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PROFESSOR KEITH HAMPSON (Chief Executive Officer, Sustainable Built Environment national Research
Centre): I first heard Brian speak in Washington DC last year, in April last year at a CIB
IDDS workshop. I was spellbound and the great thing about sitting near the front of a room
and hearing someone like Brian speak is that I was able to get to him first as he spoke
and stepped down. So immediately I said, "Brian, we need to get you to the World Building Congress
in Brisbane in May in 2013." And he thought, "Who is this guy? What is this place called
Brisbane? And what is this World Building Congress business?" But he's here, and I'm
just delighted that he's here. And the place called Brisbane is in a country called Australia
that he'd never even visited before. So I'm delighted to start this collaboration. We
talked yesterday about Martin Fischer and us not being able to keep him away after his
first visit in 1996, and in 17 years time, Brian, we want to be continuing the relationship
here with the CIB, with QUT and the SBE. And at this stage, you know, it's going to be
a great 28 and a half minutes now. A little bit about Brian: He's the manager
of Integrated Building Solutions for Tuner Construction Company in the U.S. Now, Turner
turnover 9 billion dollars worth of construction work a year. It's a fairly serious delivery
and I'm thinking about New Zealand's industry that I heard yesterday from Peter Berghaut,
it was 10 billion a year. So turner, this is your man to turn over the New Zealand construction
industry in one company. It's the largest general builder in the U.S. He supports Turner's
building information modelling implementation in pre-construction, construction and facilities
management. He also develops and delivers BIM training programs to enhance the skills
of Turner's staff including Turner's BIM university, an immersive 8 week advanced BIM training
program for employees. Brian joined Turner in 2001as a field engineer and has worked
his way through the various field, cost, engineering and management positions on projects across
the country. He holds a Bachelor of Architecture degree from Virginia Tech and was a member
of the first graduating class of the VDC Virtual Design and Construction Certificate at Curtin,
sorry, at Stanford University in Cife, one of the first certificate programs of its kind
in the world. He's presented on BIM at the Turner Innovation Series Conferences in Istanbul
and in Moscow, in Sao Paolo in Brazil, and at the CIBW78 in Cairo in 2010 and at events
throughout the United States. Brian Krause, everybody, if you could make him very welcome.
BRIAN KRAUSE (Manager, Integrated Building Solutions, Turner Construction company): Right,
I'd just like to start off by first thanking Keith and John for inviting me to come talk
with you guys today. To put things into context, to go just a little bit further, Turner was
founded in 1902. Like Keith said, 9 billion in volume with 42 offices across the United
States but we've done work in 60 countries across the world. 5000 employees and, like
Keith said, normally considered the number one general builder on engineering news in
ENR magazine. Now, the way that Turner frames all of this BIM Lean integrated project delivery,
we call it Turner Integrated Building Solutions. And we have a mission statement in support
of our core business: every phase of construction will be analysed for process improvement through
the use of new technologies, innovative thinking and solutions integration. And we really group
BIM, Lean and IPD as part of that integrated building solutions with cloud, social and
mobile and green building closely related but still within other groups at Turner. Now,
the way that kind of comes together is, we've been hearing a lot about how wasteful the
construction industry is -- that's the problem. The process is Lean construction and how we
implement those process improvements on our projects. Structure is a collaborative delivery,
whether it's formal or informal through an integrated project delivery or just a teamwork-based
design build, and then we've got all kind of tools we're using to help on top of these
problems, processes and structures. So the way I frame my talk here for the next
20 minutes or so is around how we plan, how we build, how we operate and then how we educate
our staff to do all this on construction sites. So to start how we plan, every good project
using these tools has a good BIM project execution plan. And whether we're using one from the
U.S. Army Corp of Engineers or Pen State or VA or one that we've created internally, it's
creating a very detailed BIM project execution plan. But now we're starting to add in Lean
concepts into that execution plan. And sometimes Lean can get a little bit heavy in process
discussions, and it's hard to tie down what do we really do, what can we do on our projects,
so we created a top ten list. So these are the top ten things we can do on our project
to help with process improvement on those projects. So we'll try and define these Lean
items that we can do to help process performance as well as defining how we're going to use
BIM in conjunction with them. Now, a lot of what I'm going to be showing, they don't fall
into a category of BIM or Lean or IPD, it's... I hope you see that some of the lines are
starting to blur putting them together. So the number one thing on that list is developing
people, and I can't stress enough that teaching our staff, teaching our project teams how
to work together, even if we don't have a true contractual arrangement that allows us
to work in that, is very important because that'll help us have that successful project
that'll allow us to do some of those collaborative things and break down some of the traditional
barriers. So we really do a lot with working with our people. Now, for anyone that was
in the previous IDDS session, you saw a great case study on centre health. Now that fell
into the, what we would call the tri-party true IPD-type project which is down at number
three but we do 1500 projects a year at Turner and I'd say we've probably only done five,
maybe ten IPDs in our history. So, realistically, we're getting a lot more of the number ones
and number twos, more joint agreements that may have some shared savings that are a design-build,
design-assist type arrangement and that's what we have to work within.
