The Designer's Role in a Built Environment Innovation Challenge

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This content is intended for students who are exploring the role of a design professional as a part of a Built Environment Innovation Challenge. Architects, engineers and other design professionals (as described below) provide essential services for visualizing and simulation of owner requirements, and coordinated solutions to meet them. Depending on the nature of the owners' requirements, the designer in a built environment innovation challenge should be an individual who's licensed in a design discipline that is the most germane to the majority of the owner requirements or the most dominant ones. This designer is responsible for the overall design concept and system, and may have a number of delegated designers with a variety of subspecialties comprising the rest of the design team.

Design in a built environment innovation challenge can be relatively fluid, particularly in the early stages, with ongoing design input and influence coming from direct interaction by members of the owner and constructor teams. The designer must ensure their visualization and simulation stays synchronized across the network of interdependent relationships among the owner, designer, constructor teams and the various parts, components, and subsystems that comprise an alternative solution. These services are essential to achieving an effective project delivery team and optimizing performance of a built environment project solution that meets or exceeds owner requirements.

Designers with professional disciplines that are commonly associated with the built environment industry are introduced below:

Architect

An architect's services are essentially the art and science of creating an optimal "built environment user experience". This refers to the experience the owner has expressing a built environment requirement, as well as the experience the people who will utilize spaces created to meet the requirement will have. The users' activities within these spaces are based upon particular functions. For example, a warehouse and an operating room are types of spaces that support very different users and functions. The successful architect must enable the integration of objective confirmations that functional requirements of spaces are met with subjective confirmations that the same spaces will please the people that will use them.

Engineer

An engineer is any one of a wide variety of professionals that may provide expert services in design, analysis, and management within a broad professional field comprised of many engineering disciplines. Some examples of engineering disciplines that are commonly associated with the built environment industry include (but are not limited to):

Other Built Environment Related Design Professionals

Examples of other design disciplines that are commonly associated with the built environment industry include (but are not limited to):

The Designer's Deliverables

1. Post a response to the Request For Support (RFS) for open-source Planning and Project Development (PPD) posted by the owner:

This open source proposal should be informed by the open source content published by the owner as described in the content of the Owner's Deliverables for a Built Environment Innovation Challenge. After a careful review of all the content posted by the owner, the designer should formulate, organize, and consolidate any questions the designer has about the owners requirements into a concise, organized and summarized Request (or Requests) For Information (RFI). Be sure to request a time limit for responses to the RFI(s) from the owner. This is so that the owner has an understanding of when the designer needs them, for a complete and timely response in support the owner's timeframe allotted for the PPD effort. Review any responses the owner provides to the RFI(s) by the time requested, and publish an open source written response to the owners RFS by the time requested by the owner. The RFS response should make it clear how the designers' knowledge, skills, and abilities support the delivery of a solution that meets or exceeds owner-expressed requirements.

2. Prepare an information modelling integration plan:

Developing, documenting, and promoting structured procedures for all stakeholders throughout the process of designing, constructing, and operating a facility or infrastructure system are the main objectives of a information modelling integration plan. This plan, prepared by the designer, should describe to the owner, how the process of meeting the owner's requirements will perform best when it stays synchronized across the network of interdependent relationships as described above. It also should explain how information modelling tools, platforms, or environments support the synchronization needed for the best solution to the owner-expressed requirements. The choice by the owner to utilize information modelling tools, platforms, or an information modelling environment depends on the level of sophistication necessary. The designer should cover each concept in the information modelling integration plan and make clear recommendations to the owner about what level of information modelling system sophistication will result in optimal performance of the project with respect to the owner-expressed requirements and budget.

Tools

Information modelling tools refer to design applications that carry out valuable tasks in addition to merely capturing and representing descriptive graphic or textual content with fixed geometry and properties on a output device or paper. Tools that automatically synchronize content across design disciplines and output formats can decrease the risks of cost and schedule growth when a potential change is introduced. The designer will need to compare information modelling tool systems according to the following criteria in the context of the owner's requirements and experience.

