Akio Moriwaki As head of global marketing for the AEC Industry at Dassault Systèmes, Mr. Moriwaki launches and promotes groundbreaking Industry Solution Experiences. He is a member of buildingSMART.
While building information modeling (BIM) was once considered a critical piece in efficiency driving construction project delivery, the truth is that BIM applications have not met the needs of GCs and specialty contractors. After more than a decade in use by architects and engineers, few construction companies can credit cost savings to BIM because the applications are not used in the field.
BIM’s usefulness as a specifications solution for architects does not translate well to construction. A BIM model of a door, for example, may contain sizing, acoustic information, fire performance and other characteristics, but it will not include the granular definitions of components needed to make a purchasing list. As a workaround, contractors are likely to flatten the BIM model into a paper drawing and create a spreadsheet from which to order components.
Prefabrication is one strategy that has gained traction within construction and allows a team to mature from managing pure site-built projects, the vast majority of developments happening today, to an off-site manufacturing and assembly approach.
Moving construction processes off site into a prefab shop offers nominal advantages. The controlled environment permits work to continue regardless of inclement weather, quality is improved in a controlled environment, and skilled labor can be concentrated in the warehouse while unskilled labor can be deployed to perform on-site assembly.
While prefabrication solves some logistical problems, it also carries some critical limitations. Prefabricated components are limited to a maximum size and weight since they still must be transported to the jobsite. This process creates two locations to control because some assembly work happens in the prefab shop, while other activities take place on the construction site. These logistical issues increase the cost of large, low-density prefabricated assemblies.
Over the last decade, the construction industry has come to terms with the need to make significant changes. Most major players have taken steps to improve efficiency, borrowing lessons from manufacturing industries and adopting digital design, off-site construction and prefabrication strategies. However, there are critical differences between high-volume, mass-production, industrialized manufacturing and one-off, hyper-customized, large-scale construction projects. These differences demonstrate the need for an altogether new approach to construction delivery.
Lessons from the Industrial Revolution
Until the Industrial Revolution, craftsmanship was the sole solution for creating goods, including buildings. Each product was developed by hand, with the potential for quality to vary across goods produced.
THE TRAJECTORY OF PRODUCTION STRATEGIES THROUGH THE INDUSTRIAL AGE
REFERENCE: “The drivers to new paradigms are market and society needs.” The Global Manufacturing Revolution: Product-Process-Business Integration and Reconfigurable Systems by Yoram Koren (November 2010). Reprinted with permission from John Wiley & Sons.
With the advent of the Industrial Revolution, manufacturers were able to mass-produce goods to satisfy demand with a high volume of products. The tradeoff is that mass production relies on component standardization and limited product variety to achieve cost efficiencies. This standardization at high volumes removes any opportunity for personalized production.
Manufacturers of mass-produced goods are now beginning to navigate this challenge as they recognize the limits of industrialization in their own context. The emergence of Industry 4.0 is meant to support manufacturers in harnessing data to drive greater flexibility in production processes and the mass customization of goods. Read the rest of The limits to industrialized construction
Today’s trade-based construction and assembly processes, even when performed off site, present massive execution risks. Financial sinkholes lurk wherever a trade may intersect with another trade.
Productization is a radically different approach that unlocks new levels of value and scalability for developers. At the core of this strategy are integration-ready construction modules, which incorporate multi-trade assemblies, standardized interfaces and generative variants. These
modules organize into product lines that align with the business objectives of owners and general contractors (GCs).
Starting with a Dassault Systemes’ CATIA® model, one can use physics apps on the 3DEXPERIENCE platform to create simulation models and perform analyses for events such as the movement of trains on bridge decks. One such example is shown below in Figure 1. Two balanced cantilever spans of a representative box-girder bridge are meshed, and finite element analysis is performed. A standard TGV train is considered to pass over the spans, and appropriate axle loads are taken into account at the wheel locations. The wheels are considered to be point masses, and vertical loads are generated at the point mass locations due to the action of gravity. Contact conditions are specified between the point masses and the bridge deck, and the set of point masses is then translated longitudinally over the bridge deck in order to simulate the passing of the train.
