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Technology and the Future of the U.S.Construction Industry

August 1984

NTIS order #PB86-209442

Published in the United States of America by the AIA Press. Washington, D.C.

Papers included in this document published with permission of the Congress of the United States,Office of Technology Assessment. The views expressed in this document are not necessarily those ofthe Technology Assessment Board, OTA Advisory council, or individual members thereof.

OTA wishes to acknowledge the contribution of Robert Gold, who was responsible for convening thepanel in which the material in this volume is based, and Linda Long, whose editorial assistance in thepreparation of this volume was greatly appreciated.

ISBN 0-913962-81-3

. . .111

Technology and theFuture of the USConstruction Industry

Congress of the United States Office ofTechnology Assessment

Table of Contents

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2.

3.

4.

5.

Technology and the ConstructionIndustry: An IntroductionHenry Kelly

Computers and ConstructionHarry MileafAlton S. Bradford

Smart Office BuildingsRichard Carl ReismanMichael ClevengerPiero Patri

Modular Structures andRelated TechniquesDon O. CarlsonEric Dluhosch

Energy in BuildingsDavid E. ClaridgeJohn P. Millhone

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121216

30303440

464670

767680

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8.

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Construction TechnologiesRichard L. Tucker

Structural SystemsWendel R. Wendel

MaterialsAlbert Dietz

Commercial Building DesignsCharles H. Thornton

Over the HorizonRaymond P. Whitten

Reflections on the PresentationsJohn P. EberhardJames Gross

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104104

124124

134134

140140

144144150

iv

Foreword

The American Institute of Architects is pleased to publish this report in cooperation with the Officeof Technology Assessment for the United States Congress.

The OTA panel on technology and the construction industry explored topics such as commercialbuilding designs, energy use in buildings, and the future utilization of computers in the constructionindustry. While not endorsing all the views expressed in the report, the AIA offers the publication tofoster discussion of the construction industry’s future and the critical role of the design professions inshaping the built environment,

The American Institute of Architects is interested in hearing from readers of this report, and asksthat comments be directed to the Office of the Executive Vice President at the American Institute ofArchitects, 1735 New York Avenue, N. W., Washington, D.C. 20006.

John A. Busby Jr., FAIAPresidentThe American Institute of Architects

Technology and theConstruction Industry:An IntroductionHenry Kelly

Technology is reshaping the Americaneconomy. Vast improvements in agriculturaland manufacturing productivity haveoutstripped demand to the point where netemployment in these areas is falling whileemployment in business service professions hassoared. Economic growth has been buoyed byenormous volumes of sales in office computers,telecommunication systems, and other productsnot even on the market a decade ago. Whetherthe rate of change is more or less rapid than ithas been in the past, whether the changes areevolutionary or revolutionary, is in some waysnot as important as the fact that, takentogether, these changes have dramaticallyreshaped the way the economy combinesmaterial, capital, labor, and ideas to providemost kinds of goods and services. The workdescribed below was undertaken because thechairmen of several Congressional committeesasked the U.S. Office of TechnologyAssessment (OTA) to describe the way newtechnologies are acting to reshape the nation’seconomy. One of the areas chosen for specialattention was the construction industry.

There is a widespread perception that thetechnologies that are reshaping most of the restof the economy have left the constructionindustry behind — that Ramses II wouldprobably recognize most of the operations intoday’s construction site. Construction istypically considered a low-technology industryoperating in sheltered local markets with low orfalling productivity. Believing this to be amistaken impression, OTA convened aworkshop of experts with direct experience inconstruction. The topics were selected afterextensive preliminary discussions with industryexperts who were asked to identify areas wheretechnology was likely to have its greatest effecton the industry as a whole: the use ofinformation technologies; factory constructiontechniques; new energy technologies; and newstructural designs. Participants were a diversegroup drawn from industry, academia, andgovernment. The diversity of the participantswas a reflection of a diverse and decentralized

industry. Many of the participants met eachother for the first time in the workshop eventhough they had spent careers studyingdifferent aspects of construction.

