Is Construction Broken?

8/19/2016

By naming it “Let’s Fix Construction,” this project set forth the premise that construction is broken, or at least not operating optimally. To support the premise that construction needs fixing, I suggest it’s necessary to back up and determine what we believe are actually out of order.

I come to this project from a professional vantage point: that of an architectural school grad and an employee at architectural firms. I have been working my whole 22-year career in design firms; I’ve moved from intern to project architect to project manager and to full-time specifier. That means that I’ve been experiencing only one part of the story, but I have gotten pretty familiar with that one side.

The facility design and construction process (at least in the traditional design-bid-build or design-negotiate-build methods) is for the most part driven by the architect. The architect is the one who is presented the project goals by the Owner and is tasked with generating the design and construction documents and then helping to facilitate its execution. In this architect-centric view, the responsibility to faithfully and skillfully execute the work lies with the architect. The architect comes up with the conceptual design and develops that design, adding more and more technical detail, coordinating the work of engineering and other consultants, incorporating information from myriad sources into one package and shepherding that package through procurement and entitlement, until the job can be built by a contractor. The architect maintains responsibility through construction, working to verify that the project is being built so that it conforms to the design.

As the center of all that activity, the architect is the source of (or at least contributing to) many problems that, if solved, would go a long way toward ‘fixing’ construction. For the remaining part of this post I will describe what I see are some of the most serious of those problems, and hope for other stakeholders to add their own later. The words “many, but not all” should of course be a given in front of each item below.

Architects don’t view their work as providing a professional service in which they have a duty to put their clients’ interests above all others and to making sure they communicate honestly with their clients and to obtaining informed consent for all important decisions. Instead, architects see themselves as designing for themselves, or believe they’re working for the good of society, the environment, adopting “improving life” or other lofty goals that create real conflicts of interest that they don’t even recognize.
Architects have inadequate practical knowledge of construction. They don’t understand how their designs and details get translated into physical components in a building and what it really takes for human beings to assemble what they’ve designed.
Architects, and humans in general, to be fair, have a overly optimistic view of their own knowledge and competence. This is known as the Dunning-Kruger Effect. As a result, they forcefully promote making decisions based on faulty information that they have high levels of confidence in. Most “green” advocacy falls into this category.
Architects are slow to recognize and adapt to changes in construction technology, and end up lazily copying solutions from project to project long after they’re obsolete.
Architects are hesitant to participate in the code-writing process, even though the content of the codes and the way they’re developed directly impact their work.
Architects have very poor knowledge of how much construction actually costs, and use loose rules of thumb to try to determine whether or not their designs are within clients’ budgets. They rarely know how the details they create affect the project cost, and the resulting necessary Value Engineering (VE) costs them time, money and prestige.

The idea that we’re going to fix construction means that these and other problems should be identified, given serious thought individually and collectively, and only then I think should solutions be proposed. I look forward to working to affect the changes that the industry so desperately needs.

3 Comments

Keith Robinson link

8/19/2016 11:19:35 am

Great kick-off Elias!

To add some balance to your thoughts, and to present an opinion from the construction community - at least on this side of the border - the Canadian Construction Association (CCA) recognized that the amount of design input required by the construction documents, combined with inaccuracies and an overall reduction in the appropriate levels of communication within specifications and a higher level of "pretty" details rather than "practical" details was leading to an increase in the numbers of RFI's, requests for changes and construction disputes.

They embarked on a series of “Quality of Documents” workshops across Canada to explore and discuss the issue of poor quality documentation, its potential causes, and, perhaps most importantly, potential solutions to address the issue.

In total, twelve workshops were held across Canada, involving more than 600 representatives from all stakeholder groups, including owners, architects, engineers and contractors. The workshop structure allowed for open and candid discussions on the topic, and included an anonymous survey to rank the impact of potential causes and issues related to quality of documents.

I participated in several of these sessions, and was looking forwards to see the results - and which are now available at http://www.cca-acc.com/en/information/quality-of-documents-workshops.