You know, we're a 9 billion dollar a year contractor and sometimes we can't wait for
the contractual arrangement to catch up, so we're using these things regardless of that
contractual arrangement. Now the way we develop people, we'll start adding in some of those
technology tools. Now this is an example down in Miami Children's Hospital. We did a highly-rendered
visualisation of the hotel room. We have one of these 3D headsets out of our Boston office
and our staff flew down and they sat with the nursing staff, with the design team and
we put them in the immersive VR environment. It was actually kind of interesting what happened
on the job because some of the designers, there were certain things that showed up that
they weren't expecting to show up and it was very clear to the client what was happening
and it made the design almost too clear for the designers and where they were in the design
process. Another example of this is at the Children's Hospital, Philadelphia. And this
one's kind of interesting. This is one of the surgeons there and what he's got in his
hand is the wand and what he's doing is he's actually grabbing a piece of equipment that
we had floor-mounted in the model and he's picking up that piece of equipment and snapping
it in the ceiling, because he preferred that piece of equipment to be ceiling-mounted with
miscellaneous metals versus being floor-mounted. So these are the type of live, interactive
things we're doing with our design teams, with our ownership teams, where they're moving
the model around, making design decisions where it's a lot cheaper in the virtual world.
Now from this, we start doing what we call target value design. And that target value
design, we break our teams into different components and those different components
then use the model, use the intelligence in the model and the data in the model to look
at different design options. And, obviously, this being an information model , those quantities
and costs are automatically generated both visually and in the data and in the cost database
so that those individual target value design teams are seeing very quickly the different
design options that are changing. Then we take a look at all of those overall budgets,
whether it's mechanical, whether it's structural, whether it's the exterior wall, and we see
the trends as those design exercises with the models start happening and, you know,
it's OK if one goes up and another goes down to stay within that target value design budget.
We may put together an A3 which is kind of a one page summary of something that we determined
from doing those target value design exercises. This is an example showing an HVAC system
life-cycle cost analysis where we looked at the initial cost, we did some studies and
we were able to, in a one page document, show the team, might be some more initial costs
but over the life-cycle of the building it's more intelligent to use a different type of
system. Now that starts leading into another topic
which we call total cost of ownership. A lot of times when people hire Turner they just
think of this red piece of the puzzle -- the construction costs, and granted, that's probably
the largest piece of the construction project cost, but really if we can start influencing
some of the other bits of the puzzle, it may affect some of the costs in construction but
it may be better for the overall cost of the project. Some of those things we're doing
are life-cycle studies or energy analysis or daylight simulations within the model.
I'd say, from a contractor perspective, this, we haven't done a ton of unless we're very
closely teamed with our design partner, but we are seeing some of this as part of our
total cost of ownership model. Now, something else that we've started doing
at Turner is we've created some plug-ins for commercially available software. This is a
plug-in for Sketch Up. And we found that our staff really liked using Sketch Up, especially
in the conceptual estimating stage, so we created a plug-in which we call Quantify and
it adds some properties to Sketch Up that allows you to pretty much do the same clicks
that you would on something like an on-screen take-off type software but then it adds the
information to that Sketch Up program. We developed another plug-in for Revit as well
as NavasWorks that pulls out attributes out of the model and then we can use those attributes
in Excel Spreadsheet and put them in Timberline or another costing database we might use.
So, you know, we're trying to put all of these plug-ins that we may be creating under an
umbrella that we're calling Voxel just so we can help identify what they are. At Turner,
we're not a software developer by any means. We're just working with existing software
that's there, like Revit, like Sketch Up, but then we're using folks, and there was
a question earlier about how does the educational world start translating into the industry,
we're using folks from your universities to help us develop these. So it's your universities
that we hire as a full-time engineer and they're helping develop these. You know, it's not
our 40 year veteran construction builders that are developing these things; it's your
folks. So it's just something that we're doing to help improve our process.
Something else we're doing is we've just recently started doing some safety planning models.
