Slow Down to Take Advantage of Building Modeling
July 31st, 2006 by HalResidential home construction suffers from the same non-standard designs of commercial construction. But in residential construction there has been far too little time to do operations engineering to take the waste out. 3D (and 4D) design tools are changing that.
Concurrent Design for Production
James Folkstad1
James recognized that design is a social process. As players change, the house will change. 3D CAD tools can enable that social process. Learning happens for individuals and may only reside in one person's head. Finding ways to share that learning across a subdivision is critical to driving the waste out of construction.
"There were so many slap-in-the-face problems to solve that we never got to the root causes."
James created a team of researchers-as-detailers to do the work of modeling design elements. As the team learned with the subcontractors they began to see they needed different tools for detailing and conveying construction documents. They couldn't build the models fast enough to keep up with framers and other trades. The company would not slow down to learn and avoid errors.
Early modeling took tremendous time. They have now learned to use methods to dramatically cut the time for creating objects and models. This is resulting in far more reliance on good details by the craft labor.
- Associate Professor, Colorado State University, Industrial Engineering and Construction Management [ ⇑ back ]
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