ARCHITECT AND ENGINEER COLLABORATION: THE SOLAR DECATHLON AS A PEDAGOGICAL OPPORTUNITY

Michele Chiuini, Walter Grondzik, Kelsey King, Mark McGinley, Jamie Owensmchiuini@bsu.edu, Department of Architecture, Ball State University

wtgrondzik@bsu.edu, Department of Architecture, Ball State Universityklking09@gmail.com, Speed School of Engineering, University of Louisville

m.mcginley@louisville.edu, Speed School of Engineering, University of Louisvillejamie.owens@gmail.com, Department of Architecture, Ball State University

ABSTRACT

While close collaboration between architects and engineers in building design is a well-recognized necessity, we still educate students in each of these professions separately (and generally in isolation). This paper describes the experience of integrating teams of architecture and engineering students as they progress through the design and construction of a home for the 2013 Solar Decathlon competition. This competition requires that engineering and architecture students, in addition to other disciplines, design, build, and operate a net-zero energy solar house prototype.

The Solar Decathlon experience has identified three critical aspects for interdisciplinary collaboration: project logistics, the design process, and the collective values of the design team. Among the three, the design process is the aspect that seems to offer the greatest opportunity for innovation, especially as it relates to information technologies and building information modeling (BIM). BIM, required as a Solar Decathlon deliverable by the U.S. Department of Energy, provides an excellent conceptual framework for organizing teamwork and interdisciplinary collaboration.

This paper describes how a BIM management system was used by students as a design tool and how it was used to support a collaborative interdisciplinary team approach. Also described are how the students' design processes were impacted by the use of BIM and how this facilitated an early collaboration with engineers. Our experience shows that the collaborative design process and the effectiveness of the teamwork still depend on conventional design review methods, such as face-to-face interactions, which enable the students to understand and appreciate different professional philosophies and values. Such coordination is greatly augmented by a BIM methodology, which allows the productive participation of different disciplines while ensuring that the responsible team members maintain control of the design in their area of expertise.

Keywords: architectural education, BIM, engineering education, Solar Decathlon

1. INTRODUCTION

The 2013 Solar Decathlon is the sixth iteration of an international competition that challenges educational institutions to design, construct, and operate a net-zero-energy house under conditions that engender high expectations for performance and intense public scrutiny. The competition involves ten distinct contests—several of which are primarily engineering-based and some of which are primarily architectural. Successful teams must realistically involve multiple disciplines and these disciplines must work closely together. The Solar Decathlon requires that teams submit key deliverables in Revit, an implementation of BIM (building information modeling) software. Team Kentuckiana, one of 20 entries for the 2013 Solar Decathlon, involves engineering students located at the University of Louisville, architecture students from Ball State University (Muncie, IN), and assistance from faculty at the University of Kentucky (Lexington). Collaborative design across a distance is critical to success—it is also of substantial interest as pedagogy for architectural and engineering education.

2. THE SOLAR DECATHLON AND INTEGRATED DESIGN

2.1 Integrated design in practice and pedagogyCollaboration has long been a prerequisite for successful building projects of any reasonable scale. Such collaboration has involved a range of parties (disciplines), including architects, clients, engineers, landscape architects, code officials, and others. The interrelationship between architects and engineers is particularly important to project success when the project is complex or seeks high-performance outcomes. Historically this architect-engineer relationship has tended to be sequential; so much so that it has often been described as a relay, with information handed from the architect to the engineer in a just-in-time manner. The growing demand for high-performance buildings seems to suggest that what was formerly considered a “just-in-time” collaboration is now more likely to be seen as a “too-late-to-do-much-good” arrangement.

Revised modes of architect-engineer interaction have been described under a variety of terms. “Integrated design” appears to have gained traction as a term with professional recognition. Two key professional organizations have slightly different takes on the specific terminology related to this collaboration and its essential characteristics. The American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) uses the term “integrated building design” (IBD), which it defines as"a collaborative process of preparing design and construction documents that result in optimized project system solutions. For IBD to succeed and be beneficial to the project, the entire project delivery team must be committed to understand, and remain engaged and involved in the process from project inception through operation and maintenance. An integrated design process discourages sequential philosophy and promotes holistic collaboration of the project team members during all phases of project delivery. Emphasis is placed on optimizing system solutions that are responsive to the objectives defined for the project. Optimizing system solutions requires the participation of all team members." (Baumann, 2009)

