Mission
|
The
CIFE mission is to be the world's premier academic research center for
Virtual Design and Construction of Architecture - Engineering - Construction
(AEC) industry projects.
Virtual Design and
Construction (VDC) is the use of multi-disciplinary performance models
of design-construction projects, including the Product (i.e., facilities),
Work Processes and Organization of the design - construction - operation
team in order to support business objectives.
The
theoretical basis of VDC includes:
- Engineering
modeling methods: product, organization, process
- Analysis
methods (model-based): including schedule,
cost, 4D interactions and process risks
- Visualization
methods
- Business
metrics and focus on strategic management
- Economic
Impact analysis (i.e., models of both
the cost and value of capital investments)
Specifically,
CIFE objectives include:
·
Research - to develop and test innovative new ways to model, visualize,
analyze and evaluate the multidisciplinary performance of design-construction
projects, and
· Education - to increase awareness of the value and costs
of Virtual Design and Construction for practitioners and Stanford
students.
|
Measurable
Breakthrough 2015 Objectives
To make our VDC
business objectives precise and to stimulate significant effort to achieve them,
CIFE proposes breakthrough business objectives for AEC company performance:
- Schedule
performance: by 2015, CIFE member companies will have designed three
major AEC projects within a year and constructed them within “six months”.
Some CIFE companies have already established dramatic schedule improvement
as 2008 objectives.
- Cost
conformance: by 2015, CIFE member companies deliver 98% of their
AEC projects within 2% of their budgets. Most CIFE companies see that excellent
VDC models are crucial for dramatically improved cost conformance.
- Sustainability:
by 2015, CIFE member companies develop their new AEC projects with lifecycle
costs reduced by 25% from comparable 2002 performance. Many companies now
demonstrate significant commitment and achievement in this area.
- Globalization:
by 2015, CIFE member companies will acquire 50% of their materials and services
from global providers and will make at least 50% of their sales in global
markets. These related objectives are important for many companies already,
and inevitably global companies will find new opportunities for market growth,
cost management and, perhaps most important, sources of innovation.
We identify these
specific objectives to give the industry and us a vision and a specific set
of measurable objectives that appear to be highly valuable in practice. We want CIFE
member companies to be able to distinguish themselves both with significant
objectives and believable methods to achieve them. We chose them as “reach”
objectives in the sense that they will be achievable only given success in practice
of VDC visualization and metrics, integration and automation, plus significant
but necessary enabling changes in the processes of design and construction.
We recognize that each company will need to create its own individual objectives
with specific breakthrough 2015 and annual numeric targets. For example, some
organizations will want to construct buildings significantly faster than six
months; others in a longer period. An additional task for each CIFE member company
is to identify its strategy and annual plans for making incremental changes
to realize those 2015 breakthrough objectives. As we noted in the Summer Program,
each company is completely in control of its VDC vision, measurable objectives and
implementation strategy. We at CIFE will continue to provide vision, intellectual
leadership and educated participants.
In 2006, CIFE
members reported extraordinary success of in reaching the intermediate objectives
that we first set in 2002. Most reported that they operate with a strategic
plan to implement VDC incrementally and they use the first (visualization)
stage of VDC confidently. Given that the CIFE membership has largely achieved
the CIFE objectives for members for 2006, which we first identified in 2002, we propose:
Measurable
2010 Objectives
In
2010, CIFE members will
- Operate with a strategic plan to implement
VDC broadly and will manage by public and explicit model-based process
metrics including latency, safety, quality, schedule, cost and sustainability;
- Use second (integration) stage of VDC
confidently and serve >= 5 business purposes on >=10 major projects/year,
e.g., architecture, safety, schedule, space use, energy;
- Pilot third (automation) stage of VDC
and automate >30% of routine design and construction activity (wrt
2006 baseline) on > 2 pilot projects/year; and
- Staff each project with four VDC trained
engineers
|
Methods
In support of this mission, multi-disciplinary CIFE researchers, gifted students
and our industry member partners will address hard problems of the built environment
to:
- Pursue research on Virtual Design and
Construction, i.e., performance-based modeling, visualization, analysis and
evaluation of products, processes and organizations across the AEC
project lifecycle;
- Pursue research on IT management and
business issues to optimize delivered value and
cost of Virtual Design and Construction;
- Develop and deliver educational and
training content to both industry practitioners and Stanford students concerning
the value and costs of Virtual Design and Construction; and
- Work with our industry members to select
research directions and transfer research results for the benefit of CIFE members.
Related
sites:
Stanford
University
Last Updated January
31, 2007.