In the United States we have something called Jiffy Lube where you take your car to get
your oil changed and whenever you get your oil changed they do a 35 point safety checklist
of your car. So we've developed the Turner 50 point BIM safety checklist where we've
written some rule sets, both within Revit as well as in Celibri, and they're based on
OSIA or based on our job site safety requirements that we need to have and we'll put our model
into that safety checker and really do that 50 point safety check before we go out onto
the site and before we start implementing. So we'll know if there's a penetration in
the slab. If it's a small penetration we may not have to do anything. If it's a larger
penetration we may have to put, you know, a plywood cover over it. If it's a very big
penetration we may have to put handrails around it. So by putting the model in this environment
we're able to check those things quickly before we start the project.
Another nice thing that we've done out of our New York office is we submitted our first
3D safety permit submission to the department of buildings. This was the first time in the
New York City department of buildings that we actually submitted a 3D model and they
accepted that. And we submitted it as well as we loaded it on iPads for them so when
they walked out into the site they could look at our safety in real life on the iPad. And
I think it really started something there in the Department of Buildings because now
they're starting to open up their eyes to accepting 3D design submissions as well as
just site safety submissions. The final thing as part of the plan stage
that I'd like to talk about is planning versus managing. As part of that planning phase we
do pool planning. A lot of you have probably seen these sessions in action by using the
sticky notes with all of our sub-contractors and all of the parties in the room and really
taking a look at how we're going to put that schedule together. And what we're trying to
do is start introducing the model to that environment as well so that we're not only
looking at individual activities on a sticky note but we're actually looking at that live
in a model with some preset simulations that we've done and what you're seeing here on
the bottom right is some of the equipment being move into a tight mechanical space and
what would have to be done there. Now moving on to the build phase. There's
the planning phase as part of collaborative pool planning but then there's also the managing
phase, the tracking of your productivity and tracking it versus that plan. So we'll start
looking at our percent plan complete and we'll start looking at how much work in place did
we actually commit versus our plan. On the left-hand side is more of a traditional way.
You know, for as many years as we've had highlighters, we walk into the trailer after a slab pour
and we'll highlight what got poured that day and we'll put the date on it. Well that's
static information hanging on the wall whereas now we can highlight that information in the
model and it's got the cost and schedule information tied back to our plan and we can see how we're
doing as it relates to our plan. Another thing that we use is a constraint
log and really I'd say it's a glorified action item list from the meeting minutes. But really,
when you start showing how many items did you get done since the last commitment meeting
and you really show that you got 50 percent done, you got 48 percent done, we got 75 percent
done, it really starts putting the point on who needs to act a little bit more timely
in their decisions to keep the process moving. Something else as part of that Voxel piece
where we're working with the developer and we've created kind of an electronic version
of the sticky note process, you know, this is showing one of our engineers using it on
a Smart-board, it creates that data electronically so you don't have to capture that afterwards
from those sticky notes. I'd say one thing, though, with this, I'd say it still doesn't
replace the interaction that happens when someone walks up with sticky notes, you kind
of have everyone in the room by hand jotting down their activities and committing to them
by writing it out on paper. So that's one thing I'd say we found by using the electronic
tool. We've got lots of i-rooms set up across to create those collaborative environments
and we've also got them virtually, so we're using a couple different software where we'll
use teleconferencing and webinar type activities where you can either watch it from your iPad
or from the smart boards and everyone can collaboratively mark up the space that we're
collaborating in. Now moving on to the build-side of BIM, this is a laser scan of Madison Square
Garden. For anyone familiar with Madison Square Garden it's in New York City, it's where the
New York Rangers play and the New York Knicks play, it's one of, I'd say, the most well-known
arenas in the United States and we did, we were doing some renovation of current seating
as well as suites, and we did a complete laser scan of the entire facility, turned that laser
scan into a usable model and then used this model as part of our coordination process.
So started looking at those existing condition sand tying that in with the new stuff that
we're constructing. So our trade coordination, it's gotten, I'd say, a lot more detailed
and a lot more complex since the early days when we started it I'd say six or seven years
ago, we've got a lot more access space and more of the soft space that we're modelling
as well as we're doing more with underground coordination as well as above-ceiling coordination.