The American Institute of Architects (AIA) uses the term “integrated project delivery” (IPD), which it defines as "a project delivery approach that integrates people, systems, business structures and practices into a process that collaboratively harnesses the talents and insights of all participants to optimize project results, increase value to the owner, reduce waste, and maximize efficiency through all phases of design, fabrication, and construction. IPD leverages early contributions of knowledge and expertise through utilization of new technologies, allowing all team members to better realize their highest potentials while expanding the value they provide throughout the project lifecycle." (American Institute of Architects, 2007)

The virtues of a more interactive collaborative approach to building design, regardless of the specific terminology employed, are being touted to the design professions (Elvin, 2007). ASHRAE devoted its 2008 annual international webcast to Integrated Building Design: Bringing the Pieces Together to Unleash the Power of Teamwork. Architect-engineer collaboration through an integrated design process is being pushed to practicing design professionals. Is this approach, however, being introduced to architectural and engineering students? The answer to the above question is: it depends. It depends upon whether one looks at architectural education or engineering education; it also depends upon how deeply one looks. ABET (previously The Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology) requires that engineering graduates have "an ability to function on multidisciplinary teams." (ABET, 2011) This could be interpreted as an expectation that engineering students in building-related disciplines be able to work with architecture students. Real-time, give-and-take collaboration between architects and engineers is not, however, the only possible reading for this criterion. In architectural education, there are currently no requirements for collaboration (i.e. integrated design experience). The National Architectural Accrediting Board includes in the list of requirements for graduating architecture students "Collaboration: Ability to work in collaboration with others and in multidisciplinary teams to successfully complete design projects." (NAAB, 2009)

In academia, however, it is often exceptionally difficult to engage students in projects that truly provide or demand interdisciplinary collaboration as envisioned by the integrated design process. Appropriate counterpart disciplines may not be available on or near campus. Competing accreditation demands may make collaboration difficult. Promotion and tenure systems may discourage innovative academic explorations. Schedules may not mesh between departments or institutions. Enter the Solar Decathlon competition.

2.2 The Solar DecathlonThe Solar Decathlon is a biannual competition for solar-powered houses sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy and open to teams of university students. Each team is required to design, build and operate a net-zero energy house with a floor area of between 600 and 1000 ft2 (56 and 93 m2), and a target cost of less than $250,000. The twenty teams selected to compete for the 2013 Solar Decathlon are required to submit a number of design deliverables before assembling the house on the competition grounds in Orange County Park, California. Team Kentuckiana is one of these teams and is a partnership of

three universities: the University of Louisville, KY; Ball State University, IN; and the University of Kentucky. The team includes mainly students of engineering and architecture, but also a number of students from other programs (such as construction management, business, communication, interior design and landscape architecture).

2.3 BIM in educationOne of the main design deliverables during the course of the competition is a BIM model created in Autodesk Revit, an application which is widely employed in architectural and engineering practice but, in our experience, is not yet common in academic environments. There are three components of this authoring tool: Revit Architecture, Revit MEP (Mechanical Electrical Plumbing) and Revit Structures (integrated as one package in the 2013 version). The model generated in each discipline can be linked to cross disciplines for coordination of the respective design elements. With the models linked together during the design process, checks can be run to analyze conflicts or clashes between the components as well as facilitate optimization of the building design and system performance. When the design is completed the models are often handed off to contractors to use as a primary reference for construction. At Ball State University, collaborative use of this modeling is taking place—with construction management students, who can take off quantities directly from the three-dimensional model, and with interior design students, who can work on furniture, lighting, and other interior components within this virtual three-dimensional space.

What place has BIM in architectural and engineering education? Is this an effective method to prepare students for new models of integrated practice? As mentioned earlier, BIM does not have yet a significant impact on how educators teach architecture (Smith, 2012). Other educators predict that "with the increased attention on BIM software and its increased availability to students, we are likely to see BIM permeate (if not dominate) the studios within the next few years. However, careful attention must be paid to the impact of this particular tool on the curriculum. We must ask: what role should BIM have in architectural education and where is its appropriate place in the curriculum?" (Cheng, 2006) The architectural pitfall looming in such questions is to see BIM only as a form of three-dimensional modeling, missing its fundamental nature as an interdisciplinary collaborative tool—able to accept, process, share, and integrate information.

