CETI Award 2011

Jury

• Lisa Grayson, Project Department Program Advisor, ExxonMobil (Chair)
• John Fish, Director Project Support Services, S&B / FB
• Raju Hingorani, Vice President IT Services, Jacobs Engineering
• Harold Monk, Subject Matter Expert-Plant, Autodesk
• James Newman, Engineering Manager-CADS Methods, AREVA
• Jim Purvis, Group Director Engineering Systems, WorleyParsons
• Tom Sawyer, Senior Editor, Engineering News-Record 
• Jochen Teizer, Assistant Professor, Georgia Institute of Technology

2011 Recipients

Scenario-Based Project Planning Category

DPR Construction

UCSF Medical Center at Mission Bay Project Team

This project is proving that integrated project delivery processes, tools, and technologies can be successfully applied to a public sector project. The UCSF Medical Center at Mission Bay will include a children's hospital, a cancer hospital, a women's specialty hospital, a rooftop helipad, an outpatient building, and a central plant. UCSF Medical Center, DPR Construction, Stantec, and the design team reduced construction costs by more than $100 million without reducing scope. Some of the innovative practices used include:

• Co-location: More than 100 people from 19 companies were co-located to enhance collaboration and minimize delays in decision-making.
• Cluster teams: Nine cluster teams, with representatives from designers, subcontractors, the owner, and the general contractor on each team, focus on driving costs down and streamlining information flow and decision making.
• Pull and ICE sessions: Pull schedule meetings establish optimal sequences and durations. Integrated concurrent engineering (ICE) sessions solve multi-disciplinary issues quickly with all affected stakeholders approaching an issue and choosing the optimal solution.
• Access to information: ProjectWise, a server-based document management system, is being used to allow for real-time access to the latest drawings and models.
• Last planner: During construction, last planners for each of the different scopes discuss and agree to one- and three-week look ahead plans.
• Target value design: An integrated effort set achievable cost targets per trade to reduce costs while maintaining cost, schedule, and quality.
• Virtual design and construction: Highly detailed models to validate design, user requirements, and constructability resulted in a cost-savings of $15 million and higher schedule reliability and field productivity.
• Coordination before permitting: This ensured constructability input from subcontractors was included in permit drawings.

Intelligent and Automated Construction Job Site Category

Skanska USA Building and Vela Systems

James B. Hunt Jr. Library

The Hunt Library project at North Carolina State University involved constructing a 250,000 square-foot steel frame facility. Unique systems presented high levels of risk for construction. The first is a curtain wall system comprised of over 800 units, each unique in size, color, and glass type. Next, the building uses chilled beams and radiant panels for heating and cooling, unusual in the high-humidity of the southeastern U.S. The building interior has cutting-edge technologies: micro-tile displays and interactive exhibits. Finally, the library has no stacks, but instead features a fully automatic book delivery system—a 50-foot pit housing approximately two million volumes.

The Skanska team approached the project with a critical eye on technology: BIM in estimating and preconstruction, visualization and smartboards, logistics planning and 4D scheduling, field mobility and mobile electronic resource stations (MERS), material tracking, mechanical, electrical, and plumbing coordination, and as-built BIM handover.

For the curtain wall system, supply chain management called for barcoding each curtain wall unit, tracking them from fabrication through installation, and linking them to the BIM model. Another critical aspect revolved around iPads and MERS. MERS allowed subcontractors to view all RFIs and ASIs as well as the BIM model, which provided huge benefits in visualization.

A Skanska innovation grant resulted in a detailed ROI study. Time and motion studies determined the change in 28 specific work processes after adoption of technologies on the project. Results showed an overall reduction from 62 hrs/wk to 54.5 hrs/wk on average. The team also analyzed the benefits of time and efficiency gains on avoided rework.

Georgia Tech and Metalforming

Rapid, On-Site Digital Fabrication of Sheet Metal Roof Panels

 Researchers from the Georgia Tech Construction Information Technology Laboratory, in collaboration with Metalforming Inc., invented a technology that eliminates inefficiencies and automates the entire on-site sheet metal fabrication process.

