Sophometrics — ideas 2005

 

Web entry — November 12, 2005

"Design Metrics for the US Design & Construction Industry"

DēMeSM is an innovation from Sophometrics.

DēMeSM is new, but it has deep roots. It is derived from conversations going back nearly a decade. It shares characteristics with the "sustainability charrette" created by the US Green Building Council. It is loosely similar to design metrics developed for the software industry.

So, where does it come from?

I am enamored of the power of conversation. This does not mean I like talk for its own sake, nor am I good at small-talk. But I sense, within the transactions between people, the ebb and flow of meaning — created, transmitted, stored — which owes its existence to conversation. Hold that thought.

I am amazed by action itself. Movement. Closing the deal. Delivering the goods. Publishing the plan. As long as that movement is balanced by … I expect you anticipate my point. Hold this thought.

I am less enamored of measurement. Measurement is two-edged, too easy to abuse. But, I have great respect for the measurements that are useful, or necessary, or integral to what we do. A sailboat race is an extraordinary example of the integration of opportunity and measurement. Each degree of heading, each hundredth of a knot, every millimeter (or is that inch) of trim might win a race, and only then, the execution of every tack matters. The meaning of a great race is in the space between closely measured values and dramatic moves. Why consider measurement? Because it carries meaning. I ask, "How do you measure the quality of design?" Hold this.

Innovation. What more can I say? Change. I understand that there is a growing demand for innovation, and also for change, particularly in the design & construction industry. A demand from customers. From people who live, work, and play in the spaces, places and voids left behind by designers and constructors.

But, change is slow. Significant change — revolution — requires twenty years in the construction industry.

So, due to its slow rate of change, the design & construction industry is getting a helping hand from other industries, mostly through the vehicle of business management consulting.

Resource management. Team building. Lean management structure. Strategic marketing plans. Human resource programs. Communication skills building — are you ready willing and able?

All good stuff, but when it comes to the heart of assembling a cross-corporate team and actually executing a project, these programs have limited impact.

I keep thinking about the Mars Climate Orbiter, lost in 1999 because one NASA team used English units of measurement and another used metric.

I've been talking and listening at meetings for 20 years and it fascinates me how frequently veteran professionals leave a good meeting, go back to their offices, and translate the content into so many different, sometimes competing, contexts.

But fascination is trumped by frustration. I sense that solving this problem is the key to moving forward in our industry. I've made it my business to find solutions.

So, what is  DēMeSM?

Recall my earlier topics: conversation, action, measurement, and innovation. Obtaining innovation (even copying an innovative building in a new location) is a matter of capturing productive conversation and translating it into effective action. Defining the intent, monitoring the intermediate steps, and measuring results just happen to be the only way this happens. I can use  DēMeSM to help my clients do just that.

So, what is  DēMeSM?

It is a graphically-organized, hierarchical, numerical measuring tool consisting of modules oriented to project goals. These modules are a collection of widely variant contexts by which we might choose to measure a project. A two-step process — selection of a set of measures followed by defining the criteria and weight of each measure — marries  DēMeSM to each project.

So, what is  DēMeSM?

It is an occasion to talk about a project and a framework that inspires productive conversation — that identifies most (if I said "all" I'd be lying through my teeth) of the issues that will enable success.

So, what is  DēMeSM?

It is a measuring stick against which each team member can check their next action.

So, what is  DēMeSM?

It is the means by which an owner/user understands that they have indeed procured the project that they intended to buy; and by which they can re-define their next project.

So, what is  DēMeSM?

It is the pressure that allows innovation to cook more quickly. And the framework that allows a team to guard the best-fit innovation and to eschew the mis-fit innovation for each project.

So, what is  DēMeSM?

It is a tool that I can see, use, and describe; that identifies what I have been saying for a decade — there is a better path to creative design than the one most teams practice.

Think not? Call me.

 

Web entry — October 16, 2005

"Master of the House: Why a Company Should Take Control of Its Building Projects"

David Thurm, CIO at the New York Times Company, becomes Master of the House in an article of the same name in the October 2005 issue of the Harvard Business Review. It's not a typical article for HBR.

It's an article owners and architects need to read.

Owners too often and too early cede their critical role in the design process to construction and finance experts who focus on time and money. What they do they do well, and they're important, of course, but they're not the consultants with the ideas. On the other side of this coin we have architects, some of whom have begun to adjust, like ill-fated lobsters in the pot, to what they see as an emerging paradigm, driven by short-term economies. I fear this cart-before-the-horse model of building delivery is growing beyond its considerable limitations. It works well when the design is not important (a warehouse, for example). But if the architecture matters, architects are the first consultants owners should turn to when they want to make a building because they are the consultants with the ideas.

David Thurm has good reason to feel good about the way the design process worked for the New York Times as they developed a plan for their new headquarters in midtown Manhattan. They did things right, from the start.