As with our experience being focused on the Design Community, there are a bias of opinions within the reported issues - but the top 5 issues pretty much replicate your observations (read the entire report, it clearly states that we collectively have a need to fix construction):

- Lack of final coordination, checking and proofreading
- Insufficient time for design
- Lack of coordination between architects and engineers
- Owners’ (unnecessary) pressure
- Insufficient fee/design contingency

Ujjval Vyas

8/20/2016 12:25:57 am

What Elias references as point number one above is the result of nearly five years of work on my part and articulated further in the work of the recent group called the Fiduciary Duty Initiative. A subsidiary of this group involves specifiers and their issues as related to the larger fiduciary duty required of all licensed learned professions. Elias and a number of others in the specifications profession have participated in meetings of these groups. Elias was kind enough to allow me to present some of this work at a recent CSI Chicago presentation. Fixing construction will take a great deal more knowledge regarding the underlying economics, legal, and business issues in the whole BD+C markets than is currently understood. This new requisite duty will fundamentally change, for the better, the core problems in the profession and make the construction industry vastly more efficient. At the same time it will upend the current regime of practice at a scale that will be difficult to comprehend for many. Interestingly, what the AIA, CSI, NSPE, or other professional organizations think or want in regard to a fiduciary duty and its attendant duties of care and informed consent will be irrelevant and they can do nothing to stop its central role in the coming new reality of professional practice. A major conference is slated for next year that will lay out all the basic issues and make evident the academic validity and practical outcome of this change. It is good to realize that real change is coming though there will be much I asking of teeth and invective involved. Should be a very enjoyable ride as the architectural profession finally comes to accept the serious role and duties entrusted to it by the granting of a state monopoly for such services for the benefit of the client's interests first.

Jeffrey M. Pilus, CSI, CCCA, USGBC, AIA link

4/15/2017 06:07:24 pm

Happening on this string gave me the motivation to contribute to this blog, for the first time. The premise that Elias sets forth in the opening statement in his post is particularly pertinent. The notion (premise) that anyone can make the assumption that Construction is “Broken”, and that some nebulous, unidentified, transcendent group has the aptitude or capacity to prescribe some panacea to remedy all of Constructions infirmities has always seems steeped in Hubris to me. I have contracted from the taxonomy for a number of reasons.

Primarily the unremitting proposition that if only more participants in the construction process were persuaded to take the certification exams offered by the CSI, we could wash away the profound stains from the process like a baptismal font. This particular proposition promotes such an oversimplification for an antidote to a complex subject, that it scarcely merits commentary. So much more personal information about individual backgrounds, biography, and personal chronicles than I care to read about creep in here. These reminiscences do not address the questions, are self-ingratiating, and offer little insight into real basis for discussion. Anecdotes that offer nothing but insight into individual passions are for Facebook. Without “determinant judgment” (the side of the house you see), your imagination (that which fills in the other side) is no better than simple, repetitive, overwhelming redundancy, fed through a manifold of sensations. “Feelings” (are the equivalent of) responding without the guidance of concept. “Judgments” (are involved in) an appeal to reason.

The AIA. Even though he appears to be a climate change denier, I must admit that Elias does possess some valuable insights. His disdain for sustainable design is overwhelmingly cynical and dismissive. It seems to be rooted in some “confirmation bias”. Data is more essential than what we call “the truth”. It is my observation that Architectural colleges have continued to provide a doctrine that supports a presumption that they (Architects) are artists. Academia supposes that Architecture is only marginally related to a form of business, and that it is an unfortunate circumstance. Students are encouraged to ignore documentation, for the sake of aesthetic purity and their lofty status. They provide a poor foundation (at best) for doing design work. It is exclusive, and grounded in impoverished, narcissistic, mediocre thinking.

The USGBC has taken an approach that is self-defeating with its passionate “community organizing” approach. Just look at the cover of this month’s USGBC magazine. I believe that we have already provided a lot of rhetorical material that enforces a predisposition that reinforces stakeholder’s notions that we are too idealistic, too impractical and don’t have much interest in their budgets.

The CSI gives much lip service to their commitment to improve the process, but not much support to academia. Go to Construct Convention next year and guess the average age of the attendants. If we hope to revitalize the organization, it must include donating time and teaching materials to educators. Unfortunately the focus seems to be on marketing…twitter and Facebook accounts and that kind of bilge. If you are inclined to teach graduate students in Architecture specifications writing or CSI principles give them a call and they will be happy to take your credit card number and line up your pupils for an exam…for a fee.

Blaming Contractors for problems is a very popular approach among design professionals, but often they deserve it. I will say that most of the really innovative uses of sophisticated BIM software are being pioneered by that segment of the industry. I echo what Ujjval Vyas has to say about the future of the industry. I will be interesting, and mostly dependent upon the success of a cooperative and integrated approach to design and construction. The nostalgic cry to return to the old way of doing things is still hissing in the background, but don’t go out and buy some pencils and a drafting table just yet.

Is Construction Broken?

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