The construction industry, of course, is notreally a single industry but a complex cluster ofindustries somewhat uncomfortably combinedunder a single classification. Residentialconstruction, commercial buildings, industrialstructures, and civil engineering projects aretypically bundled somewhat uncomfortablytogether. Moreover, construction activitiescombine a wide range of different professions:architects; engineers; and specialists in sitework, renovation, and maintenance. Differentteams are formed for new projects. Teamsassembled for major projects often disperseafter the projects are complete. This fluidityand flexibility makes the industry dynamic,resourceful, and adaptable. But the diversityhas always frustrated efforts to analyze the netperformance of the industry as a whole. In fact,several of the workshop participants arguedthat while much of the industry’s strength liesin its flexibility, excessive fragmentation canalso create problems. Often, no one has aperspective on the construction processadequate to detect inefficiencies that resultfrom imperfect coordination among the firmsresponsible for construction, or adequate tocombine an analysis of construction decisionswith an analysis of the implications of thesedecisions for building operation and facilitiesmaintenance. The diversity also makes itdifficult to measure progress in the industrysince national economic statistics provide a poorpicture of the diverse enterprises that combineto make the U.S. construction industry.

We asked the participants to explain how thetechnologies they knew best were reshaping theconstruction industry, and we asked them tospeculate about the possible impact of thechanges that might result on overall growthrates in the industry, the quality andperformance of building products, the numberand nature of jobs created by the industry, andthe international competitive position of the

domestic industry. The discussion alsoconsidered areas where optimumimplementation of new technology may requirea review of existing federal, state, and localpolicies that are used to regulate the industry.The policy consequences of new constructiontechnology will be the subject of a separatestudy and are not extensively discussed in thisvolume.

The workshop established two points quiteclearly. First, the construction industry is beingreshaped, in some cases radically reshaped, bynew technology — although the changes areseldom obvious to casual observers. Andsecond, many attractive new technologies arebeing adopted slowly because of the industry’sfragmented nature, the failure of clients todemand innovation (due in part to the fact thatthey seldom recognize the potential advantagesof new technology), the shortage of researchfunding from either public or private sources,by a regulatory structure poorly adapted torapid technical change, and fear of litigation.Slow rates of adoption of new technologies canmake the industry vulnerable to foreigncompetition and rob clients of qualitativeimprovements in buildings that could not onlymake the building a more attractive place towork or live, but reduce operating costs as well.

The workshop was organized around thepremise that technology affects the constructionindustry in three principal ways: (i) technologyhas reshaped the national economy in ways thataffect demand for different kinds of structures;(ii) technology has changed the nature of thestructure itself (including the services providedby buildings); and (iii) technology has changedthe way that structures are produced anderected.

1. Demand

Even if it embraced no new technologies it-self, the construction industry would be forcedto change in response to the transformation un-derway in the the American economy. America

is becoming a nation of office workers. Thismeans greater emphasis on office structures.Moreover, the nature of office work is itselfchanging in ways that, in turn, are changing thedemands placed on buildings. While we can ex-pect significant growth in the productivity ofproduction-floor operations, many of the mostdramatic increases in national productivity dur-ing the next decade are likely to occur becauseof improvements in the technology of officework. This is as true for sales clerks, hospitalemployees, architects, lawyers, and teachers, asit is for insurance agencies and banks. Officesare becoming much more heavily capitalized asword processors and other more sophisticatedcomputer terminals substitute for routine cleri-cal work. This trend means new office designsand new demands on the building infrastruc-ture. Moreover, modern communications givemanagement much greater freedom to chooselocations for ‘back office’ activities and a vari-ety of other functions. There is seldom an abso-lute need to locate these facilities near centralheadquarters buildings or even near the produc-tion facilities that they may support. The resulthas been a decentralization of operations, subur-banization, and rapid movement toward thesouth and west.

We must also consider the dynamics ofchange. It is now clear that most buildings willneed to be adapted to a variety of different pur-poses during their design lives. A fast-pacedeconomy means increasing need for flexibility— particularly in office activities where it issimply impossible to predict what equipmentwill dominate ten years from now or, indeed,what equipment will be available next year.This means that structures dedicated to a singlepurpose, and structures that cannot be up-graded to accommodate modern communicationsystems and energy efficiency technologies, areincreasingly unattractive investments. Some ofthe members of the workshop, most promi-nently Wendel R. Wendel, argued that weshould try to move away from the notion thatbuildings are permanent monuments and recog-nize that the provision of shelter is a service —

Technology and the Construction Industry

a service that should be tailored to a need aslong as the need lasts and then modified or re-tired.