User interface intuitiveness. The designer must assess existing tools on how readily the primary users of the information modelling system will familiarize and gain proficiency with it. Obviously the least time necessary to learn and the least amount of user errors will result in greater value towards the design.
Content functionality. The designer must assess existing tools on how well content changes within the model are reflected in updated outputs (e.g. output devices, drawings, material lists, etc.) and result in timely implementation during project execution to reduce or avoid costs and delays.
Parametric object development and modelling capabilities and capacities. Within the context of the owner's requirements the designer must assess existing tools on how well primary users can create and link attributes of objects to existing model content, and how well the tools support sophisticated objects and geometries, revision tracking, take-off list generation, clash or conflict detection, and data standardization.

Platform

An information modelling platform refers to an integrated system of tools, processing power, storage, and multi-user access suited to a particular set of owner requirements and the corresponding design, analysis, and management tasks. Platforms that can process and store large amounts of data as well as interface with external data sources benefit owners who have complex requirements. That is, requirements that necessitate coordination and collaboration over a large breadth of design disciplines and specialties, as well as significant depth of detail within the respective disciplines and specialties. The designer should assess the value of implementing an information modelling platform and make recommendations to the owner accordingly. A recommendation for implementing a platform should include a comparison of information modelling platform systems according to the following criteria in the context of the owner's requirements and experience.

Inter-application processing capacity. The designer must assess how quickly multiple applications share and process large amounts of data within the cloud computing environment of a given platform.
Collaboration support. The designer must assess how well a platform encourages and fosters collaboration between the variety of stakeholders within the project team itself as well as within the larger built environment industry.

Environment

An information modelling environment refers to an integrated system of platforms that can generate, exchange, maintain, synchronize, and manage the comprehensive matrix of parametric object data across them. Environments that foster inter-operability among platforms make the exchange and use of information between platforms more intuitive, simple, and quick. The designer should assess the value of implementing an information modelling environment and make recommendations to the owner accordingly. A recommendation for implementing one should be in the context of the magnitude and complexity of the owner's requirements and the owners experience with information modelling tools, platforms, and environments.

3. Develop a preliminary information model for project inception:

Consider how a playwright or screen-play writer may create content such as "storyboards" to give investors or producers an initial sense of how their script or screenplay might look and play-out in an actual production like a play, movie, game, or show. This is an analogous concept to a preliminary built environment information model that can give owners and constructors an initial sense of how their built environment project might play out through delivery or operation.

A key characteristic of an information model is that it is adds value to 3D virtual models via additional layers of information. This may include materials information, relationships to other objects or models, or specific instructions for building or maintenance. The added value of this extra information permits a variety of advanced analyses of the model. This may include structural resistance, cost and schedule estimations or projections, or energy consumption and water use performance.

Another key characteristic of an information model is that it's parametric. More than just a representation of three dimensional geometry, it can capture, manage, and show relationships between the various parts, components, and subsystems that comprise alternative solutions to meet or exceed owner requirements. This requires that design team leadership make recommendations to the owner about the aspects of their requirements that will benefit most from parametric modelling and collaborative development by cross-functional teams of key designers, constructors, and even product suppliers essential to evolving and refining the model to meet owner requirements. Evolving and refining the design as a parametric model enables cross a functional team to discover and solve problems in a virtual environment. Solving problems in the virtual environment with the help of parametric modelling has less cost and schedule impacts on the delivery of a solution that meets owner requirements than finding and solving the same problems later during the actual physical construction effort.

Designers may use an open-source parametric modelling tool such as FreeCAD to develop a preliminary information model for project inception using the guidance on Building Information Modelling (BIM) using FreeCAD found in the online FreeCAD Manual. Designers may also use an open source BIM platform like BIMServer to support the dynamic collaboration process among the designer, owner, and constructor teams of evolving the model through design and project delivery.

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