Though Thurm focuses mostly on the process after the architect was on board, I was curious enough to do a little digging and came up with a Times architecture critic's outline of the architect selection process. The first thing that impressed me: "The goal of the selection process was to choose an architect rather than a design." This means the clients placed the interaction between their corporate vision and the architect's ability to resonate with their vision at the heart and the start of the process.

Second, because the selection process was about the compatibility of people and the possibilities for collaborative expression, not about the design itself (they chose not to stage a design competition, which might prematurely thrust them into talk of methods and materials for a plan that would probably get changed anyway), the contractor was not part of the selection process. The selection team was a 50-50 partnership between the Times and Forest City Ratner, the real estate development firm which would occupy one floor and lease the top half of the building to other tenants, while the Times would lease the bottom half, exclusive of six floors at the base dedicated to retail and auditorium space. The Times took the reins for selection of the architect.

Back to the article.

Thurm begins his account with a single sentence set apart as a paragraph for emphasis. "Coming in on budget and on time isn't good enough." The reason he puts this statement right at the beginning is not to ground the discussion in time and money, but to dismiss those topics right away. They matter later, but they can't be allowed to interfere with the crucial early conversation to forge a relationship between "your vision for the business - both how you want it to be perceived and where you want to take it," and the architects who will make that vision visible to the world.

He further counsels owners to become visionary pragmatists — visionary first, pragmatic second — because "absent a guiding principle, it's easy to lose your bearing during the inevitable compromising and cost cutting that will take place" later.

The article actually warns owners that relying on consultants who focus on materials and methodology at the very beginning and through the early stages of design development can effectively stop the critical flow of ideas that connect the company vision with the architectural vision. Calling the construction industry "hidebound" is perhaps too harsh, and the characterization of owners as risk-averse is not universally applicable, but he's right about the mediocrity that results when owners and builders, focusing on what they feel most comfortable controlling, inadvertently 'conspire' to "avoid the embarrassment of being over budget and behind schedule."

Consider some of Thurm's methods for improving team collaboration and client involvement, all valuable, all about owners having the courage to be active through the entire process. Strong interaction with project owners liberates the team to explore, research, test ideas and come to superior, sometimes innovative, solutions. You need to read the article to appreciate the intelligence of his observations, but here's a list of highlights:

 •  Get involved in the selection of engineers and other consultants.

 •  Draw the owner's building committee and executive team into the process. David's team created an RFG (request for guidance) form directed to the Time's' executive team.

 •  Extend the value of Value Engineering by involvement of the whole team, including owner representatives.

 •  Invite the entire team, including building committee members, to walk through the design prior to construction, looking for problems (i.e., extend the value of quality control).

 •  Participate with manufacturers and suppliers in mock-ups and system integration. In two cases this yielded David "new" system solutions at traditional system prices.

Thurm suggests that his guidance, and the guidance of the Times' executive team, kept the decision process focused on the Times' goals — on the value that they intended to create for their organization. This is represented in the building's image, in the healthful and productive nature of the workspace, in the effective use of energy, etc., but every decision was based on the focus established by these goals.

It is this correlation between the organization's goals and the solutions brought forth in the building design that creates value where it would not exist otherwise.

While I celebrate the tone and involvement of the New York Times in the design of their new office building, I have two observations. First, what Thurm identifies as innovations for Manhattan projects are beginning to percolate in other areas of the country. The same innovations incorporated into the Times building have been created by other design teams several times over (with two exceptions I give David's team credit for — the lighting control system integration and the building's exterior sun screen).

Second, David, as the owner's project manager, accepts responsibility for aggressive involvement in the process. But, I am concerned that responsibility for drawing the owner into the design process belongs also to the design profession.

In other industries it has always been the case that whenever customers can identify a shortfall in products or services, that shortfall is an indication of pending change for the industry — a warning of radical change, creating new winners and losers in a surprisingly short time. I see this article as a wake up call to the design profession. Architects need to get closer to owners. Part of that is aggressive marketing (read that as education) before there's a project to go after. I've worked diligently to bring Sophometrics to where it is now because I believe the other part of the story is creating project communication tools that owners can grasp with as much certainty as the cost-control tools they are offered up front by financial and construction experts. David Thurm makes the case more eloquently.

 

Web entry — October 3, 2005

Good day! — After a rather long vacation away from my Web Log, I need to offer up two topics. First, during Sophometrics' most recent Web update, we "discovered" the words "design metrics" and found a resounding resonance with our latest work. Second, the progress of sustainable and energy wise activities has reached the tipping point on the West Coast & I am pleased.

Design Metrics

In 1980 I started my career as "the engineer's engineer." MIT and all that. Quickly became a teacher in the electrical discipline.

