Over the past few years, an increasing number of consumer market mobile apps featuring augmented reality (AR) technology have been released. Consequently, the technology has generated a lot of excitement, as well as hope of future, more powerful apps. But what exactly is augmented reality capable of today? What are the promises for tomorrow? Can it fulfill the needs of the AEC community? During this presentation, we will try to answer those questions. We will first show examples of what the AR technology can do today. We will then discuss the main challenges faced in the development of AR applications, and especially those in the AEC world. Finally, we will look at potential applications of AR for AEC, and do a short incursion into the future.

Stéphane Côté

Stéphane Côté obtained a B.Sc. in computer science (Laval Univ., Canada), a M.Sc. in physical oceanography (UQAR, Canada) and a Ph.D. in satellite remote sensing (Southampton Univ., UK). He was then hired by Bentley Systems, where he worked as an imaging software developer for 10 years. Five years ago, he accepted a research director position in the Applied Research group at Bentley. His research interests include augmented reality, 3D stereo visualization, and point cloud technology. He was recently appointed Distinguished Fellow in recognition of his innovative contribution at Bentley. He is also the author of 5 patents.

The IPD Framework defines the relationships among the project participants and the processes that guide their actions. It embodies the project goals and creates consequences for success or failure tied to their achievement. It puts control in the hands of the project participants and makes them responsible for total project outcome, not just their individual performance. Correctly designed, it stimulates behaviors that increase creativity, improve productivity, and reduce waste. A strong IPD Framework leads to better outcomes, whether measured in value, aesthetics, sustainability or otherwise. The IPD Framework is the result of an intentional process, purpose built for the project, and adaptable to chaning conditions.

Howard W. Ashcraft Jr.

Howard W. Ashcraft Jr. is a skilled litigator with tremendous experience in the construction industry. He is actively involved in developing new approaches to construction project delivery that will avoid many of the issues he has seen over the course of his career. In particular, he has worked as a steering committee member and legal and risk chair of the AIACC's interdisciplinary taskforce on Integrated Project Delivery. He was a contributing author to the AIACC's Integrated Project Delivery: A Working Definition and the joint AIA/AIACC Integrated Project Delivery: A Guide. These documents reflect the most current thinking regarding use and implementation of collaborative project delivery methods. Howard recently received the president's award from the AIACC for this work.

Like a construction site, the IT landscape in the AEC arena is changing rapidly. Firms must plan and architect not only to handle the needs of today, but think about the changes that technology will impact over the next 2, 5, and 10 years. Add in the uncertainties of economies, consolidation within the industry, and other factors, and it becomes even more important to utilize tools and methods of operation that will improve efficiencies, bring information to where it is needed, and lower costs. We will present a high-level enterprise IT strategy that encompasses technology with business goals and creates a vision of how work will be conducted in the near and the not so distant future.

David Ladek

David Ladek is an Enterprise IT Architect and member of the Global IT Business Alliance Team at CH2M HILL, a group focused on strategic partnerships between IT and the business. His broad background of IT experiences, including software development, infrastructure planning, and business needs analyses, enable him to have a singular view of how technology can be utilized to positively impact industries today and in the future. Incorporating CH2M HILL’s expertise in engineering and construction, as well as first-hand knowledge of current and emerging IT-based tools, David is working on enabling these within the firm to improve the information delivery and collaboration for 30,000 employees globally as well as connecting them with partners and customers. He has a BS in Business from the University of Colorado, and is constantly searching for simple and innovative ways to implement IT. He has been with CH2M HILL for 17 years.

Fred Cardenas

Fred Cardenas worked in the construction industry for 12 years before joining Meridian Systems. As the product marketing manager he plays a critical role in maximizing Meridian’s success in the Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC) market. This includes driving the strategic direction of Meridian’s market leading Prolog® software product line. Prior to joining Meridian in 2010, Cardenas served as the manager of Virtual Design and Construction at Austin Commercial, an ENR top 40 contractor, where he helped develop trend setting integrations in the areas of estimating, document management and project controls. Mr. Cardenas has an extensive background in enterprise system deployment and integration and has leveraged that knowledge over hundreds of projects and hundreds of thousands of square feet put in place. His breadth and depth of project experience range from program management and design-build to CM at Risk delivery methods and include a variety of project types such as healthcare, aviation and education. He has played a strategic role in such notable projects as Dallas Independent School District’s 2002 $1.3 billion Bond Program, Dallas Fort Worth Airport’s International Terminal D and Sky Harbor Airport’s Consolidated Rental Car Facility. Cardenas graduated from the University of California, Santa Barbara with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics.

