Managing Quality in Architecture

Integrating BIM, Risk and Design Process

Charles Nelson, William Ronco, John Beveridge, Jack Reigle, James Cramer

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN:
  9781351987868
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Architecture General

Completely revised throughout for this second edition, Managing Quality in Architecture addresses the new ISO 9001 standards after the significant 2015 revision. ISO 9001 is the global standard for quality, and firms certified under the 2008 edition have three years to upgrade their quality systems to the new Standard. This book helps architects, engineers and other designers working in the built environment to develop appropriate quality systems that meet the requirements of the international Standard.

Importantly, the 2015 Standard integrates risk management with quality, something that earlier versions did not. Risk is an extremely important factor in professional design practice, and this important element is fully explored in the new edition. Similarly, the role of BIM in quality management is addressed as an integral part of practice.

International contributions from the USA and Australia provide expertise in each topic, and case studies from the USA, Japan, Australia, New Zealand and the United Nations Office of Project Services provide easy-to-follow illustrations of the important areas to understand. The focus is completely practical, rather than theoretical, affording readers a concise picture of how the issues of excellence and quality performance flow across every aspect of design practice.

1 Surviving & Thriving in a Swiftly Evolving Professional Environment

1.1 Forces driving change in the design professions

1.2 Can the professions respond in time?

1.3 Anticipating the path ahead

AIS Space Architects update:

Since AIS won the toilet block project in the new space station a dozen years ago, much has changed – but as in most design practices, not much has changed. Here’s where they are up to:

Vern Ackler has stepped back (to work on his golf game, and spend more time with his grandchildren) – still very much involved, but down to three to four days a week.

Les Izmore, the next most senior partner, declined to lead the firm, citing his primary interest in focusing on design. Accordingly, Clea Shay has taken over the Managing Director role.

Other generational change is happening: Hugh Brisse is not all that comfortable working for a woman boss, but he’s keeping a low profile. Weldon Boltman has surged ahead, bought into the business as an Associate Director, and is taking on increased responsibility. He sees himself as in line to take over the firm when Clea slows down, and it’s energized him.

The firm commissioned a fairly cheeky website (spacearchitects.net), that got them a lot of publicity, and probably did them no harm. Otherwise, the firm dynamics are about the same.

1.1 Forces driving change in the design professions

Times of rapid change are rife with opportunities for architects.

AIA, The Client Experience – 2002

The central premise of this book is that improving the way a practice manages quality is an important key to meeting the challenge of these changes – a way to ‘survive and thrive’. Thus we need first to consider these forces – their causes, their effects – and what we can do to work within, around and above them.

That premise hasn’t changed since the first edition a decade ago.

Fact: Our world is changing faster than at any other time in history. The rate of change is exponential, not linear. Consequently, the framework in which the building design professions exist is also changing more rapidly than at any other time in history.

Perception is important. To the extent we are caught up in the swirl of change, and responding to its pressures, we tend not to see the consequences as clearly as we should. We need to step outside the ‘squirrel cage’ for a different perspective. This second edition of MQIA – Managing Quality in Architecture – will try to maintain that different perspective.

A quality approach to practice must consider change and the forces driving it, because client perceptions and value judgments also change in a changing environment. Most authorities on design practice say the design profession is undergoing serious change; some say profound change. Many practices are having difficulty in adapting to these changes, and are struggling with them.

As we consider and evaluate effective responses to these forces, we need to also understand how the management of quality relates to other key elements in the practice business model. It isn’t necessary to define an optimum business model to usefully explore the importance of managing quality in practice, but a reference framework facilitates discussion.

How swift is the evolution?

It is axiomatic to say that the greater the forces of change, the more rapid the change will be.

Noting that sometimes changes that appear to be evolutionary are in fact cyclical, Green says “the pace of change today – whether global, societal, or regional, in the home or at work – is so rapid that there may be a greater likelihood that the seeds of actual evolution are embedded in it”.

Kevin W. C. Green, of Green & Associates, Inc., a Virginia-based marketing and strategic planning consultant, discusses the dynamics of change in the first five chapters of the AIA Handbook (13th ed., 2001).

