Architects Collaborate in the Cloud

Architecture has been a bit of an IT laggard. That may change now that Frank Gehry has brought his 3D modeling—the basis for many of his renowned, contoured projects—to the cloud for commercial use.
Architects Collaborate in the Cloud
Awarding Winning Gehry Tower, at 8 Spruce Street, New York City. (James Grundvig)
James Grundvig
1/23/2013
Updated:
4/24/2016

 

When I saw the pilot demo of architect Frank Gehry’s long-term goal to bring 3D Modeling—which is the basis for many of his renowned, contoured projects—to a cloud environment last October in New York City, I wondered how the new technology would hold up under commercial use.

In reaching Gehry Technologies’ Los Angeles office, I got the answer:

“We have streamlined our workflow for sharing 3D models. GTeam is enhancing the effectiveness by which decisions can be made and progress monitored. GTeam is an excellent solution for our needs.” – Zhah Hadid Architects.

“We are having tremendous success using GTeam on our projects. It really does open up a whole new aspect to team collaboration.” -The Pike Company, which is a large construction management firm.

Two sides of the industry’s design-build divide have given positive feedback.

According to GTeam engineers, the platform hasn’t suffered any technical challenges. Not bad for a product that launched three months ago. 

 

What is helping project stakeholders, where 80% of the architect-engineering-construction (AEC) industry is made up of small to medium size businesses (SMB), is GTeam’s collaborative environment and the ability to walk into a virtual replica of the building before it is constructed.

Gehry Technologies, Inc., hasn’t overlooked the SMB wedge of the market; it offers pricing at three levels, to include smaller firms.

Cool might be one word to describe GTeam, collaborative another. But unless you have worked in the industry for many years like this author has, the plain word useful comes to mind.  With useful comes the value-adds the new generation of architects, engineers, and project managers might take for granted or not be familiar with. Useful saves time, money, and reduces the noise of distractions. The latter, frees managers to solve problems that pop up everyday on a project.

The Drag of Analog Process

In a recent Engineering News Record (McGraw-Hill) article—What You Don’t Know About Your Data Can Hurt You (12/3/12)—of fifteen verticals the AEC industry is dead last (1.4%) in investing in technology.  By comparison, the banks invest 7.3%.

For too long the industry has been an IT laggard. It has been stuck in the Dark Ages of spreadsheets, emails, and paper, paper, paper. Much of the workflow that revolves around submittals of product data is analog and paper-driven.

Perhaps the biggest benefit for stakeholders is not to merely to stroll through a virtual building or examine blowups of connections, but to coordinate all of the “guts” in the cloud from their own desks. The old way of making all of the electrical and plumbing bends, risers, and runs to fit in ceilings and closets—“coordination drawings”—used color pencils and months of management time.

GTeam, and building information modeling (BIM) software like it, break the old mold of coordinating, allowing managers to work remotely instead of in a crowded field office, and doing so more efficiently than ever before. This saves time, reduces errors, and maps out project details far more accurately. 

 

 

From 8 Spruce Street to Collaboration in the Cloud

In December, Frank Gehry and his architectural firm Gehry Partners, LLP, won the 2011 Emporis Skyscraper Award for “8 Spruce Street.”

From the Emporis press release:

“8 Spruce Street, the first skyscraper by the architect Frank Gehry won over the jury with its magnificent undulating stainless steel facade. Commenting on the choice, the jury said: ‘8 Spruce Street stands out even in Manhattan’s already remarkable skyline. It is a major new architectural landmark for New York.’”

From GTeam: “Gehry Technologies, a global leader in applying technology to building industry challenges, played a central role in the delivery of the 2011 recipient of the Emporis Skyscraper Award.

“By working directly in a shared 3D digital environment that facilitated better communication and collaboration, we were able to bring fabrication expertise forward into design and realize our design inspiration for 8 Spruce Street,” said Gehry. “My team is inordinately proud of this building and likewise honored by this award.”

 

Interview with GTeam’s CTO Dennis Shelden, Ph.D.

By email, Gehry Technologies’ co-founder and CTO Dennis Shelden agreed to an interview.  With a Bachelor of Science in Architectural Design, a Master of Science in Civil and Environmental Engineering, and a Ph.D. in Computation and Architectural Design from MIT, Dennis Shelden joined Gehry Partners in 1997.  Exposed to Gehry’s 3D conceptual approach to architecture, Shelden helped form Gehry Technologies, Inc., in 2001 on R&D he and Gehry Partners team had performed.  This long road led to a timely product.

“What are some of the benefits GTeam offers to clients?” I asked.

“It is widely understood in the industry that BIM promises broad potential for reduction of errors and waste, improving the speed and quality of building projects, and allowing data generated in one corner of the process to be easily repurposed in other contexts,” Shelden explained. “Some of this promise has been realized, but there are also significant bottlenecks in project delivery that limit the realization of this value. In short, BIM-based project improvement is a collaboration and social question, where the value created is proportional to the number of people involved and the strength of their involvement.

“Technology that reduce the friction of access and present data in a consumable way to all parties can go a long way to reducing the impediments to change. GTeam is designed to address those impediments, by making BIM and other project data simple to access, provide team members immediate notification of changes, and the history of project change.”

I inquired: “What are some of the missing pieces to that puzzle in delivering data transparency for the project stakeholders?”

“Better management, navigation and access to project data is the first step to increasing levels of project and data integration. BIM has provided a new paradigm for connected and integrated information, and web services technologies like GTeam that connect silos of information is the next piece of the puzzle,” he said.

“Going forward, there are an almost unlimited number of discrete activities and data sets that will be increasingly connected. GTeam has been architected to integrate all sorts of files, data services and activities. Some of these—like specifications—are in their current form artifacts of paper/document driven processes that will radically transform in a connected web services world.”

“What is the next phase of development for GTeam?” I asked.

“We have many items on the development list that will be delivered in future versions. What’s great about a cloud-based SaaS solution is we’re able to rapidly respond to customer needs and deliver new developments every six weeks. Some of the future rollout items are: advanced mobile access, enhanced messaging and real-time collaboration functionality, additional 3D file type support, and powerful social communication abilities. We are also working on a number of extended apps and integrations with partners.” 

“Is construction IT finally catching up with other industries?” I asked.

“We think so.  We see signs that IT groups are embracing process improvements that are technology driven.  Many of the technology solutions our customers are using are cloud-based and have mobile capabilities.  They realize that on-premise applications are difficult to maintain, increasingly complex, and overly expensive.  It’s becoming more important for construction teams to use technology as a competitive differentiator.”  

 

A final thought on the change of moving from manual processes to all-digital, Shelden said: “The market has shifted to cloud computing and mobile applications in many other industries because of the ROI technology provides, so it’s a trend the construction industry is embracing too.”

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James Grundvig is a former contributor to Epoch Times and the author of “Master Manipulator: The Explosive True Story of Fraud, Embezzlement and Government Betrayal at the CDC.” He lives and works in New York City.
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