3. THE TEAM KENTUCKIANA DESIGN PROCESS

3.1 Process phasesThe Team Kentuckiana design process, leading to Design Development deliverables, went through three phases involving different forms of interaction and three-dimensional modeling. The first was a conceptual phase when design strategies and problem solutions were developed through an ongoing discussion between architecture and engineering students. A large number of potential solutions were presented by architecture students during the course of the fall semester of 2011, and critiqued by engineering students. Three-dimensional modeling using a variety of architectural modeling software was used as a means of improving communication and, though not used as a tool for direct

collaboration, allowed the capture of engineering input early in the preliminary design process where this input can have the greatest effect on the performance of the end design.

The conceptual design phase was followed, during the spring semester of 2012, by the schematic design phase. Because a Revit model was required as a competition deliverable, all architecture students were basically required to use this software. Revit is not taught in architectural courses; therefore training sessions were set up during the semester. The architecture student team was organized into three task groups: Envelope, Interior, and Exteriors. A common Revit model was created and uploaded as the central file on an external server, also accessible to the engineering students. Two graduate students, one in engineering and one in architecture, were appointed Project Manager and Architecture Project Manager (respectively) with the charge of managing the Revit collaboration.

The architecture students were able to integrate the engineering input during joint design sessions (Figure 1), so there was no need for design review tools during the schematics phase. Each task group had design responsibility in their area and had to coordinate or negotiate changes that affected another task group's decision. For instance, changes in the envelope dimensions affected all task groups, while changes in the interior floor plan were coordinated only through the Interiors group.

Fig. 1 Architecture and engineering students collaborating in the same studio space at Ball State University (ARCH 402, spring 2012, Professor Michele Chiuini).

In the third phase, as students moved toward a final design for the Design Development submission, all team members continued to use Revit Architecture 2012. Intermediate experimentations, however, were made using other three-dimensional modeling applications (such as Rhinoceros and Sketchup).

3.2 BIM coordinationThe Revit-model management system raised the issue of ownership of design decisions, creating occasional tension between task groups. Difficulty in solving conflicts was mainly due to lack of effective communication when work was done in remote locations, outside the studio. Similar to what happens in a professional office, sharing files on a common server still requires physical proximity to alert collaborators of problems and errors. Thus, it was decided that 1) all Revit work should be done in studio when most of the team members were present, and 2) the central file should reside on an internal university server, to be shared with the engineering team only for design reviews. This decision was paralleled by the engineering student team, which was working on the Revit MEP and Revit Structures versions of the central file created in Revit Architecture (Figure 2).

The design process between schematics and design development was particularly indicative of the problems of BIM-based interdisciplinary collaboration. The schematic design solution was submitted relatively early when the design was emerging from the conceptual phase and was not completely defined architecturally. At that stage the design

Fig. 2 File sharing organization used by the architecture and engineering teams (1 indicates exporting to the shared model and 2 indicates importing).

input from engineering students, such as the energy analysis, was based on independent calculations based on the current architectural solution. Similarly, cost analyses performed by construction management students used quantities taken from conventional dimensioned drawings. The main challenge was for the engineering students to model mechanical systems and structures in Revit. Initially the engineering students suggested modifications (mostly during verbal discussions) and the architecture students made corresponding changes to the Revit model (Figures 3 and 4). The aggressive Design Development schedule, however, forced the students to adopt BIM as a collaborative method. The construction management students who had to estimate the house cost, received Revit training at the beginning of the fall semester of 2012, only few weeks before the deliverables due date.

The Design Development deliverables required an integrated BIM modeling process and there was a need to assign specific modeling tasks to engineering students working with Revit MEP and Revit Structure. The problems encountered at this juncture may be indicative of the educational challenges in both architecture and engineering schools. The architecture students were able to use Revit as a collaborative tool relatively early in the design process; learning the software and organizing the design according to BIM logic was much more problematic for engineering students.

