Lessons Learnt from Customization of a BIM Tool ...

Conference on Computer Applications in Civil and Hydraulic Engineering 2011 (CCACHE 2011) September 01-02, 2011, Kaohsiung, Taiwan

Lessons Learnt from Customization of a BIM Tool through University-Industry Collaboration Tsai, Meng-Han1, Kang, Shih-Chung2,*, Hsieh, Shang-Hsien3 and Liao, Yuan-Fu4 ABSTRACT This paper presents the outcomes of a five-year development project of customizing a BIM tool through University-Industry Collaboration. In the first year, a development team of National Taiwan University architected the system by drawing on data collected through intensive interviews and meetings with CTCI, a design-build company. In the second year, the team implemented the customized BIM tool for 4D simulation. Then in the third year, the development team experimentally tested the system and solved the usability problems identified in the tests. In the fourth year, the team worked closely with the design-build company and defined a workflow for the use of system. In the final year, the system was officially deployed to a design-build project. This paper summarizes the lessons learnt from each year of the University-Industry collaboration project. The experiences may help reduce the overall investment risks and eventually successfully introduce the new solution to a company. Keywords: Construction management, customized, BIM, lessons learnt

產學合作之客製化建築資訊模型工具研發經驗分享蔡孟涵 1 康仕仲 2 謝尚賢 3 廖源輔 4 摘要本文旨在分享一個由學界及產業界共同研發客製化建築資訊模型(BIM)工具之研發經驗。在第一年時，台灣大學研發團隊透過訪談及會議收集瞭解中鼎工程公司的需求，並進行工具之初步設計。在第二年，研發團隊依照中鼎公司的需求進行客製化 BIM 工具的功能開發。第三年時，研發團隊藉由實地的測試，改善客製化工具使用性的問題。接下來，研發團隊透過訪談中鼎工程公司，進而提出使用 BIM 工具的流程。在最後一年，客製化的 BIM 工具已正式的導入中鼎工程公司的專案中使用。本文將這五年產學合作過程中所遭遇的問題及雙方的經驗進行分享，希望可供工程業界於開發客製化系統時參考。關鍵字：營建管理、客製化、建築資訊模型(BIM)、經驗分享 1. INTRODUCTION Requirements for customization of technologies are very common, but they are rarely discussed. The characteristics of the construction industry are usually 1

project-based, not product-based. Each company structures its individual employee hierarchy and work breakdown structure, according to different project types and integration mechanisms needed. Being able to adapt customization software to suit

PhD Candidate, Department of Civil Engineering, National Taiwan University Associate Professor, Department of Civil Engineering, National Taiwan University 3 Professor, Department of Civil Engineering, National Taiwan University 4 Assistant Chief Engineer, Civil & Building Engineering Department, CTCI Corporation 2


different project requirements is seen as essential. The lack of integrated tools has hindered the application of the above-mentioned technologies in the construction industry [4, 5], so customization is important. However, little research has discussed this issue. The majority of studies in the construction field have focused on using and introducing methods. Following are a brief discussion of the benefits and challenges of using customized tools. 1.1 Benefits of Using Customized Tools A customized tool often integrates compatibly with the existing systems. So it can help companies minimize the impact and costs when introducing a new technology to enable effective collaboration. Customized tools allow easy adoption and provide not only support to the existing procedure, but also better adaptability. The customized tools can flexibly leave or join the existing system according to the requirements and needs of the organization and users without significant impact on the performance. Understanding and managing the complex relationships between users’ needs and technical requirements is a key factor in developing customized tools [3, 11]. Enhancing the skills and competences to use the tool is a major concern when introducing a new tool. Customized tools have in-house technical know-how, so users can easily use the tools to do their work. 1.2 Challenges of Using Customized Tools The first major challenge of using customized tools is the investment risk, which is about how to efficiently invest sufficient resources to support the tools. Before developing a customized tool, a company must consider the cost and availability for implementation, and the needs of clients. Some studies indicated the importance of understanding the impact of new tools adoption on individual performances and organizational productivity [2, 6]. Often, the companies