Figure 1 shows the contours of the component of tensile stress along the bridge’s longitudinal direction as generated by the train’s live load. One can see high tensile stresses along the deck top surface in the neighborhood of the pier as the train’s weight is borne by the cantilever portion of the bridge deck. Although just elastic properties have been used for the bridge deck in this analysis, other material models appropriate for concrete will need to be used along with reinforcements and pre-stressing cables to get more realistic results. The latter will be essential when responses of the
bridge to scenarios such as seismic and extreme loading need to be predicted.
Figure 1. Bridge showing contours of tensile stress along the axis. The tensile stress gets generated due to live load from the train.
The Institution of Structural Engineers has awarded the 2017 prize for Construction Innovation to the team that designed and built The TallWood House at Brock Commons – an 18-storey mass timber hybrid building at the University of British Columbia (UBC) in Vancouver, Canada.
At 53m high, this student residence building has been recognized as the tallest mass timber hybrid building in the world. It is comprised of 17 storeys of five-ply cross laminated timber (CLT) floor panels, glue laminated timber columns.
Key to proving the construction process was the use of 3DEXPERIENCE to simulate the construction methods, from delivery of prefabricated parts to the work processes involved in assembling the building. CADMakers* used the 3DEXPERIENCEplatform to simulate in real time all these interactions and hence improve on methods in a digital world before committing to the real world.
Zaha Hadid Architects used CATIA 3DEXPERIENCE as the platform for the design of the world’s longest asymmetrical single stay bridge in Taiwan – The Danjiang Bridge. The design teams based in 3 locations across 2 continents used CATIA 3DEXPERIENCE On Cloud as the design and collaboration platform. Read the rest of CATIA 3DEXPERIENCE contributes to two Construction Awards
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Located at the mouth of Tamsui River that flows through the capital Taipei, the Danjiang Bridge is integral to the infrastructure upgrading program of northern Taiwan. Commissioned through a competition by the Directorate General of Highways, Taiwan, R.O.C., the bridge will increase connectivity between neighbourhoods and reduce through-traffic on roads within local town centres.
By also reducing traffic from the congested Guandu Bridge upriver, the Danjiang Bridge will greatly improve the northern coast traffic system and enhance accessibility throughout the region with the rapidly expanding Port of Taipei/Taipei Harbour, the region’s busiest shipping port.
The Team
The winning design team comprised a joint venture collaboration between architects Zaha Hadid Architects based in London, acting as design consultants; lead structural engineer was Leonhardt, Andrä & Partner in Germany and Sinotech Engineering Consultants in Taiwan acting as local engineering consultants. Read the rest of Zaha Hadid Architects: The Danjiang Bridge
These are extraordinary times for civil engineering. Innovative structures such as hyper-loops, undersea hotels and made-to-order 3D-printed buildings, which were just concepts a few years ago, are no longer considered to be in the realm of fiction. These novel structures need to be designed for either transporting people through natural surroundings, protecting them from natural surroundings or allowing them to interact with natural surroundings.
SHoP Architects was one of the 17 architectural firms invited to participate in the 2017 AEC Hackathon earlier this year.
Dassault Systèmes’ Design in the Age of Experience Hackathon was a unique opportunity to create innovative building designs in under 24 hours with CATIA’s latest generative modeling applications on the 3DEXPERIENCE platform.
In this video, you’ll hear directly from the SHoP team about their experience, and see the beautiful designs they created during the event:
Traditionally, engineering firms review the architect’s conceptual designs and independently develop their engineering drawings. This is a wasteful step, which duplicates work and can misinterpret the architect’s intent. This disconnect between the designs also makes it incredibly difficult to test new ideas or incorporate changes from the architect.
It provides the ability for all stakeholders to collaborate on and visualize a virtual mockup of the project from start to completion in digital form, improving speed and building trust that the desired outcomes will be met. Read the rest of “Future Testing” for Civil Engineering
The Institution of Structural Engineers has awarded the 2017 prize for Construction Innovation to the team that designed and built The TallWood House at Brock Commons – an 18-storey mass timber hybrid building at the University of British Columbia (UBC) in Vancouver, Canada.
Tweet: The TallWood House at Brock Commons project in Vancouver was awarded the 2017 prize for Construction Innovation @CadMakersCo @3DSAEC #3DEXPERIENCE https://ctt.ec/Ye0xn+
