Editor’s Note: Gehry Technologies CEO Jim Glymph used his keynote presentation to the European CATIA Forum earlier this year to launch the company’s AEC solution, Digital Project. In this transcription of his presentation, Glymph explains why he thinks Digital Project can help transform the construction industry.
By Jim Glymph
CEO, Gehry Technologies
Transcription by Martyn Day
Contributing Editor
I have been passionate about architecture and building for as long as I can remember. I have worked in construction and engineering, and been a practicing architect for 32 years, for the last 16 with Frank Gehry. I am drawn to others in our industry who share this passion for building, not just the architects, but the craftsmen, tradesmen, builders, and engineers who share the joy in the process, and the sense of accomplishment, in creating buildings that serve and inspire our society. But I have been disappointed by our industry as well. It is painful when the AEC industry is characterized as inefficient, ineffective, and full of risk and conflict, litigious, corrupt, unfair, and economically inept. I am concerned by the shortcomings of our industry, both perceived and real, and by the evolution, over the past 50 years, of a system of project delivery that divides the people who share this passion for building into separate camps that often have too little understanding and respect for the challenges and concerns of the other side.
Our industry is indeed too often divided, fragmented, and often undisciplined. The boom or bust AEC market we work in is perhaps the most unstable and insecure industry one could choose. To protect ourselves from these risks we, the architects, engineers, and contractors have evolved a process that focuses on the divisions between us rather than the common ground we share As building projects have become more complicated in their technology, regulation, concerns for safety, energy and the environment, as buildings have changed from field crafted custom constructions to an assembly of standard products, custom fabrications, and increasingly complex environmental, energy and communications systems, the risks have increased and the project delivery process has become more complex.
The design, engineering and building of ‘one of a kind’ buildings is unlike the manufacturing of mass produced products. At the start of a building project you usually do not know what it will be, how it will be made, or who will build it. Building requirements, codes, and practices vary from project to project and from region to region. Few universal standards of practice exist. Outside of the environment of integrated design build companies, teams of architects, engineers, and consultants are brought together to start a project. They must either integrate their ways of working virtually overnight, or perpetuate a fragmented process. Later in the design process they may know who will manage the construction, and even later, often after the design is complete and bid, they will know who will fabricate its components and provide the products that are to be assembled or crafted in the field as coordinated building elements.
As a result each player in the process has developed its own ways of working and come to rely on itself. This has resulted in a system where each player can only develop processes and solutions in its own limited field of influence. Through the life of a project information is often regenerated; technology, knowledge and expertise are carefully guarded; and the risks associated with the development of a project are isolated or transferred to others.
The software industry has responded by developing niche solutions for each industry segment that are usually incompatible, and often redundant. This redundancy of information has lead to more conflict, more risk, and more inefficiency. Management too often focuses on accountability, rather than coordination, in an effort to isolate the source of the problem and assign blame. A whole legal industry has grown up around this problem only adding to project costs and inefficiencies.
Most AEC software solutions have been developed through the lenses of this fragmentation and most are rooted in a 20th century paper process (or a paper like digital version of this process). The management of a paper bureaucracy has itself grown around this process adds more cost in the effort to manage confusion. Most of the management time on a project is spent dealing with this fragmented, redundant paper process and conflicts rooted in the process itself. Whether it is the management of complex CAD layering systems, or conflicts in the interpretation of paper and text documents, or the scheduling of the work, or logistics on the construction site, each of these software solutions does little to challenge the underlying system that is at the heart of the problem.
We believe all of this is why, in spite of over 30 years of evolution of software applications for the AEC industry, productivity has dropped, errors and claims have increased, and clients, architects, engineers and contractors are as insecure as they have ever been. We believe the Digital Project software solutions, developed by Gehry Technologies and powered by Dassault Systemes CATIA V5 technology, that we have released this month are, as of today, the only solutions in the AEC industry that are designed to take on these problems across the entire project lifecycle. The software is at once proven and new, revolutionary and pragmatic. It is designed by people from the industry for the industry. It brings together the concepts of PLM emerging in the aerospace, automotive, ship building, and product design industries with real world practical experience from the building industry gained over 15 years of innovation by Gehry Partners and the architects, engineers, and contractors who have collaborated on their projects. It has been pragmatically designed to allow for the evolution from a paper based process to the new world of digital design and contracting. It is an open architecture that allows it to integrate AEC industry niche market solutions that exist today into a single collaborative master model for architects, engineers, contractors and project managers that can be directly linked to the advanced applications emerging in the fabrication industry. We hope and believe it is the long awaited first step in providing tools to industry leaders intent on transforming our industry to the benefit of all the players in the building process and the clients they serve.
We are not naive enough to believe that software solutions alone can transform an industry, or that our industry can be transformed overnight. It will take a decade or more to reach the midpoint of this transformation. And we do not believe we have all the answers or that we can do it alone. We do believe that Frank Gehry’s stature in the industry and the success of his pioneering projects around the world affords us a unique opportunity to make a much broader contribution to the industry as a whole; one that goes beyond any particular design style, or set of building types. Gehry Technologies is leveraging this experience and influence to bring a broad base of professionals, academics, and researchers together to guide us in the development of real world solutions.
To help us achieve these goals we have enlisted the support of the industry itself. This year we will place Digital Project applications in over 20 academic institutions in North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia. We are consulting with these institutions to develop new teaching programs and promote cross industry collaborations between schools of architecture, engineering, and construction management. We hope to expand this base to over 60 within two years. We have also established a research association, “The Digital Project”, with research institutions at MIT, RMIT, Stanford, Georgia Tech, Salford, and Hong Kong Polytechnic to coordinate research efforts and develop industry metrics and attract money for research to the AEC industry. And we will listen carefully to our friends in the AIA, RIBA, DBA, CERF and other professional associations who have recognized the need for change and are actively striving to address problems in our industry.
Digital Project is an open system, with adaptive tools that allow architects and engineers to transfer their own standards and systems into the software. It permits customers to develop and protect their own IP, or to contract Gehry Technologies to develop it for them. In this way it is more than a simple cookie cutter or kit of parts solution. At the core of the product is the CATIA V5 geometric and parametric modeler, the most powerful in the industry. We have developed links to other software platforms, an object attribute system that can be adapted to multiple industry standards, and translators that permit the transfer of information across industry platforms. This is a first release, our work is far from done, but we think these products represent a significant step toward a better future for our industry.
More information: www.gehrytechnologies.com