Craig Larson

Craig Larson joined Oracle USA 15 years ago with a background of over 15 years of engineering and project management experience. He has a degree in Civil Engineering from the University of Utah and specialized in Geotechnical Engineering. He has managed many large construction projects including earthen dams, levies, roadways, deep and shallow structure foundations and heap leach pads for the mining industry. Prior to earning a degree in engineering he worked for a materials testing agency providing quality control on construction projects. Since joining Oracle Mr. Larson has been involved in the sale and implementation of project accounting and project management systems within many engineering and construction companies across North America advising these and other companies during hundreds of software selection decisions. He is also an active member of FIATECH and is currently involved in several projects led by that organization.

Thursday, August 16, 2012

GSA is defining and testing its road map for BIM during Facility Management. This innovation will enable GSA to leverage facility data throughout the lifecycle of its capital assets to provide safe, healthy, effective and efficient work environments for our client agencies. We will present the business needs for BIM during Facility Management and the steps that GSA has taken to define, develop, validate and incorporate BIM during Facility Management.

Peggy Yee

Dr. Peggy Yee is a Program Expert with GSA’s National Building Information Modeling (BIM) Program. Peggy's professional interests involved the development and implementation of virtual design and construction technologies in the AEC industry to increase the quality and efficiency throughout the facility lifecycle. In the past, Peggy has worked on 4D modeling projects across the US and in Europe. Peggy received her PhD in Civil Engineering from Stanford University's Center for Integrated Facility Engineering (CIFE).

Andy Stapleton

Andy Stapleton is the Director of Project Development for the Chicago office of Mortenson Construction. He is responsible for new business strategy and has helped lead Mortenson’s effort in the development of Virtual Design and Construction (VDC) and Building Information Modeling (BIM). He has presented on BIM and Integrated Project Delivery at numerous conferences, actively participates in promoting progress and education in the area of virtual design & construction and sustainable construction within Mortenson, and has published articles in the topics of sustainability and VDC. Andy also served as senior MEP engineer for Mortenson on projects such as Ann & Robert H Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago, Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, California, and Seagate Technology Wafer Fabrication Facility in Derry, Northern Ireland.

KBR’s core business is the management and delivery of very large construction projects across the globe. Since a lot these projects are happening in remote areas of the world with a great many participating parties, it only makes sense that contract management technology is a key facilitator for project control and project success. Barry Burt, Senior Manager of Contracts at KBR and Eric Zoetmulder, from software provider SciQuest, will outline the core design concepts of the KBR contract management solution and draw conclusions on lessons learned in the development and roll out.

Eric Zoetmulder

Eric Zoetmulder is the Director of Product Marketing at SciQuest, Inc. a leading provider of eProcurement and Supplier Management solutions. In this role Eric is responsible for driving SciQuest’s product and market strategy with particular focus on Sourcing, Spend Analytics & Contract management. Eric has a background in managing information technology and professional services with The Thomson Corporation and Accenture and holds a master’s degree in information technology from the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. Eric was recognized in 2010 by Supply and Demand Chain Executive Magazine as one of their Pros-to-Know, as an expert in Supply Chain Management.

Stanley Pepper

Stanley Pepper has more than 30 years of experience in general management roles in closely held businesses. He spent the majority of his career at Pepper Construction, a Chicago-based general contractor. Mr. Pepper joined Pepper Construction in 1976 after graduating from college. He was named director of marketing in 1981 and later served as vice president of business development, president and chief executive officer. During his tenure at Pepper Construction, the company expanded to Texas, California and Indiana and grew to over $800 million in annual revenue. Mr. Pepper then joined Lake Capital, a private equity company. While there he pursued companies in the construction industry and was the Chairman of Soil Safe, a Lake investment. Most recently he has moved back into an operating roll as CEO of Plans and Specs, a construction industry platform for communication and document management.

Raymond Topping

Ray currently serves as the Director of Fiatech an industry-led organization focused on leading the global development and adoption of innovative practices and technologies to realize the highest business value throughout the life cycle of capital assets. Ray leads the strategic direction of the Fiatech and manages the operations. Fiatech is actively developing and implementing projects that increase the value return in capital projects life cycle through emerging and advanced technologies.

Ray's past experience includes serving as an Executive Vice President of CH2M HILL and in senior leadership roles for CH2M HILL including the firm's Global Operations Leadership Team for 20 years. He served as CH2M HILL's firm wide Engineering Design Group Director for 15 years with overall responsibility for global engineering design delivery. Ray filled senior leadership roles on several of CH2M Hill’s strategic Global Program including the CLM Delivery Partnership for the 9 Billion GBP London 2012 Olympics Program, Program Director for the US$23 Billion Masdar City Sustainable Development in Abu Dhabi, UAE and as a Senior Adviser on the Panama Canal Expansion Program.