have no extra time and money available for the implementation [7]. Technological capacity of a company is the second major challenge. The core issue is how to develop the customized tools. Developing customized tools requires sufficient capacity and experiences on software development. Another issue in tool developments concerns the understanding and management of complex relationships between customers’ needs and technical requirements [10, 11]. In a construction project, staff responsibilities not only are likely to increase in complexity, but also overlap [9]. When a company uses a customized tool, it needs to redefine responsibilities of staffs, which is the third major challenge. The company also needs to foresee how the tool will be used to serve the company through reorganized responsibilities. Some studies suggested that implementing a tool is not just a technical enhancement but a managerial decision that involves re-engineering organizational functions and operations [1, 8]. 1.3 Background of the Studied Case It is a great challenge to introduce the new technology to a large-scale construction firm where technical staffs are accustomed to in-house working procedures and techniques. In this research, the company involved is CTCI Corporation (CTCI), the largest engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) firm in Taiwan. In 2005, CTCI planned to introduce a BIM tool for 4D simulation. However, it was found that the commercial tools could not satisfy the needs of CTCI staffs. Although several commercial products have powerful functionalities for BIM simulations, they often cannot be easily adopted and customized to satisfy the needs of a specific consulting or construction company, such as CTCI, because each company has its own software environment for managing 3D models, scheduling, and manipulating other BIM related data. In this research, a customization BIM tool relied on


the existing tool hence is another alternative to introduce the technology to CTCI. 2. RESEARCH METHOD In April 2005, CTCI and the Computer-Aided Engineering (CAE) Group of Civil Engineering Department in National Taiwan University initiated a collaborative research project. The project aimed to develop a customized BIM tool, Construction Director. Figure 1 shows the year-by-year progress of the project that finally lasted for 5 years. The focuses of the first year were twofold: requirement confirmation by strategic planning and system design. To ease the task of binding the objects in the 3D model with the activities in the construction schedule, we designed a customized BIM tool that provides user-friendly interfaces and flexible object management and binding functionalities. Requirements were confirmed to better satisfy CTCI’s needs for the tool development. In the second year, the researchers and programmers at NTU developed the customized BIM tool, named Construction Director, based on the design dome in the first year. Construction Director was built on top of the existing Intergraph’s SmartPlantReview (SPR) software, which has been frequently utilized by CTCI engineers. It can therefore be expected that the tool can be easily adopted by CTCI engineers in their current workflow for visualization of the construction progress on computer screen. After Construction Director was developed, in the third year, this research focused on field study as well as lab study. In the field study, Construction Director was implemented and tested in a real project. In the meantime, we determined hardware capacity needed and its performance, and conducted usability tests in the lab study. The purpose of the usability tests was to identify the problems that users might encounter while using Construction Director.

Figure 1. Five-years project for Construction Director

When Construction Director was ready to use, this research focused on reducing the number and magnitude of potential problems for introducing Construction Director into


CTCI. Therefore, in the fourth year, we interviewed various key personnel of different departments and surveyed existing workflow. The existing workflow was then re-engineered for introducing Construction Director. In the fifth year, CTCI arranged training courses and tutorial to facilitate its staff in learning the functions and operation of Construction Director before adopting the tool. Four main departments used the tool in their projects and reported the problems they encountered. The design team then dealt with the problems and revised the tool. Therefore, through this practical application, the deficiencies of the tool were overcome to commensurate with CTCI’s requirements. 3. RESULTS This research selected a typical design-build project of CTCI to address all the issues involved in the five-year collaboration project. It also aimed to help clients to evaluate Construction Director, the customized BIM tool. The following five-year experiences are summarized. With a view to handling construction matters efficiently, this research set up the strategic plan and goals of our research project in the first year by confirming the clients’ requirements towards tool customization. We found meetings between professional users and tool designers are important tasks for exploring and confirming the clients’ need before customization of the tool. A feasibility analysis of the tool through surveys and interviews in the company can ensure the principal requirements are met. In addition, the tool designers need to perceive the various natures of the clients’ requirements, but this is often difficult because they do not have sufficient engineering knowledge. Therefore, having meetings with engineers to share ideas can help them to customize the tool to meet expectations. After setting up the strategic plan and design, the authors realized that many of the CTCI projects had experienced cost variances due to changes in designs or other

reasons. To receive payments of extra work for cost variation, it is imperative that the clients be convinced of the variation of work. Construction Director provides useful representations to articulate work variations to help clients understand the fact and persuade clients to release funds to the contractors with confidence. Thus, in the second year, the authors found that the programmers, to some extent, need to have an engineering background for understanding the complex nature of situational changes in a project. This will help bridge the client-contractor relationship. In the third year, the feedback from the field test and the lab study helped develop the tool in many ways, such as improving the help function, tutorials, and providing open source training materials. The authors found that a complete user test plan took much time but helped gather sufficient information for diagnosing the tool. Studying the training materials for the tools application is seen as time consuming by engineers but this will eventually bring positive results after they are trained how to use the customized tool. In the fourth year, the practical application of Construction Director was targeted to the company’s workflow. It involved many kinds of exercises that needed close discussions and interviews with the company’s key personnel, as well as restructuring work responsibilities. The authors realized that the changes of the existing practice have to be as few as possible for easy integration and successful implementation of the tool. Different personnel from different sections of the project department should be involved in interviews and discussions to help the development team obtain complete workflow information. Also, asking company matters at the managerial level would require some communication skills and availability of time for appointments. After planning for practical application, the development team adopted the customized tool in the design-build company. The authors understood that project delivery methods of renovation projects, equipment