Several of the participants suggested thatbuyers’ standards and tastes may be changingin a way that affects the market for buildings inqualitative ways. Buyers may become increas-ingly intolerant of uninteresting structures, orstructures that do not create a pleasant workenvironment. The relationship between thework environment and workplace productivityhas received particular attention. James Grossnotes that the total wages and salaries paid topeople working in a building is an order of mag-nitude higher than the cost of the building it-self. Anything that can increase theproductivity of the occupants is therefore likelyto be a wise investment.

2. The Structure Itself

a. The ‘Smart’ Building. The construction in-dustry has responded to changing demands bymodifying both what is built and how it is built.It is becoming difficult to know what we meanwhen we talk about a ‘building.’ Surely wemust include the basic space-conditioning andlighting equipment. Presumably, we also in-clude the systems that operate elevators, secu-rity systems, and other equipment key to basicoperation of the building. It seems reasonable toinclude the complex computer systems that arenow managing lighting, chillers, and other en-ergy systems. But should other features thatcome under the broad concept of ‘smart build-ings’ be considered a product of the construc-tion industry? For example, with the breakup ofAT&T, telephone wiring should probably betreated in the same way we have treated con-ventional electrical wiring. Should we also in-clude the more sophisticated infrastructureneeded to operate office automation systems:antennas on the roof; fiber-optic cables; com-puter centers that may perform telephoneswitching, broadband communication, and datamanagement functions, as well as operate secu-rity systems, energy systems, and elevators?How should we treat furniture if the furniturebecomes a critical part of the office environ-

ment. In many cases, for example, it may bebetter to make lighting fixtures a part of mov-able partitions instead of making them perma-nent fixtures. While ‘shared tenant services’have not fared well, the difficulties may liemore with the institutional arrangements of-fered, and inattention to the real business needsof customers, than with the underlying capabili-ties of the technology. Relationships betweenbuilding owners and tenants are likely to changein ways that blur the formerly clear distinctionbetween the building shell and the apparatus in-troduced into the building by tenants. At aminimum, a premium will be placed on struc-tures that can flexibly adapt to changing needsof tenants. Structures may provide fewer ‘built-in’ services and tenants may be expected to pro-vide more for themselves. Tenant-suppliedlighting, for example, is much more likely to beefficiently matched to particular needs than sys-tems designed to provide the entire buildingwith lighting levels high enough to satisfy themost demanding draftsman. (The advantage ofavoiding fixed lighting systems is underscoredby the fact that the next generation of drafts-men is likely to want lower-than-average light-ing levels in areas where they will be looking atdisplay screens instead of fine print on paper).On the other hand, buildings could providemore services, making building owners, in ef-fect, service companies that offer such things ascomputer and communication services, alongwith ‘basic’ utilities like electricity and heat.Unfortunately, national data is inadequate formeasuring the extent to which these new tech-nologies are actually being introduced in newstructures. The most impressive examples of‘smart building’ concepts have been in propri-etary structures.

Leaving aside the revolution in the technol-ogy of office work, there are also major changesunderway in the technology of the basic struc-ture. The materials used for building compo-nents have also changed. Plastic pipe and steelstuds are easy to see, but a variety of other newproducts are being used in insulating materials,floor coverings, exterior wall surfaces, glazing,and floors. Technology has challenged conven-tional notions about how to provide basic struc-tural support. Optimum design engineering has

An Introduction 5

refined conventional designs. Truss systems,such as the one marketed by Space Structures,can vastly reduce the cost of large, unsupportedspans. A variety of new adhesive materials areused to attach everything from decorative pan-eling to structural members.

b. Building Operations. Building control tech-nologies must also be considered as part oflarger systems that are themselves ‘smart.’Thinking about this issue requires a consider-ation of the ‘life-cycle costs’ of structures in-cluding an analysis of operating costs and thecosts associated with making modifications thatwill be needed during the structure’s useful life.