Stuart Bull

Stuart Bull is regarded as one of Arup’s best BIM experts and regularly speaks at regional and international conferences on all aspects of BIM and project team collaborations. He joined Arup in 1990 in London and worked for five years on industrial engineering projects such as the Toyota car production plant in Derby, UK, and various off-shore and energy related projects. In 1995, Stuart transferred to the Arup Hong Kong office Airport Project group and began his interest in 3D modelling on the new Hong Kong International Passenger Terminal roof, Ground Transportation Centre, HACTL (HongKong Air Cargo Terminals Ltd) Super Terminal 1 cargo facility and Hong Kong School for Biological Sciences. By 2003, Stuart had relocated to Sydney as a 3D / BIM Specialist which allowed him to use his skills to begin production of the Sydney Opera House BIM. Stuart was also involved in 3D modelling of the National Beijing Swimming Centre also known as the Water Cube, the Macquarie Bank Head Quarters at King Street Wharf - the first diagrid structure in Australia. His other notable projects include the Mayor of London’s City Hall, the Millennium Dome, Selfridges Department Store in Birmingham, UK, new ice hockey and multi-use stadium in Turin for the 2006 Winter Olympics, the 23-storey toroidal diagrid head office for Aldar developments in Abu Dhabi and the extensive development of the Singapore Sports Hub site 3D coordinated multi discipline model. Stuart is leading the regional development of 4D construction planning skills, where he feels the next significant developments from BIM will evolve, and has an extensive interest in BIM related facility and asset management systems. Stuart also is heavily involved in supporting local universities such as the University of New South Wales, Sydney University and is currently an honorary Innovation Fellow at UTS Faculty of Architecture.

Mark J. Frisch

Mark J. Frisch, AIA, LEED AP, is a principal at Solomon Cordwell Buenz, an architecture, interiors and planning firm headquartered in Chicago, with offices in San Francisco and Abu Dhabi. As principal in charge of technical design, Frisch leads initiatives in innovative materials, systems and sustainability. He consults internationally on LEED certification and emerging design technologies that utilize alternative energy solutions. He is a LEAF Award winner for Best Use of Technology and winner of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Sun Wall Design Competition.

Sometimes (or often) in human experience, familiarity with a thing tends to conceal what a thing really is, and what it may become. For that reason there can be significant reward in trying to look at things in new ways. When we ask, “what is a drawing?”, and “what is a BIM model?”, we can ask this conceptually with the belief that a search for what something is can lead to an understanding of what it can become.

In the case of drawings and models, are we so familiar with them that we have difficulty imagining what they can become? Drawings have been with us for millennia. And certainly we are well and truly familiar with models as well, even in their more recent form: BIM models. It is interesting, in fact, that one of the primary functions of BIM models is that they are used to automate the production of drawings. We know this, but we don’t often go further; we don’t ask what drawings and models are.

For drawings, a useful question to ask is, “what is drawn?” Drawings indicate their author’s “drawing-of-our-attention-toward” locations in a project. What is drawn, is one’s attention, toward something. An author chooses locations, then draws our attention toward them with graphics (automated or not) together with the author’s embellishing graphics and commentaries. The sum of these activities (a drawing set):

This tells us something about BIM. While BIM automates the production of a set of drawings derived from a model, that model is no replacement for drawings, and cannot be, because models (BIMs) generally do not demonstrate the above-mentioned quality of “drawing-attention-toward”.

In his talk, Mr. Snyder will ask “What are drawings?” and “What are models?” and will attempt to clarify why the answer matters. He will then introduce the concept of Hypermodeling, Bentley’s solution to supply that “drawing-attention-toward” by augmentation, in-situ, in such a way that communicative effectiveness is elevated, along with its advantages over BIM. He will then show a few examples of its successful use. Finally, he will talk about the future of hypermodeling, and make a parallel with some of Bentley’s latest research results related with hypermodel-augmented panoramas, continuing Bentley System’s efforts aimed at elevating the communicative capacity of media through a convergence: of evolving forms of environmental immersive media, and the conceptual basis of the medium of drawing itself, “drawing-attention-toward”.

Rob Snyder

Rob Snyder is a researcher in the Applied Research Group at Bentley Systems. Inventor of the hypermodeling technology, Mr. Snyder is fascinated by media and media transformation, and the ways that media can be transformed to support better communication. He has a degree in Architecture from the University of Kentucky and prior to joining Bentley worked at several design firms large and small, pursuing at each an effective use of tools for visual communication.

