faculty Research

Study: 3D building models fall short of promise

By Amanda Weber
July 20, 2011

Assistant Professor Gina Neff and her research team studied how Building Information Modeling (BIM), an information communication tool, supports collaboration among builders, architects, engineers and contractors throughout the building process.

The research was funded by the UW Royalty Research Fund, the Department of Communication, the College of Built Environments, and a National Science Foundation (NSF) grant.

BIM computer software turns blueprints into three-dimensional digital renderings, allowing for interaction with a building model. Ideally, all entities of the building process would have the ability to use this software to make changes and show others what needs to happen at various steps of the construction process. But the team found that this is not necessarily how BIM is utilized.

Neff, Carrie Sturts Dossick, associate professor in construction management, PhD candidate Brittany Fiore-Silfvast, and assisting graduate students observed three different building teams at three sites in the Pacific Northwest during the last three years. The team calls these sites Hill Medical, Valley High-Rise, and the last site is a complex laboratory building. “We were really interested in what’s called inter-organizational communication and collaboration in these projects,” Neff said.

The team also traveled across the country to interview industry leaders. They have completed more than 150 interviews, learning about how BIM is utilized and thought about in various firms.

Open-toed shoes and other cultural differences

Neff and her team visited each construction site amid the loud noise, hard hats and unsteady terrain. It was during the very first visit that she realized she needed a makeover for that environment. “I was wearing open-toed shoes and I suddenly was very conscious that I was wearing absolutely the wrong thing,” she said. “One day I put on my closed-toed boots, and one fellow looked down at my boots dismissively and said, ‘I guess those will do,’ because I wasn’t wearing steel-toed protective safety boots. I became very aware of the cultural differences between people who work on the construction site and those who work, as they say, ‘just in the office.’”

The team sat in on multiple weekly meetings, taking audio recordings of the communication, and notes concerning the technology utilization. For the third site, the team was also included on the email exchange.

Throughout these observations, Neff learned that BIM is, generally, not being used as it is intended — to support the simultaneous work of all entities on the same set of files. Instead, “Architects are using the (BIM) models, printing out the blueprints, and then handing them to the engineers. Engineers build their own models, make their own prints, and hand them back to the architects.”

Technology vs. Messy Talk

In the first two sites, examples they thought would represent the whole of the building industry, the research team was hoping to find out how BIM helped this process along. Much to their surprise, instead of improving communication, it made some things more difficult. “We found that when using these new tools, it was actually having the opposite effect of how it was being touted in the business press. It made some problems easier to solve, but some problems much harder to solve.”

Such problems included the inability to problem-solve as a group, which could be attributed to each entity’s conflicting obligations. Coming to the project, each worker either had an obligation to the project itself, to his or her scope of work, or to his or her firm. “We found that once you use this lens of conflicting obligations, you can start to see why there are so many communication problems among these professions,” said Neff. “The buildings were built, but the teams were quite contentious.”

Neff also found that while the BIM tools are helpful for solving known problems, they don’t aid the process of uncovering unknown problems, a topic that is addressed in her and Dossick’s recently published article, Messy talk and clean technology: communication, problem-solving and collaboration using Building Information Modeling.

The best practice for finding problems is to simply talk it out, Neff said, but that takes time and effort. “They think of talk as being quite messy and expensive. You have to get people in the same room. You have to sit through meetings. Each of these three different knowledge domains has very different kinds of ways of seeing the building. For the professionals we observed, they often need to share information before they can even define what the problem is.”

A Different Approach

For the complex laboratory building, while still looking at how BIM helps the collaboration process, the research team was also looking to see how the use of BIM can make the design and construction process more environmentally friendly. The complex laboratory building they observed being built will meet L.E.E.D status. L.E.E.D stands for Leadership in Energy Efficiency and Design. It is a certification system set by the U.S. Green Building Council.

Laboratories are one of builders’ most difficult projects, as they include a necessity for special water, air, chemical, and entry systems. “Can we actually see better results of more efficiently built buildings from an environmental standpoint, if people use these communication technologies and best practices of collaboration during the design and construction process?” asked Neff. “We don’t yet know the answer to that question.”

What stood out about the construction process of the laboratory for Neff and her research team was the way they communicated, shared, and documented new ideas. Their strategies were conducive to teamwork and brainstorming — a much different situation than the first two construction projects. 

“One of the things we found so interesting and innovative was the ways in which they would modify existing forms and documents in order to make them work in particular ways,” she said. In meetings, the builders used white boards to collaborate and fix problems. After finding a solution with dry erase markers, they also had to document the decision, which is where the iPhone came in handy. Neff said, “In the case of the white board, they take a picture with their iPhone and then upload that picture into their computerized documentation system.”

While Neff and her research team continue to study how BIM impacts green construction, they will publish two more research articles on their findings later this year. They would also like to give a report to the industry. Neff said, “Through our affiliation with the Pacific Northwest Center for Construction Research and Education, we have the opportunity to educate people in the area about what best practices are and what kinds of human communication factors need to be considered when rolling out these new tools.”

In the future, Neff would like to bring UW communication students together with students in the College of Built Environments for a course that would give all students experience in working with and observing communication technologies like BIM. “I would like to design a studio class for communication undergraduates to help think through these problems in organizational and group communication using real teams here on campus.”