A Bottom-Up Approach to Generate VDC Implementation Patterns by Comparing Production Metrics Data

Research Team

Research Overview

Observed Problem:

Production metrics are important yardsticks for Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC) project teams to determine whether their projects are on track. Despite an uptake in projects implementing Virtual Design and Construction (VDC) in recent years, analysis of production metrics across different projects has been difficult since the inner workings on projects is only reported anecdotally.

Primary Research Objective:

To document similarities and differences in production metrics reported across a large number of VDC implementations carried out by AEC professionals belonging to different roles and organizations across projects of different type and size in different phases of design and construction in Latin America and Northern Europe.

Potential Value to CIFE Members and Practice:

Supports decision making within project teams by assisting them with establishing production metrics on comparable projects
Supports organizations in standardizing production metrics across projects

Research provides relevant insights for:

Owners, designers, general contractors, software providers, researchers

Research and Theoretical Contributions:

A dataset of production metrics based on 300 VDC implementations
VDC implementation patterns based on similarities and differences in production metrics reported across projects

Industry and Academic Partners:

Norwegian Institute of Science and Technology, University of Lima

Keywords:

production metrics, VDC framework, BIM (Building Information Modeling), ICE (Integrated Concurrent Engineering), PPM (Project Production Management)

Research Updates & Progress Reports

Research Updates - June 2021

We collected production metrics data reported by 279 AEC professionals working on VDC implementations in Scandinavia and Latin America. We prepared two datasets of 1970 production metrics. Data clean-up involved elimination of production metrics which were either vague or were controllable factors (input metrics or practices which project teams choose to put in place) or VDC application objectives (output metrics measured at key project milestones), project objectives (output metrics measured at project completion) or client objectives (output metrics measured when the project is operational). In comparison to controllable factors, VDC application objectives and client and project objectives, production metrics are output metrics measured daily or weekly during project run-time. After clean-up, we classified the production metrics into 17 production metric categories found in the literature (Kunz and Fischer, 2012; Belsvik et al., 2019). The two datasets were then compared using the 17 production metric categories as the basis for comparison. Figure 1a below illustrates the results of the comparison. Figure 1b explains the process of data preparation, clean-up, classification and comparison of production metrics data obtained from the 1st large scale VDC program in Norway (2019-2020) and Peru (2020).

Fig. 1a_A Bottom-Up Approach to Generate VDC — Figure 1a. Comparison of production metric categories across 2 datasets

Fig. 1_A Bottom-Up Approach to Generate VDC — Figure 1. Production metrics data preparation, cleanup, analysis and comparison

To identify the top 10 individual production metrics reported by professionals enrolled in the 1st large scale VDC program in Norway, we compiled 83 unique production metric labels by collaborating with SBI and industry experts who participated as mentors in the program. We found evidence of 57 out of the 83 production metric labels, indicating that professionals found them useful. Figure 2 illustrates the top 10 individual production metrics reported by 115 professionals.

Fig. 2_A Bottom-Up Approach to Generate VDC — Figure 2. Top 10 individual production metrics reported by professionals in Norway (N = 115)

Original Proposal

CIFE Seed Proposal

Publications

We have submitted a draft manuscript at the CI and CRC Joint Conference 2022 on “Next generation construction”.
We are currently working on a journal paper documenting our findings in detail.

References

Belsvik, M.R., Lædre O., Hjelseth E. (2019). “Metrics in VDC Projects”. 27th Annual Conference of the International Group for Lean Construction (IGLC).
Kunz, J. and Fischer, M. (2012) “Virtual Design and Construction: Themes, Case Studies and Implementation Suggestions”, CIFE Working Paper #097, pp 28-29.

Funding Year:

2021