UX and Architecture - Integrated Building Design… and More!
Thoughtful individuals in the building design and construction industries have often speculated about the failings of design, approval, and construction processes and debated how to improve them. How a building owner avoids “cost effective retrofits available on opening day” is one such topic for conversation. There is generally an agreement that better access to information and better communication between the diverse participants in a design and construction project is key to better building performance and physical quality.
In the late 1990s and early 2000s, this topic was the subject of research at CanmetENERGY, part of Natural Resources Canada (NRCan), and simultaneously with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, part of the U.S. Department of Energy (NREL). To the question of how to improve the quality of construction, at a cost that was affordable, the answer to be tested was integrating all of the design disciplines. The term “Integrated Design Process” (IDP) was coined to describe a workshop- (or “charrette”-) based design approach, with all design disciplines plus the owner and owner’s operations and maintenance staff working together in the same room, to optimize design decisions. As one could expect with such a broad concept, many other names to describe the activity arose. Integrative Design, Integrated Building Design, Charrette Design are all terms describing the core idea.
The NRCan C-2000 Program for Advanced Commercial Buildings put 23 buildings through a structured IDP and demonstrated that a 50% reduction in energy use was possible, even with owners and designers who were inexperienced in the process. Initially the focus was on office buildings and schools, but retail stores, notably Mountain Equipment Co-Op, also found success in the program. The premium for the improvement was identified as being “knowledge based,” meaning that once the concepts were understood, design and construction costs became less distinguishable from normal operations. The initial projects had construction costs roughly seven percent higher than conventional, but by the end of the program, costs were indistinguishable from “business as usual.”
NREL produced an extensive guide to running design charrettes that is still in use today. The typical comparison of Canadian and U.S. government research (and research budgets) is repeated with the results of the investigations. NREL went on to build the Research Support Facility (RSF) at its campus in Golden, Colorado, and NRCan closed the C-2000 program. For those interested, RSF is a three-storey, 33,648 m2 net-zero site energy office building. Towards the end of the C-2000 program, a set of model IDP meeting agendas covering a 13-meeting sequence following the program’s passive load shedding design approach was produced. This approach was based on C-2000 experience and was used in the design of Manitoba Hydro Place (KPMB Architects), and NRCan’s Materials Technology Lab (Diamond Schmitt Architects) in Hamilton, both LEED Platinum certified facilities.
IDP is a term that has been associated with LEED since the program was introduced. It was advocated in training courses, but a credit for using the method appeared for the first time with the release of LEED v4. At that, the LEED v4 IDP credit focuses on discovery and planning for energy and water consumption to the end of schematic design. The C-2000 version of IDP carried through to the completion of design development using the passive load shedding approach that structured the detailed development of the project.
Owner engagement in IDP is special because the technique has the ability to transform the original expectations for a project, offering opportunities for getting much more out of the original project assumptions and budget than was initially thought. The structured nature of the design process gives owners an opportunity to confirm that they are getting value from the discussions, especially when, as is common in many institutions, the person with the financial authority has little understanding of building construction or operations. There is also the opportunity for an owner and his or her O&M staff to learn a lot about how the building works through participation in the design process, which leads directly to more effective operations.
But times are changing and new explorations of getting better value from the design and construction process are bridging the divide between designers and constructors. Just as it is being formalized, “Integrated Building Design” is being challenged as a method by “Integrated Project Delivery” (IPD), to use the ASHRAE terminology. With integrated project delivery, the designers and constructors work together to bring a design forward.
Other practitioners are promoting Lean Construction, which has many similar features. In these project delivery approaches, the structuring of design seen in IDP is broadened to move directly into construction once the design has been substantially established. Interestingly, the deeper integration puts a stronger emphasis on the earliest activities in IDP, which are focused on confirming the requirements of the owner’s facility program and ensuring that there are no internal barriers to exemplary performance.