One case study that I wanted to pull up is our Denver VA Medical Centre, and one thing
I'd like to highlight here, you know, the question came up in an earlier session "Who
built the model? Who built the Revit model? Who started the Revit model?". This building
actually had 120 and counting Revit models on this project, so a lot of our trades instead
of working in 3D CAD they were actually working in Revit and we've got an entire process here
of just how to manage that much data and that much information on that project with that
many Revit models coming from all the different participants in that project. A lot of this
starts leading then to prefabrication, we're seeing a lot more prefabrication on our projects,
moving directly from that model into prefabricated parts in different onsite and offsite warehouses,
whether it's bathroom pods, MEP racks, headwalls or piping, we're seeing a lot of different
things that are coming onto our projects now that are helping initiate both in the buyout
phase, in grouping subcontractors together as well as, you know, helping make it work
with some of the BIM that we're doing. Just a couple of case studies where we're doing
this, now something we're trying to do with prefabrication is not just prefab a bathroom
pod and say "Alright, we're done with prefabrication on this job", we're starting to try to connect
the prefabricated modules together, both in the model environment as well as on site,
so we may have a prefabricated bathroom pod and then an MEP rack and then a patient room
headwall for that hospital and then we're trying to connect those to create a larger
prefabricated model to be put together and connected on site. As part of this entire
process we really try to have continuous improvement, another Lean concept, you know, using the
PDCA plan to check-adjust models so we're really trying to look at what we're doing,
measure what we do and then adjust to make sure that we're doing it better next time.
One of the ways that we're doing that, this is a quick metric that we did for our clash
detection process, the one column there, the third column, shows the total number of clashes
that we had when we ran it in Navisworks whereas the fourth column shows the total number of
actual documented clashes, so how many things were actual legitimate clashes and not duplicates
and not things that really, like flex ducts that we could just move around in the field,
and if you look at that only 28% of our clashes that were generated by the software were actually
real, and when you think of that in a Lean concept that's 72% waste that's part of our
process. So as a running clash detection there's 72% waste in that, and we're trying to change
that and actually, this was done back in 2008, the software's gotten a little bit better
to group some of those clashes and we've done some internal things to eliminate some of
that waste. Another nice metric that's come out of this is we track our productivity based
on thousands of dollars per man-month, so on a traditional job, mechanical, electrical,
fire protection, they may put in place around 15 thousand dollars a man-month, so one worker
will put in about 15 thousand dollars a man-month, and I did a study of four BIM jobs and four
non-BIM jobs in the DC areas, and when I looked at the four BIM jobs the productivity for
mechanical was actually around 37 thousand dollars a man-month, electrical was around
20, 25 and fire protection was around 20, so we saw a big increase in our productivity
on those BIM jobs, again I tried to focus on where the biggest *** for the buck was
with us doing mainly clash detection and coordination on those projects. We're starting to see more
dashboards on our projects so that anyone at any time can log in and see these metrics
and act on them as part of their process. And we're also using more RFID and barcoding
to feed some of that data, on the left is what we're using as an entry portal to our
jobs with passive RFIDs on the hard hats so that we can know who's on the job, and on
the right-hand side is more using the barcodes for material tracking which we've tied back
to our submittal logs, so as you scan that you can see if that submittal has been submitted
and approved or not. We're also starting to take the model out into the field and, oh,
there must be some sound with this one, but we've actually created an app, which isn't
quite available on the iTunes store yet, but it uses the scanning of a barcode with augmented
reality, and there's some similar apps already out there, but we're using it where you can
overlay that augmented reality but pull from that barcode database that has that active
model already in it. So next I'd like to talk about how we operate
and how we use these models and these processes to operate the facility. Again, like I said,
we're not a software developer so we're working with other software that's out there but we're
then putting things on top of it, and this next one we call Voxel library and Voxel monitor,
and they're built on the Veo platform, but we've linked them in with the clients building
management system. So what you're seeing here is, this is our Columbia University project,
on the left-hand side is the active BIM that we use as part of the process for coordination
and cost estimation and schedule simulation on the job, and on the right-hand side are
the live temperature sensor data that we link to the building management system. On this
job there's around 600 physical sensors that we've linked it with, the way Columbia wanted
to do it was they only wanted a one-way view, they only wanted to be able to view the temperature
data, they didn't want to be able to change the sensor data from the BIM model so you
can click on different room objects, which we linked with the sensor data information,
and then you can see the temperature as well as alarming information. We also linked, you
know, 35 hundred documents to this so when an alarm goes off you can look at that object,
you can look at the intelligence that's built into the model but like you're seeing here
a red box will pop up when an alarm goes off in the building management system and then
you can zoom into that, see all the data that's part of that and look at the documents as
its linked to that. Got about five minutes here so I'll speed
up and finish up. But what's really nice with this is, you know, you're zooming into that
object, it's linked with the building management system, it's linked with the documents, you
know, and I know there's been a lot of discussion about PPPs here, you know, this could be a
nice, intelligent way to manage your facility and make sure that you're getting the operational
excellence that you're planning from the beginning. This is one other quick video that was showing
the same thing happening but it's linked to a barcode, so you could scan that barcode
and pull up that same information from out in the field. The last thing I'd like to touch
on is how we're educating both our own staff as well as industry; I mean it's nice that
we have senior level support and engagement to help promote these Lean and BIM type items
on our projects. We've got something very interesting happening on Socialcast which
is really our internal social networking way, internally, of sharing ideas, and since we
started about two years ago we've now got over six thousand searchable messages and
content strictly about technology and Lean processes, and I'd say it's probably one of
the best things out there that we have that is a nice database to search what people are
doing and what's being done. We also do weekly webinars where we educate staff on what's
being done on projects, and something that I've been involved with the last three years
is Turner BIM University. The first two years it was eight weeks, last year it was six weeks,
and it starts with a weekly flow of Lean operational type ideas, the tools and then how do we-
and then let's practice using those tools to help benefit a job. So one week may be
estimating, one week may be scheduling, but this last year we actually overlayed Lean
process concepts on top of that BIM University, so looking at value stream mapping, looking
at LASS planner, looking at work breakdown structures as part of that university.