Recent advances in machine vision algorithms and inexpensive high-res video cameras allowed researchers to develop a videogrammetric roof surveying technology. The captured video data, stored on a tablet PC or laptop, is sent to a server. A 3D wire diagram of the roof is generated that includes the as-built dimensions of each plane. Detailed dimensions in XML format allow a contractor to download data to a USB flash drive and transfer it to an automatic roll forming and cutting machine at the job site.

Metalforming recently introduced a computer numerically controlled machine, called CINCO, which enables on-site digital fabrication of roof panels. Videogrammetric roof surveying technology is used to acquire as-built measurements of the roof structure. 3D software programs then layout the optimum pattern of sheet metal panels required to cover each plane. CINCO bends and cuts sheet metal coil into precise, ready to install panels. This not only eliminates hand-cutting of flanges and notches, but enhances panel quality and appearance. Labor savings of 25-30 percent have been noted for multi-plane roofs, the most common type of metal roof.

These advancements have the potential to impact the entire sheet metal roofing industry by significantly increasing on-site productivity. The surveying technique could be applied to any application that requires tape measuring: commercial built-outs, kitchen and bathroom cabinets and countertops, flooring, window installation, and siding.

Intelligent Self-Maintaining & Repairing Operational Facility Category

U.S. Army ERDC-CERL

BUILDER™ Sustainment Management System

With over a half-million facilities valued at more than $720 billion, the U.S. Department of Defense is one of the world's largest facility owners. Due to immense scopes and dynamic operating environments, managing and directing investments for these facilities presents a unique challenge, both at headquarters and at installations.

The BUILDER™ Sustainment Management System, developed by the U.S. Army Construction Engineering Research Lab, integrates engineering, architectural, and management business rules into a decision support tool. It provides objective, repeatable, and consistent facility investment guidance for asset inventory, condition, and functional assessment; maintenance and repair identification; and long-term forecasting and planning. The approach ensures that consistent results are applied across sites, organizations, and agencies.

BUILDER™ incorporates a novel knowledge-based inspection process that enables facility managers to match strategic mission objectives to inspection frequency and level of detail. Since condition degradation is only one aspect of facility performance, a complimentary functionality index measures obsolescence issues and user requirement gaps. A prioritization system incorporates user-defined metrics to determine which investment requirements most support organizational goals. Finally, a forecasting engine allows users to simulate the consequences of their policies over multiple years, providing awareness and course-of-action analysis to evaluate alternatives to facility rehabilitation investments.

Success of the BUILDER™ is evidenced by widespread adoption. The U.S. Navy recently adopted BUILDER™ for its shore-side facility condition assessment program. Annual inspection costs now are $7 million, a savings of nearly 75 percent over previous annual expenses. DOD plans to adopt BUILDER™ as its quality rating standard for facility condition assessment.

Real-Time Project & Facility Management, Coordination & Control Category

Onuma and the California Community Colleges

FUSION + CCCGIS + ONUMA

Onuma brought two separately operating database systems together to create the largest cloud computing BIM and GIS platform anywhere. California Community Colleges (72 districts with 112 campus locations) owns the Facility Utilization, a Space Inventory Options Net (FUSION) system. The Foundation for California Community Colleges has been providing building assessments and managing and maintaining both FUSION and the systems' geographic information systems (CCCGIS) since 2003. The newly created FUSION+CCCGIS+ONUMA will allow this large college system to manage and plan its facilities effectively and efficiently.

FUSION+CCCGIS+ONUMA combines 5,000 buildings (71 million square feet) and GIS data with building models in the ONUMA System. The centralized online platform makes real-time data available to users without having to install or update software. Information can now be visualized as 2D or 3D building models. BIM data can be exported for contractors and builders. This also allows for easy updates once construction is complete. Maps can be portrayed visually at a statewide, campus-wide, building, or room level. FUSION+CCCGIS+ONUMA users can even view and edit furniture and equipment on a room level.

Many benefits have been realized within the past nine months since the integration of the systems. Vendors now see an easy way to connect through web services to the system. Real-time data are accessible on multiple devices, including iPhones and iPads. Several solution providers of classroom scheduling are evaluating how to link to the system. Efficiencies in cost and time to manage complex data in simple formats allow teams to focus on value-added tasks.