He says that evolutionary change, unlike cyclical change, is neither steady nor gradual, but is “a series of long, quiet plateaus studded with sudden bursts of massive evolutionary redirection … called punctuated equilibrium”.

DesignIntelligence (di.net) has posted an excellent paper by Lance Josel, President and CEO of Callison RTKL, Inc.: The Future of the Architecture Practice.

Josal’s paper is a superb and optimistic reflection on the changes happening in our profession.

See Sources at the end of this Part 1 for the link.

Davis and Meyer, in BLUR: The Speed of Change in the Connected Economy (1998), asked:

Has the pace of change accelerated way beyond your comfort zone? Are the rules that guided your decisions in the past no longer relevant? If so, you are just like everyone else who’s paying attention…. The elements of change that are driving these momentous shifts are based on the fundamental dimensions of the universe itself: time, space and mass…. The fact is, something enormous is happening all around you, enough to make you feel as if you’re losing your balance and seeing double.

Thomas R. Fisher, in the opening page of In The Scheme of Things: Alternative Thinking on the Practice of Architecture (2000), puts it bluntly:

We are in the midst of a tremendous social and economic transformation, as sweeping as the Industrial Revolution was some 150 to 200 years ago. The current process of change has been called many things: the global economy, the information revolution, the age of complexity. Whatever we call it, this break with the past has shaken the foundations of our economic and social lives, laid during the Industrial Revolution, and it has rendered vulnerable the various structures so carefully built upon those foundations, including the structures of the professions and universities.

Frank Stasiowski, FAIA, in Impact 2020: Predictions for the Next Ten Years of the Design Industry (2010), observes:

One of the major blind spots among architecture and engineering professionals is a real failure to grasp the speed at which the world is changing.

David Houle, in Entering the Shift Age (2012), notes:

We now live in the Shift Age, a time of transformation that will be regarded by future historians as one of the most significant periods in human history.

Houle counts the length of ‘ages’ of humanity in ‘lifetimes’, averaging 50 years each, counting prehistoric times. It took humanity about 2,800 lifetimes to get to the first age – Agricultural – which lasted about 200 lifetimes. Then came the Industrial Age, defined by machines, which lasted about 5 lifetimes.

Houle says the Information Age began roughly about 1975 and started transitioning to the Shift Age about 2007 – less than one lifetime. We don’t know how long this new age will last, or where it will lead.

Cliff Moser, AIA, in Architecture 3.0: The Disruptive Design Practice Handbook (2014), describes three stages in the evolution of architecture. Architecture 1.0 was the realm of the master builder, up to about 1900.

Then came Architecture 2.0, the role of the practitioner in the era of the Industrial Revolution, up to the recession that began in 2007.

Moser calls his view of the future ‘Architecture 3.0’, which he describes as disruptive of the whole historical premise of the practice of architecture. His view on what he sees as the dying days of Architecture 2.0 is that “We overspecialized, under-delivered, and created a profession that, in most of the public’s opinion, served no purpose”.

I further delve into the conclusions of these thinkers throughout this new edition of MQIA. I have my own views on the state of the architectural profession, what I see as the problems it confronts, and what the professions can do about it. These thoughts are the core of my website DesignNode.net.

In John Doehring’s FAST FUTURE: Ten Uber-Trends Changing Everything in Business and Our World (2015), he notes:

The globalization endg...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Dedication
• Acknowledgements
• Preface
• Foreword
• Introduction
• Key resources
• 1 Surviving & Thriving in a Swiftly Evolving Professional Environment
• 2 Why Quality?
• 3 Lessons from the Leaders: Case Studies in Quality
• 4 Creating Efficient, Effective Quality Systems
• 5 Harnessing the Power of ISO 9001
• 6 Vision, Leadership, Planning & Brand
• 7 People
• 8 Integrating BIM, Risk & Design Process
• 9 Business, Connectivity & Marketing
• 10 Project Quality: Techniques that Deliver Results
• 11 Pushing the Envelope: The Future of Practice
• 12 Appendices
• Index