3.3 Impressions of BIMA survey was administered during the third phase of the design process to evaluate the effectiveness of BIM (among other options) as a collaborative tool. The interdisciplinary collaboration methods that students perceived as most effective were the "Design Weekends" (multi-disciplinary face-to-face design sessions) and “personal interaction.” Only 15% of student respondents listed the shared Revit model as the most important collaboration method. Physical distance, schedule conflicts, and lack of time to interact were seen as the greatest challenges. Significantly, less that half of the architecture students indicated that the Solar Decathlon "greatly enhanced" their understanding of the BIM process, the major obstacles being difficulties in file-sharing management and uneven level of Revit skills among the team. At this stage, architecture students felt that Revit had not greatly contributed to enhancing the project workflow and the creativity of the design. A clear majority agreed, however, that the collaboration with engineering students was essential to achieve the project's objectives (75%), and had led to an increased understanding of the design process (64%). Students also agreed that learning Revit was an important component of their professional training.

The survey discussed above was reissued at the end of fall semester 2012 to see if there were any changes in key impressions regarding BIM and interdisciplinary collaboration as the project progressed and Revit perhaps became more of a norm than a challenge. No substantive shifts in impressions were noted—although the survey return rate in the second round was rather low. It seems reasonable to assume that impressions of BIM and team coordination (relative to this project) remain essentially those expressed through the initial survey.

Fig. 3 Axonometric view of Team Kentuckiana house from the Revit Architecture model at an early Design Development stage.

Fig. 4 Wall construction sections generated from the Revit Architecture model.

4. CONCLUSIONS

The Solar Decathlon proved to be an excellent vehicle with which to engage integrated design and BIM technology within academia. A desire for success in this diverse and challenging competition provides the need-to-know recognition that often acts as a substantial spur to learning. Understanding the demands of the competition make it clear, early in the design process, that strong collaboration between disciplines is essential for a competitive outcome. The use of BIM is not negotiable. Solar Decathlon teams wishing to compete will cross disciplinary boundaries and use Revit. The inherent nature of the project serves to break down academic traditions and inertia.

Two ongoing questions arise from this experience. Can the strengths of interdisciplinary design become ingrained in our various curricula? Only time will answer this question. What did we learn from this experience? A few thoughts on this follow.

Why was it more difficult for engineering students to adopt BIM? This can be understood first of all by looking at the type of education and design tools used in architecture, where three-dimensional modeling is used from the beginning as a form of visual thinking. Visual thinking is not just a way to represent artifacts to a third party, such as a client, but is a form of creative thinking very different from verbal and mathematical thinking. Architecture students learn early to work with digital modeling in a sophisticated way, and this makes easier to learn new types of three-dimensional architectural modeling software.

Secondly, the attitude of the so-called allied professions (not only engineering, but construction management, interior design, and other professional specializations) is typically to await a detailed architectural solution, so that it can then be “engineered” (or cost-estimated, landscaped, etc.). This leads to a "let’s wait" attitude ("just-in-time") that puts the burden of responsibility on the architecture team, while opening the overall design outcome to potential strategic flaws (e.g., high cost due to complexity in design and difficulty in construction) and design process inefficiencies, resulting from time-consuming changes made when the design is in an advanced state.

REFERENCES

ABET (2011) "Criteria for Accrediting Engineering Programs, 2012–2013," General Criteria 3, Student Outcomes, ABET Board of Directors, October 29, 2011 http://www.abet.org/DisplayTemplates/DocsHandbook.aspx?id=1807

American Institute of Architects (2007) “Integrated Project Delivery: A Guide” (version 1) http://info.aia.org/SiteObjects/files/IPD_Guide_2007.pdf

Baumann, O. (2009) “Integrated Design–Delivery and Operations of Net-Zero Energy Buildings,” Building Industry Day Workshop http://www.solardecathlon.gov/past/pdfs/09_workshops/09_integrated_design.pdf

Cheng, Renée (2006) "Questioning the Role of BIM in Architectural Education," Department of Architecture, University of Minnesota. http://www.aecbytes.com/viewpoint/2006/issue_26.html

Elvin, George (2007) "Integrated Practice in Architecture," New York: Wiley, 2007.

National Architecture Accrediting Board (2009) “NAAB Conditions for Accreditationfor Professional Degree Programs in Architecture” (2009 Edition) http://www.naab.org/accreditation/2009_Conditions.aspx

Smith, Ryan (2012) "Integration and Education," Integrated Technology in Architecture Center (ITAC), University of Utah, Salt Lake City http://network.aia.org/CenterforIntegratedPractice/Home/OnEducation/