• Google SketchUp – Go Green – Many people use Google SketchUp in the early stages of their designs, when decisions they make can have the greatest potential impact on the way their buildings perform. We wanted to create a place to showcase some of the innovative work that folks are do

Thanks, sometimes it is difficult to understand if it’s you or your work place that is dysfunctional. I work for an Engineering Consultancy firm; a new London branch of an American company. I’ve been there over two years as CAD Coordinator and are still waiting for help from both sides of the Atlantic for setting up what I would of thought was one of the most important setions of a company that sends drawings out as the main ‘face’ of the company. I won’t go into detail, but i am basically locked out a system controlled by the States, who don’t understand that things are done differently in the UK and still have yet to send someone here to help set up the system that is at least – metric! There are other added issues with the symbols still not completed due to a requirement of an UK Engineer to actually give the nod that these are the standards we are actally going to use? Finace and marketing have liberally been going back and forward across the Atlantic, but no help for a section which is where all the design work ends up and is displayed. I just don’t get the lack of interest in setting up standards for this section? I also have from your list 1, 2 – the main MD is not allowed to make decisions on the floor of the office as he doesn’t understand how his own company is run or how to do things procedural, 3. The MD isn’t actually the real boss, the project coordinator is. 4. Consultants are not being paid for at least one month pass handing in of bills – run stateside, 6. meetings just aren’t being held, 10. 12, 17. being bullied and yelled at by certain members of staff is the norm…and yes it was over someone using ‘their’ milk. 19..that’s me and 3 other senior Engineers and just as fed up, 22. what’s a holiday again, what’s a 7.5 hr day feel like, what’s it like to be home before 8pm, 25. – this one really pisses me off as it’s common here. You forgot one . 26. High turn over rate of senior members of staff who can already see the writing on the wall. Well thanks for that; though I would like to piont out that I am planning to leave in April if nothing improves by then and coming back to Oz next year where at least the Australians know what the word hard work means.

Thanks

T R, Feb 11, 2008

• The High Cost of Low Trust – Stephen Covey on trust in the business place: “With low trust, you get a lot of rules and regulations that take the place of human judgment and creativity”
• Ultimate House Design – Scott Adams (of Dilbert fame) redesigns the house – and makes some valid points.
• SaaS – the killer app for CAD? – Good overview on where the world of CAD ought to be heading in the next few years…
• Energy saving most effective in CO2 cutting -report – Squeezing more productivity out of the energy that industries, homes and vehicles burn is the most economical way to stifle rising energy demand and control output of planet-warming gases, according to a new report from the McKinsey Global Institute.
• A standard method for the Whole Life Costing of Sustainable Design – RICS event on 18 March in Glasgow. Interesting topic
• UK-GBC supports Sustainable Building in Practice – A new guide to building sustainable homes was issued this week, which the UK-GBC is pleased to support.This publication provides hands-on, practical advice to developers in the area of new-build residential homes and contains several contributions from UK
• Mexico to build only energy-smart homes in three years – Aggressive plans by Mexico to produce no more traditional build houses within 3 years.
• Energy Efficiency in Buildings: EPBD ? The EU?s buildings platform; Stakeholders want to move on quicker despite the slow start in many Member States – Great article summarising recent events re: EPBD in Brussels. Good stats on where the rest of Europe are up to on implementation.
• Haden Young boss makes shock departure – Building – No sucession plan in place – when the guy had been there 40 years? tut tut.

Sounds great on paper, but the reality is that this is still a long way off. What does the industry need to change in order to further this technology, which exists today but is grossly underexploited?

One problem is that the information in CAD is not suitable for direct export into BIM (this article explains well). IES are hoping to have moved one step closer. They have teamed up with AutoCAD Revit to enable BIM more easily.

What worries me slightly is the claim:

This direct link means the user can run a variety of analyses, without needing specialised skills, separate analysis packages or separate models for each analysis. Greatly increasing the quality and speed of the technical feedback this development enables building designers to examine the implications of alternative design strategies at the touch of a button and use the tools for sustainable design rather than just plant sizing.

A nice philosophy, but beware of putting software in the hands of those without specialised skills. You still need to know how to interpret results, even if you no longer need to be a master at 3D building modelling, something which Kathy Sierra* touched on here.

But does BIM actually reflect reality?  I don’t think so.  Do you know anyone who uses Hevacomp or IES to it’s full potential? Or are you more likely to come across engineers who use a mish-mash of pencil and paper, excel spreadsheets with a little bit of hevacomp and perhaps a little IES thrown in? This dissonance between what the software is capable of doing and what the user actually wants it to do is probably part of the problem.  Users see the software as too complex for what they want to do and so don’t want to overcome the hurdle of learning a new way of doing things.  There’s some great writing out there on this topic including this (old) article from Jeffrey Phillips :

 So the conundrum is, we’ve got to design for lowest common denominator in a user interface, while providing as much functionality as is necessary for the customer to be interested and excited in the application.  Unfortunately, the users of applications are rarely the buyers of applications, so we need a better method to get the proposed user interface in front of the actual users as often as possible.

So is the problem with the software or with the users?  It’s probably a bit of both.  Another Kathy Sierra’s post tries to explain some of the reasons from the users’ perspective.

A final word from Jeffrey Phillips again:

The real rationale is that requesting a new feature is costless. A customer or prospect can ask for features all day long. However, the user interface and its complexity has tremendous cost, since most people are lazy and don’t want to think – and good design should not require them to think overly much. In fact good design should lead a user to the right conclusions and actions without a lot of training or support help, regardless of the number of features. What people are really saying is: give me the features I want, but simplify the interface to make it even easier to use, so I don’t have to receive training, or support this application once we start using it.

This is a topic I’ll be returning to.  I hope BIM is the future, for lots of reasons, but for the minute there are hurdles to overcome…

*Sadly, Kathy hung up her blogging boots back in April 2007 after a nasty cyber incident involving death threats.  Yikes.  I still miss her blog…

I was quite surprised by the statistic that Arup have only used this approach on 3 other projects – I’m not sure of the truth in that – maybe they mean the LA office. But it seems to reflect what I have found throughout the industry. Although companies have invested in software there seems to be a reluctance in using it as often as I would think it would be.

I’m interested in finding out why this is the case. I have a few theories – the co-ordination issues with the rest of the design team being an obvious one. But others that spring to mind are things which may or may not be tested or true. For example, is the underuse because it is perceived as taking longer? Does it take longer because engineers are not proficient in the software? What is the ideal ‘model’ for introducing 3D design? Do CAD technicians develop their engineering skills, or engineers develop their 3D drafting skills? Is this the ideal enticement for all the young folk we need to recruit over the next 10 years?
I’m still looking for an MBA project (12,000 words) to decide upon. There may be something of use in pursuing the above line of enquiry.

The other thought which occured to me is what would be the sustainability credentials of such a building, but that opens a whole barrel of worms and I will get hopelessly unstuck in the debate of art over function over morals, so I will pass on that today, I think.
(And Arup are doing well on their PR yet again)

::via Archinect