But I am not telling you the whole story. I have two degrees from MIT, one is in electrical engineering, and the other is in Architecture. This gave me an unfair advantage understanding the architects I worked with. You could chide that I was "the architect's engineer." I'm OK with that.

By the late 80's I marched merrily along, having a good time participating in the design of places that have helped define Seattle and our region. And every once in a while, I had an extraordinary experience on a design team. By the mid 90's my technology consulting team was all about "client service" and I started to explore business writing mostly found in other industries. I discovered Peter Senge and by the late 90's his work was helping me understand the difference between "good" experiences and "extraordinary" experiences. Since then I have discovered two-dozen authors who all provide insight into the way teams create value together.

By 1999, I was holding monthly in-house meetings for a select group in my company exploring how we could better understand and better execute the design process. By early 2002, I was talking to my fellow engineers about how our design activity impacted results, about integrated design solutions, about improving impact at client meetings, about better listening skills, and about the movement toward sustainability around the globe. One of my goals when I founded my new company in 2003 was to demonstrate that improved collaboration could lead to both different results (i.e., new solutions) and better results (i.e., higher quality documents and lower construction costs). I am not the only one suggesting this possibility. For example, the Institute for Collaborative Building is suggesting the same thing. In fact they expect project teams to recover 20 to 40% of cost and time to completion as the building industry as a whole begins to work together more closely.

Presently, the Institute is studying an experimental project, the Research & Technology Building at the University of Washington, which demonstrated a potential 19% savings based on the project proposal. We shall see if this savings holds up through the end of the project.

The University project is based on a coalition of contractor, design team, and building operator, who were asked to respond to a 30-year design-build, own, operate contract. In a combined proposal and design competition they were asked to meet goals identified by the University and by potential research tenants of the buildings. The good news is that the team created a real solution. The difficult news is that the team was formed for a design competition, that the contractor leads the coalition, and that definition of project goals were less than perfectly interactive with the University and the user groups. I offer two questions to clarify my concerns. First, "What more might have been done if the owner/tenant representatives had participated to a greater degree with the design and construction team?" Second, "How many Architects want to further their careers by moving to contractor-led teams?"

I have conducted several informal inquiries into the second question and I hear (mostly) that architects prefer a degree of independence and (many) crave interaction with future occupants and owners in their design work, especially at the formative stages of design. If professionals in architecture are to maintain their essential role, interacting with owners on the front line of creating value, then they must improve the way they respond to the concerns that owners have about cost and schedule, while at the same time, pushing the value of place.

So, after nearly 80 conversations with practitioners in the Northwest, I have found a special focus for my design consulting: HOW we collaborate as a design, construction, owner team, and HOW we measure progress. The term "design metrics," is most readily found in the software industry. My adaptation of these feedback techniques gives us one of the levers we need to get to the improvements we must develop.

In many of my conversations, practitioners have admitted that metrics, a framework of measurement, has been missing from our industry. In my latest work, I have made the metrics more obvious by publishing the measurements desired by the client along with the inherent goals of placemaking, for the entire team to use, and for the client to react to. This works to support essential decisions, and to expose essential economic balance points, making the design process more transparent, especially for the owner.

Progress toward capturing the savings we need, toward discovering the new solutions we need, is found within these ideas. These we need in order to move toward a more competitive built environment in a global market.

Energy

On September 22, 2005, the California Public Utilities Commission approved energy efficiency plans and $2 billion in funding for 2006 - 2008. The energy saving measures are expected to save residential and business customers in California more than $5 billion dollars. The funding represents an increase that will allow customers to better utilize diverse energy efficiency and conservation programs already in place. Applause.

While the scope of energy conservation funding in Washington State is smaller, we are augmenting the utility funding with a coalition of public and private organizations that are focused on building a smarter grid. The overall goal is to be able to deliver electricity more reliably, and for less cost, by making our existing grid more responsive to momentary changes in demand. At the same time, our local GridWise coalition is creating an industry capable of supporting more effective use of energy in individual buildings.

Seven years ago, in the midst of the dot.com boom, a few voices insisted on the need to conserve energy as we grew our economy. Indeed, their central story is the need to conserve energy in order to sustain the growth of any globally responsive economy.

Four years ago, in the midst of the energy crisis, a greater number of people became aware of the importance of conservation.

Now, we are beginning to see the fruits of that awareness. Instead of arguing about whether we need conservation efforts, both the state of California and the Fifth Power Planning Council (in the Northwest) ask how much investment is the right amount. Both organizations are now equipped to tell us how much money our continuing investment in conservation will save us down the road.

We are past the turning point — now the question is not whether to conserve, but how fast, and how much we can save in our quest to keep up with global competition. In the mean time, through the implementation of effective energy schemes, we may win ourselves time to save our future.

More soon — take care.