We're also doing an innovation series that we're going around the world, we've recently
been in Moscow and Istanbul and also in India, and recently Montenegro, where we're talking
about what we're doing with the local contractors and designers and trying to bring some of
these concepts to those local markets. We also have an award for innovation that we
started last year where we had 250 submissions from some of our staff, grassroots from the
bottom up not from the top down, really again from the folks graduating from your universities,
showing innovative things that they're doing on their projects or that they'd like to do
and then we're trying to develop them further. Just a quick look at where we are, we've done
around 500 BIM projects for around 35 billion dollars, but at the same time that's just
a small fraction of our work. We're struggling to get down into the projects below 10 million
dollars in volume and we're struggling to do more than just the basics, more than just
pull planning, more than just clash detection, more than just schedule simulation. My last
slide here, you know, I'd like to just kind of, this is how we talk to our staff, you
know, think big, think big about current inefficiencies in your process, potential project issues,
you know, the big picture of where we could be, but we've got to start small. We're a
big company, we're driving 100 kilometres an hour down the road and we can't just stop
and change out the engine while we're driving down the road building nine billion dollars'
worth of work. So you've got to start small, so whether it's implementing some of those
Lean top 10 principles, starting with the software, trying some overlaps, that's how
we educate our staff. I think I'm right up to the time, but thank you.
PROFESSOR KEITH HAMPSON: Well, so that's called drinking from a fire hydrant. While Brian's
there and his adrenaline's pumping, who would like to ask a question? We're running a little
short of time but gee it would be a shame not to leverage off some of the energy that's
in the room right now, and introduction and affiliation.
Questioner: Sylvester Salakovek, the second contractor in the room, I think there's a
third one from New Zealand as well, who's contractor by the way here?
PROFESSOR KEITH HAMPSON: There are many more than two.
Questioner: Many contractors here, well that's fine. Brian thank you very much for a very
impressing presentation, I had two questions. The first is how do you do it in a legal way
because the whole position as a contractor changes from very traditional contracting
to doing nearly everything , how do you do it with your legal approach?
BRIAN KRAUSE: Well I'd say it still all has to go back to that contract so if the contract
is saying drawing and specs we'll be working in the 3D environment which is helping the
process but it's a little antiquated but we have to go back then and translate that into
2D drawings and specs and that, contractually, is what we have to deliver. So we'll be working
in this environment because it makes sense and because it's beneficial to the job but
we have to translate that back to, you know, the older style contract and plans and specs
which we have to build off. So-
Questioner: And the second question, you say you bring your knowledge to Montenegro and
India, what's your interest in this to do that?
BRIAN KRAUSE: Well we've got work in those areas and we'd like to get more work in those
areas, so, you know, internationally Turner, we don't normally take on the general contractor
role, more of an advisor and a CM type role, but we want bring some of this innovation
to, you know, a smaller city like Budva, Montenegro, where we've got two projects where we can
help benefit the projects there in that market that really hasn't adopted a lot of these
things. So it's really, I'd say, taking some of this knowledge that we've, we've been around
111 years and we've made a lot of mistakes over 111 years, taking some of that knowledge
and some of these technologies to those developing markets and really help them, you know, learn
from our mistakes.
Questioner: Thank you very much.
BRIAN KRAUSE: Thank you.
PROFESSOR KEITH HAMPSON: I'm thinking that we should call it quits there, I know that
Brian's going to be around till Friday and that he'll be around here today, tomorrow
and Thursday as well, so I just want to say thank you to Brian, I mean the energy that
he brings to the job and the energy that he brings to Turner is quite unique and I just
wondered if you'd join with me in thanking Brian Krause. Thank you.