Energy

The energy price increases of the 1970s re-sulted in an explosion of new ideas for improv-ing the efficiency of energy use in buildings.New residential and commercial buildings canbe built which use a fifth as much energy persquare foot as comparable structures built dur-ing the early 1970s. Some of the improvementsare straightforward — improved insulation, forexample. Some result from a better understand-ing of heat-flows in structures. And some resultfrom clever new equipment and control sys-tems. A flood of highly efficient furnaces, airconditioners, lighting equipment, and other ap-pliances has been introduced during the pastfew years. Many are several times more effi-cient than the equipment they are designed toreplace. But while component improvementsprovide important new tools, their full value canonly be recognized if they are used as a part ofan integrated analysis of building energy thatincludes an assessment of the dynamic perfor-mance of a building’s shell. Overall levels ofsavings can be remarkable. The code likely tobe adopted as an industry standard in 1986 rec-ommends levels of energy use that are less thanhalf the levels typical of the early 1970s. Thesavings are not achieved from a single ‘break-through’ technology but rather from the com-bined effects of a large number ofimprovements in structural designs, equipment,and control strategies.

Integrated analysis of energy use should

probably include an assessment of the waybuildings operate as a part of regional networks.Equipment capable of integrating the energymanagement controls of individual structureswith the dispatch controls of electric utilitiescan significantly improve the dynamic perfor-mance of electric networks taken as a whole.Experiments are already underway abroad andin the U.S. by which utilities can continuouslyvary their electric rates according to an instan-taneous estimate of marginal costs of produc-tion, and can transmit this informationperiodically to buildings of all kinds (includingresidences). Control systems in each structurecan respond to these price signals by adjustingthe performance of equipment in prearrangedways. The response can be as simple as postpon-ing the start of a water heater or chiller whenprices exceed some threshold level. Dynamiccontrol over demand can allow utilities to meeta larger fraction of total electric demand fromrelatively inexpensive ‘base-load’ plants usingcoal or nuclear fuels.

Sophisticated new building technologies are,in a very direct way, substitutes for electric gen-erating technologies. Trade-offs between invest-ments in new generating capacity andinvestments in buildings are not a trivial matter.More than two thirds of all electricity in theU.S. is consumed in residential and commercialbuildings — most of it for commonplace pur-poses: lighting, refrigeration, and air condition-ing. Improved analytical tools, coupled with afew technical tricks, have permitted vast reduc-tions in the amount of energy required to heatand cool a building. Changes range from re-programming air-handling systems, to the devel-opment of high-technology light bulbs. Takentogether, they can reduce the net energy con-sumption of typical residential or commercialstructures by factors ranging from two to ten.Effective use of these new technologies will re-quire an approach to electric utility manage-ment that allows potential investors to make anunbiased comparison of investments in electricgeneration and investments in technologies thatmake efficient use of electricity in buildings.Several workshop participants noted that theexisting system badly biases decisions, since thefinancing available to regulated utility monopo-


lies (allowing investments with twenty-yearpaybacks) is much different than the financingavailable for entrepreneurial investments inbuildings where annual returns of 100 to 200percent are expected on investments in buildingefficiency.

Facilities Management

The issue of facilities management and build-ing operations has about as much sex appeal asa week-old cheese sandwich. But the issue hastaken on growing importance as demands forbuilding modifications increase as a result ofthe increasing volatility and uncertainty in de-mands for residential and commercial space —including changing interest in the energy con-sumption of buildings. Facilities managementcan be greatly simplified by using computer-based drawings and records of the kind thatwill be discussed in greater detail in the nextsection. A set of digital ‘drawings’ of a buildingthat can be conveniently updated after eachbuilding modification greatly reduces the uncer-tainties and costs of structural modifications.There is less trepidation as you drill through awall (famous last words: “Where did they putthe high-voltage cable?”), and there is less needto track old Fred to his trailer in Florida so thathe can explain what he meant by the notescrawled on the margin of the original drawings.A continuously updated building design canalso facilitate analysis of changes in structuresand heating and air-conditioning systems.

