toward glitch-free use of high-tech tools to make building design and construction less bumpy. The first piece of advice to first-time travelers down the BIM road is to get BIM’s equivalent of driving lessons and roadside assistance. Warning: If you go it alone, you may get into serious trouble. Even modeling veterans can benefit from a BIM “global positioning system.” The helpers call themselves BIM managers or model integrators. The name doesn’t
The year was 2005. The project was the U.S. Federal Courthouse in Jackson, Miss. The decision, made by the U.S. General Services Administration at the end of design development, was to turn the 400,000-sq-ft facility into a GSA poster child for building information modeling. The design team would create a coordinated BIM and use it to produce 2D contract documents. The team would also provide its BIMs to the construction manager-general contractor, as reference material only, for use during construction. Photo: Dana Eldridge, Jacobs Image: Ghafari Associates Designers produced 2D drawings from coordinated model. Related Links: Digging into 3D Modeling
Sutter Health’s Digby Christian is dead serious about delivering the $320-million replacement for Sutter Medical Center Castro Valley on time and on budget in 2013. But he also is not kidding, and sees no contradiction, when he refers to the 223,500-sq-ft job as a living laboratory. In its most ambitious experiment yet, Sutter is going beyond building information modeling’s low hanging fruit—clash detection—and exploring BIM-based estimating, automated code checking and direct digital-model exchange for detailing, coordination, automated fabrication and scheduling. The nonprofit hospital owner wants to prove it is possible to reduce waste and risk while delivering a better facility,
Sparks are flying over a proposed addition to the 2010 edition of the steel sector’s code of standard practice. The addition would recognize the practice, in use for years, of the structural engineer of record designating connection design to a licensed professional engineer working for the steel fabricator. Tests will likely confirm that welded double-angle connections (below) and seated connections (above) need modification to meet new model code requirements. “The fundamentals of this proposal are accepted,” says Charles J. Carter, vice president and chief structural engineer for the Chicago-based American Institute of Steel Construction Inc., at its North American Steel
Even with many sealed lips about project fates, evidence of the credit crunch can be vividly seen in stilled excavations and incomplete, mothballed commercial and residential structures from New York City to San Francisco. Developers in New York City alone have stopped construction on at least 30 sites, says the buildings department, while the local Building Trades Employers’ Association (BTEA) reports nearly $5 billion of delayed or stalled projects. Slide Show Tempe work stopped in 2008. Photo: The Firm PR. Work on Vegas twin-tower resort-casino halted. Construction also is slow on the West Coast. In California, the dollar value of
What do you get when you cross a farm commune with a traditional neighborhood, a suburban subdivision and a golf community? If T. Wall Properties has its way, you get the 717-acre Bishops Bay, a planned development for the rural towns of Westport and Middleton, Wis. The scheme, if approved, would contain a 240-acre neighborhood that integrates farming with housing. Slide Show Image: SWA Neighborhood planned near Madison, Wisc., would help preserve agriculture in the area. “This development can truly be a model to transform and improve the way communities are planned and the way people live,” says Andy Inman,
The National Building Information Model Standard project committee is in dire need of volunteers to help it develop open building-information-model standards to foster interoperability among products of different software vendors. The buildingSMART alliance of the National Institute of Building Sciences, which is organizing the effort, is intent on delivering NBIMS at no cost to users. Related Links: Software Firms See User Needs Driving New Development Forty Years of Grassroots Development That is not an easy thing to do. Much of the standard will be published in the form of information-delivery manuals. Progress in developing the manuals is based on the
One future vision for virtual design and construction tools is for a "highly automated and seamlessly integrated environment" across all phases and processes of a project’s life cycle. The vision belongs to the FIATECH Consortium, which is devoted to opening up digital standards production to the world by developing the tool to achieve interoperability for interoperability standards. Related Links: FirmStretchesWorksharing to BIM Modeling Pathfinders Impatient To Have A Much Fuller Digital Toolbox Digital Box FIATECH wants a digital world in which all data is available to "whomever needs it, whenever it’s needed and wherever it’s needed," says Ric Jackson, director