Cory Davis

Cory Davis, Director of Capital Renovation and New Construction with Chicago Public Schools, has implemented the Oracle Primavera suite within the capital department over the past two years. He has integrated User Productivity Kits (UPK), User Content Manager (UCM), Contract Manager and P6 and developed custom applications to bridge the gaps between the off the shelf products and the program requirements.

Cory graduated from McGill University with a Civil Engineering and business degree, completed his MBA and is currently working toward a Masters of Science in Real Estate Law. He has over 23 years experience working for an architecture/engineering firms, general contractors and engineering consultant firms in project controls, specifically using CPM products. His industries have varied from heavy civil, light rail, heavy rail, residential construction, commercial construction, power plants and tilt up construction.

Friday, August 17, 2012

Sandy Damasco

Sandy has over 25 years combined experience in design, engineering, research and development, and international work experience in such places as Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Hong Kong, China, and Sentosa Island, Singapore. He joined Lend Lease Americas (LLA) in January of 2010 as the Senior Vice President, National BIM Director. His diverse technical experience has immediately broadened the approach of Building Information Modeling (BIM) and the implementation of Integrated Project Delivery (IPD) within specific Design/Build and Design/Bid/Build projects.

Synchro Professional 4D solution finds a lonely place on the strategic competitive frontier. Learn why 4D works and why Synchro alone delivers visual simulation in an integrated planning and scheduling environment. Synchro Ltd began software development in 2001 on its supply chain management, construction simulation and task management solution, and has been recognized for its achievements in producing award-winning, transformational technology. Today Synchro's mission remains focused on delivering software that serves the project delivery team and survives the constant dynamics of project delivery in the construction industry. Synchro offers users a genuinely different approach to project management by synchronising design, scheduling, supply chain management, risk management and earned value measurement. Since October 2007 Synchro has produced an average of four major software releases per year in support of its users' feedback and pursuit of an ever expanding customer base. In 2010 Synchro begin shipping our fourth generation product focused on expanded systems interoperability, advanced data management, reporting, and the seamless support for the large super-sized 3D/4D/5D construction models. Synchro’s product line and offering is strengthened by key technology development agreements with Oracle Primavera, Bentley Systems, Autodesk, Objectivity, Asta, Design Data, and TechSoft3D. These strategic relationships offer customers the right ingredients to leverage existing legacy software investments and extend benefits beyond information silos, which commonly exist between well-formed, industry processes. Synchro's product line has a deep, steadfast commitment to enable an integrated project process around the key elements of construction development, including project delivery strategy and tactical planning, supply chain collaboration and production tracking, and how the pre-engineered manufactured components enter and improve the process. Our aim is clear: to deliver software to serve the construction delivery team that survives the everyday dynamics and demands of the construction industry. We see construction as a series of problems to be solved. Our software goes right to the heart of that challenge -- enabling users to explore options, manage solutions and optimise results. It takes just a few minutes to understand how Synchro, a Stand-alone Planning and Scheduling system delivers unparalleled value. Our Critical Path Analysis built on our proprietary scheduling engine supports traditional planning and scheduling methods using the logical network diagram to drive the 4D/5D process. We alone support complete roundtrip data synchronisation with the top CPM scheduling platforms, used in construction today, designed to support our users existing investments and established workflows using Oracle Primavera, Microsoft Office Project and AstaPowerProject. Our advanced 3D/4D/5D viewing includes traditional reporting, custom 3D/4D/5D animation and advanced AVI production. Our federated Object Oriented Database Systems Architecture focused on data integration, reusable project and component libraries, and support for the ever increasing 3D model size to xD models envisioned by the industry. We uniquely enable IFC (Industry Foundation Classes) Synchronisation (including 3D Import, Export, SynchroniseTo, SynchroniseFrom) to facilitate IFC based work flows for both upstream and downstream processes. If that isn't enough to support the delivery process, Synchro is also leading the industry with 4D Spatial Coordination for static and dynamic project orchestration, analysis and resolution management.

Deke Smith

Deke Smith is the executive director for the Building Seismic Safety Council and the buildingSMART alliance at the National Institute of Building Sciences (NIBS). Deke was instrumental in the beginnings of the NIBS Construction Criteria Base, which is now known as the Whole Building Design Guide (WBDG). He initiated both the National CAD Standard and the National BIM Standard. Mr. Smith is co-author of "Building Information Modeling: A Strategic Implementation Guide." He was a winner of the 1996 Federal 100 award, 1997 NIBS Member Award and the 2006 CAD Society Leadership award. He is a registered architect in Virginia and was elevated to The College of Fellows of The American Institute of Architects in 2008. In 2009, he was selected as an Honorary Fellow in the Institute of Green Professionals.