New Materials, Methods, Products & Equipment Category

Mortenson Construction

Fort Carson Warriors in Transition Barracks

The Warriors in Transition program is designed to provide a healing environment for wounded soldiers returning from combat. There would never be a more important customer. With that in mind, the team for this Fort Carson, Colorado, project struck a motto: "Soldier First." The technology and prefabrication concepts used here had a direct and lasting impact on Mortenson's organizational philosophy with preconstruction services.

Prefabricated components included:

• Load bearing precast wall panels, which helped the team avoid field-lay of masonry during the Colorado winter.
• Preassembled roof truss and deck sections, which reduced schedule and enhanced safety.
• Modular bathrooms, which reduced construction time and provided superior quality to the 120 living units.

Virtual design and construction included the following models:

• Each bathroom pod type to "plug-in" to the overall building model.
• Mechanical and plumbing systems to coordinate with drain and connection locations and hook-up plans for bathrooms.
• Structural steel and floor joists systems to coordinate with the precast panels and floor drain locations.
• Precast wall panels for coordination with floor joists, roof joists, mechanical penetrations, and overall architecture.
• Roof joists to coordinate with the precast wall panels, ductwork systems, and roof sections.

Prefab subcontractors were brought onto the team pre-bid to coordinate each component's BIM. The design phase was completed in less than five months, which allowed construction to start in August and avoid exterior work in the Colorado winter. The overall project, including design and construction, was completed two and a half months early, allowing soldiers to move in sooner than expected. Soldier First: a true success.

Technology- and Knowledge-Enabled Workforce Category

The University of Texas at Austin

Advancing Workforce Learning through Cognitive Analysis of Superintendent Work

Field superintendents make a broad range of decisions to support site safety, productivity, and quality. This research used a technique known as applied cognitive work analysis methods. The goal is to develop an "IT-savvy" workforce, particularly IT savvy superintendents. This effort also hopes to provide (1) more realistic environments for learning that speed the integration of experience, and (2) better software tools that can lead to improved technical knowledge among superintendents.

The research involved an analyst who, over an eight-month period, spent several hours a day with each of three different superintendents at two specific commercial construction projects. The objective was to document superintendent information processing to support innovative approaches to education and the development of supporting software. The method used, applied cognitive work analysis or ACWA, is useful in organizing the knowledge of a practitioner in terms of abstract goals of work, required decisions, and related information. The main product of ACWA is a representation of the practitioner's mental model: objectives of the job, the processes to attain each objective, and the relationships between processes.

Research results include: 

• Advances to industry knowledge: The studies found significant differences between IT savvy and less-IT savvy superintendents.
• Business factors: The research helped the contractor on the projects involved to identify the IT skills that area superintendents need to perform in day-to-day duties.
• Software tools: Field construction personnel are often seen as resistant to technology. The research concludes, however, that technology has not been well designed to support workface management tasks.

Outstanding Student Research Project Category

Man-Woo Park, Georgia Institute of Technology

Vision-Based Tracking of Construction Resources

With the evolving accuracy of cameras and computer vision, vision-based tracking may help advance construction. Vision-based tracking has been successful in sports: now replace the football field with a construction site, the players with the workers and equipment, and the balls with construction materials. Man-Woo Park is a student researcher at Georgia Tech who has made notable strides in research on the promising technique of vision-based tracking.

Two or more cameras and a processor are the only equipment required. Each camera view is continuously searched for new construction resources (workers, equipment, and materials). Once a resource is detected, its image region is marked and given to a 2D vision tracker for tracking the entity in each subsequent frame. Detection is possible by characterizing the visual patterns of various entities and detecting the regions in the video frame that match the visual pattern. Tracking the entity afterwards ensures that the same entity is located across time. Obtaining 3D coordinates is possible by correlating 2D coordinates from two or more views. This is achieved by calibrating the on-site cameras such that focal length and translation/rotation between cameras are known. Entities can then be matched across views in each frame set. 3D coordinates are calculated by triangulating the 2D positions of each element from two or more views.

This tracking solution is beneficial to on-site monitoring in that it: can track a large number of entities as long as they appear in the camera views; can cover a vast area with a small number of construction cameras; takes less time and requires less cost regarding equipment; and is fully automated, minimizing the amount of labor needed.