commissioning, underground utility relocation or installation projects may require special attention while developing BIM tools. All the information in the structural design, drawings, work permits, materials and methods, ITP (Inspection Test Plan) have to be available and clearly defined in advance for successful application of customized BIM tools. As well, departmental coordination in proper sequences, priority consideration of some important work items, and management of project participants are essential for the effectiveness of BIM tools. The following issues are addressed as

influential factors for implementing the BIM tool. Understanding these issues will assist in successfully developing and implementing BIM tools. Efficient data manipulation is also important for the success of BIM tools. In this paper, the authors addressed the process of developing a customized BIM tool in a five-year project. Table 1 shows the questions that the authors faced at different stages of the project, and the respective strategic suggestions for overcoming the obstacles for developing the customized BIM tool.

Table 1. Questions and strategic suggestions for the customized BIM tool Strategic Suggestions Stages

Question Design-Build Company (CTCI)

Development Team (NTU)

How to identify and confirm company’s requirements that First are to be met Year through appropriate tailoring of the tool.

Determine the service needs in specific areas: this would help optimize the usefulness of the tool in the present and future offerings.

Hold regular meetings: Interactions between designers and professionals can confirm each other’s requirements in the emerging trends or business needs towards setting future plan of action.

How to create flexible and opportunistic utility of the tool for different users in Second specific work-field. Year

Experiment on the customized tool: ask the users in different department to practically try the tool, to provide feedbacks, and to support the development team by providing key information to reinforce the tool’s existing features.

Develop flexible functions: Allow users to leave or add any functions in accordance with their needs. Bridge between design-build company and development team: the programmers who have background in both software designs and construction management can be a good person as the communication bridge.

How to verify the usability and workability of the Third tool for the best Year practices.

Select a pilot project: this can help users of different fields to evaluate the tool in multiple situations.

Conduct the field test and lab study: this can help assess the satisfaction level of users. Also to collect information and feedback for evaluating and analyzing the tool for tailoring purposes.


Strategic Suggestions Stages

Question Design-Build Company (CTCI)

Development Team (NTU)

How to redefine users’ responsibility Fourth and organizational Year framework.

Adjust existing workflow: the managers of different departments try to reorganize their works and employee tasks for using the tool.

Interview key personnel: to confirm the existing workflow and revise workflows that can help provide scopes to users for effective use of the tool.

How to address adoption issues and to solve barriers before it is applied to practical Fifth business. Year

Accept the policy of adoption: it enables various departments to participate in the application process. Arrange an ongoing pilot project for disseminating the tool’s implementation. Arrange training courses: it can help users learn the operations more easily and quickly.

Offer the training materials: this can raise the skill levels and competences of users for using the tool. To arrange open source technology. Observe the pilot project: this can help the company reshuffle users’ roles and activities.

4. CONCLUSION Based on the five-year development experiences from University-Industry collaboration, the authors summarized the lessons learnt in each year. To successfully implement a customized BIM tool, the focus of first year should be on identifying the real needs of the company. In the second year, the development team should keep regular communications with the company to ensure the quality of implementation. In the third year, it is important to run a pilot project and test the system to identify potential problems. In the fourth year, the development team and the design-build company need to work closely together to decide the new workflow for implementing the system. Finally, the authors suggest education be an important task in the fifth year to ensure successful introduction of a new customized tool. This research shows the future research strategy for developing a customized BIM tool in an advanced way. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT Financial support from CTCI Foundation is gratefully acknowledged. The

authors would like to thank Prof. Chuin-Shan Chen and Mr. Cheng-Han Kuo of National Taiwan University (NTU) for their assistance in the development of the tool. We also like to thank Mr. Jeng-Wang Lin, Mr. Yung-Chi Liu, Mr. Shu-Ping Chou and Mr. Nan-Hua Liao of CTCI Corporation, and Mr. Kai-Chen Yeh and Mr. Teng-Chao Pei of NTU for their help in the user test. We finally like to express our appreciation to the interviewees, including Mr. Ming-Chin Li, Mr. Chi-Tsung Yi, Ms. Chao-Yuan Cheng and Mr. Ching-Lin Chen, of CTCI Corporation. REFERENCES 1.

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Lessons Learnt from Customization of a BIM Tool ...

Lessons Learnt from Customization of a BIM Tool ...

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