3. The Construction Process

Turning to the question of how structures areactually made, three themes seem to dominate:(i) improvements in the process by which anidea goes from a gleam in a designer’s eye to aset of working drawings; (ii) greater use of fac-tory-based construction techniques; (iii) and useof more sophisticated equipment in the field.

a. Design. New computer-based systems canimprove the productivity of building design andanalysis. They can rapidly convert concepts todrawings, convert drawings to analysis and con-

vert all of this to estimates of initial costs andoperating costs. The systems can be used to pre-pare working sketches and detailed drawings.Routine building components (repeated windowand door treatments, for example) can be calledfrom digital files that need be entered only onceby a draftsman. The equipment thus substitutesfor the most tedious aspects of drafting. Pricelists can be built into the systems, allowing aninstantaneous estimate of the cost of differentdesign alternatives. Advanced systems allow acomputer-based ‘tour’ of building interiors andexteriors. Once entered, the design informationcan be used as the basis for computer-basedstructural analysis, an analysis of lighting, or anassessment of energy consumption.

Many architects, however, greet the prospectof computer-assisted design with the enthusiasmof a cat facing a pail of water. Their perceptionis that computers will substitute mechanical de-cisions for taste, and formulas will be substi-tuted for inspiration. All this is plainly possible.But increasing competitive pressure for speedand cost control make it extremely difficult forthe average architect to produce an averagebuilding with much imagination, unless thereare some fundamental changes in the designprocess. Computer-assisted design systems mayenable such changes. While the full potential ofthe systems is unknown, it is apparent that thesystems can remove many barriers between in-spiration and execution. They can improve com-munication between designers and their clients,allowing vastly more ‘what if’ excursions anddiscussions about options at different levels ofinvestment. There is no good way to calculatethe benefits of greater client satisfaction, butsurely improvements in this area are among themost important contributions a new technologycan make to the construction process.

Computer-based technologies can signifi-cantly reduce the cost of making modificationsto existing plans while preventing errors fromcreeping into areas unaffected by the change.The penalty for trying a radical new idea canbe reduced since the concept can be subjectedto a detailed analysis, and reduced to drawingsthat permit a realistic feeling for exterior viewsand interior spaces without a major investmentin time or money. Automated design systems

An Introduction 7

coupled with communication systems can facili-tate the performance of geographically dis-persed teams, allowing clients, engineers,construction firms, and architects to cooperateeffectively during the evolution of a design.They can facilitate the process by which speci-fications are sent out for competitive bids, re-duce the uncertainties associated with bidding,and decrease the burdens associated with thesubmission and analysis of proposals,

Once the basic design has been entered intoa computer-based system, a variety of analyticalprograms can use the data to assess such thingsas the energy-consumption consequences of dif-ferent design decisions. Until now, one of thegreatest barriers to energyefficient building de-signs has been the fact that heating, ventilatingand air conditioning (HVAC) analysis is typi-cally conducted after it is too late to changeany major feature of a building’s basic design.There is also a considerable ‘pain-in-the-neck’factor involved in submitting drawings to a spe-cialized group for energy modeling. It is tempt-ing to hand completed drawings to an HVACengineer and say, “Just make sure it doesn’toverheat. ”

Design flexibility is not limited to commer-cial structures since it is now relatively easy tooffer prospective home buyers the opportunityto design their own floor plans, and compare theappearance of different interior and exteriorwall coverings in the spaces they have designed.Though only a fraction of new houses are de-signed with the help of an architect, it is possi-ble that the new systems may permitprospective home buyers greater flexibility inselecting and refining home designs, using theservices of an architect, at least indirectly in theform of skillfully designed software. The Japa-nese have a system in place for doing this thatis connected directly to production equipmentcapable of delivering preassembled units to aconstruction site in two to three weeks.

b. The Construction Process. If computer-as-sisted design is the first major revolution in themaking of buildings, factory construction is thesecond. Construction has always been some-thing of a craft, with each structure fabricatedfrom basic components in the field. The litera-ture is replete with predictions that this primi-

tive form of fabrication was about to end andthe industry would evolve in a way that wouldmake it more like conventional manufacturing.A commission organized for Franklin Rooseveltin the mid-1930s made this claim. Truman ap-pointed a ‘housing expediter’ who was deter-mined to solve the housing shortage at the endof the second World War with factory-builthousing. Only a fraction of the goal was met.George Romney rekindled the dream a genera-tion later with his ‘operation breakthrough,’which similarly fell far short of its goal. Whenforecasters have a track record like this, it iseasy to be cynical about new claims. But wemay have become so cautious that we may nothave noticed how far, and how fast, we havemoved toward factory-based construction ofhomes and small commercial structures.