Outstanding Early Career Researcher Category

Dr. Ioannis Brilakis

Georgia Institute of Technology

Dr. Ioannis Brilakis is an assistant professor in civil and environmental engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He has been recognized for his groundbreaking research in infrastructure object recognition and reconstruction. Beyond research, however, Brilakis is known for advancing academia, developing curricula, and mentoring rising stars in the engineering and construction industry.

His first research developed a method that visually recognizes building materials for automating construction site image classification and retrieval. His efforts now aim at the transition from recognizing materials to recognizing objects, followed by measuring the geometry of objects for as-built modeling and quantity take offs, tracking construction resources for monitoring and control systems, and detecting object defects and damage for maintenance and structural damage assessment.

In education, Brilakis has focused on creating research-based interdisciplinary courses and providing elementary, high school, and college students with the opportunity to engage in research. He has supervised the research projects of 38 undergrads, three secondary education teachers, and nine high school students. Brilakis is also on the governing board of the Atlanta ACE Mentor Program.

Brilakis envisions that video of a facility will be adequate to recreate the bulk of its 3D geometric model. To do this, he has established an international consortium of six research groups with expertise in computer vision, BIM standards, and machine learning. The National Science Foundation also recently awarded Brilakis a grant to validate a complete version of a video-to-model method for reinforced concrete bridges. When completed, these efforts could revolutionize the way infrastructure is mapped.

Dr. John R. Haymaker

Dr. John Haymaker is founder of Design Process Innovation. A former assistant professor at Stanford University, he is a leading authority on the shifting of traditional, precedent-based design and decision-making processes to performance-based design, wherein stakeholders and designers explicitly create multi-disciplinary objectives and systematically generate and analyze a wide array of alternatives.

Performance-based design is a complex social and technical process. BIM and parametric modeling promise to help project teams make the transition, but successful adoption is proving difficult. Project teams and the industry itself lack the theoretical underpinning and systematic methods that can enable architectural designers, stakeholders, engineers, and builders to define, execute, and measure multi-disciplinary, sustainable design processes.

Haymaker's research draws on process modeling, lean manufacturing, and design theory and methodology to define methods and metrics for assessing design projects. He has developed a graphical modeling method called Narratives to describe collaborative processes. Haymaker has found that underrepresented teams are developing objectives and analyses while relying on potentially invalid precedent knowledge to evaluate conceptual design spaces.

He proposes new social and technical tools and processes that can help teams more efficiently define objectives, generate alternatives, perform analyses, and synthesize valuable and sustainable decisions. Process modeling, social networks, organizational science, lean methods, parametric and building information modeling, model-based analysis, multi-disciplinary optimization, decision analysis, and decision-based design form the theoretical and practical points of departure for these tools. He also is developing a visual platform of integrated tools that will help teams effectively plan, generate, analyze, and decide on the best design.

Outstanding Researcher Category

Dr. Lucio Soibelman

University of Southern California

 Dr. Lucio Soibelman is the new chair of the Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Southern California. He previously was a professor at Carnegie Mellon University. A native of Brazil, he worked as a construction manager for 10 years before moving to the U. S., where he earned his doctorate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His research focuses on advanced data acquisition, management, visualization, and mining for construction and operations of advanced infrastructure systems.

During his work as a project manager, he interacted with many young engineers and gained insight into what and how to teach. He engages students through hands-on class projects and involves them in ongoing research. His courses relate to construction engineering, machine learning, and data mining for civil engineering students. He has been recognized for his dedication to teaching and commitment to innovation in the classroom by the American Council on Education.

Soibelman has developed frameworks and algorithms that support the acquisition, modeling, management, and analysis of infrastructure-oriented data. By developing new Knowledge Discovery in Databases (KDD) and Data Mining (DM) technologies and by integrating and adapting existing ones, he has derived new principles and methodologies that allow infrastructure and construction managers to better manage and to extract concepts, causal relationships, and patterns of interest from complex infrastructure-oriented data.

He is the current co-chief editor for the American Society in Civil Engineering (ASCE) Computing in Civil Engineering Journal and is a member of the editorial board of seven international journals.