No one in the workshop challenged the esti-mate that nearly half the homes built today in-volve a significant amount of factoryconstruction, with the other half making veryheavy use of factory-built components: rooftrusses, pre-hung windows and doors, ‘wet-cores’(bathroom and kitchen units), and the like. InSweden today over 90 percent of all new housesare made in the factory. Is our industry headedin the same direction?

One of the barriers to factory constructionhas always been its association with inexpensive,monotonous ‘pre-fab’ construction. And indeed,drab, low-quality houses and mobile homes havebeen produced in factories. In Sweden, on theother hand, factory-built structures are consid-ered to be of a higher quality and have a higherstatus than site-built homes.

Factory construction offers several clear ad-vantages. It permits uniform assembly, testing,and inspection. It permits relatively rapid on-site erection, thereby reducing constructing fi-nancing charges. It permits the use of moresophisticated assembly equipment. And it per-mits the kind of design flexibility described ear-lier. Of course, not all, or even most, of theopportunities are exploited in existing fabrica-tion facilities.

The new technology is, of course, not withoutsome drawbacks. Movement to factory con-struction could undermine the position of somesmall businesses, eliminating jobs or replacing


skilled jobs with relatively unskilled ones, andweakening the role played by local regulatoryauthorities. The next section will return to thisissue.

Field erection techniques are also in the pro-cess of rapid change, particularly for commer-cial structures. A variety of computer-assistedequipment has been introduced in the past fewyears. It ranges from earth-handling equipmentto erection cranes and fully robotic equipment.Computer-assisted equipment is being intro-duced for two primary purposes: replacing peo-ple in hazardous circumstances, and improvingprecision. A significant fraction of constructionaccidents, for example, result from crane opera-tions. It is apparently rare for a crane operatorto complete a career without being involved ina fatal accident. Control equipment can auto-matically ‘remember’ critical lift heights andswing restrictions. Earth-loading equipment canbe programmed to dump only after sensing atruck in a proper orientation.

One of the major barriers to increased con-struction productivity has been the difficulty ofmaking joints. Accumulated field errors oftenresult in joints that fall far short of specifiedtolerances. It is difficult to introduce preciselyengineered components in a project where over-all standards of precision are lax. Productivitygains require all components to be erected withroughly the same standards. Precisely engi-neered components, such as the computer-con-structed, space-frame structures, for example,must frequently be adjusted to fit imprecisestructures. Errors of as much as a foot are ap-parently common in structures of ten stories ormore. Improved grading equipment, guided bylaser leveling and positioning equipment, is anearly example of devices designed to improvethe accuracy of field work. In the near future,computer-assisted equipment with active loca-tion controls can further improve the precisionof field work.

A final field that defied the analysis of theassembled experts had to do with the technol-ogies of renovation and retrofit. Statistics on thesize of these enterprises are particularly poor.But it is reasonable to argue that rapid im-provements in building technology will increasedemands for building renovations to improve

the large stock of existing structures. Whilesome new technologies are available for di-agnosing and repairing problems identified inolder structures, the field remains a very murkyone. Most of the new techniques identified weredesigned to pinpoint sources of heat leaks sothat the energy efficiency of the structure couldbe improved.

4. Impacts

a. Employment. Taken together, how will newtechnologies change the construction industry,the quality of the products it delivers, and thenature of the jobs it offers? There is little ques-tion that the technologies described have thepotential to affect both the number of jobs gen-erated by the construction industry during thenext decade, and the nature of these jobs, indramatic ways. On the whole, it seems likelythat the net labor productivity of the systemcan be increased, though experts disagree aboutthe quality of the jobs that will remain. No onehas a satisfactory explanation for the mysteri-ous fall in the productivity of the constructionindustry measured using standard statistical se-ries. Some of the workshop participants claimedthat the decline was an artifact of flawed mea-surement. The productivity gains created bymodular-home factories, for example, do notcontribute to the measured productivity of theconstruction industry since factories are classi-fied as manufacturing firms and not construc-tion companies.

Design firms are likely to see routine draftingand cost estimating become much more produc-tive as modern equipment assumes a greaterportion of routine chores. There will be fewerpeople as well as fewer steps between the de-signer, the engineer, and the customer. Theopportunity to keep refining and revising de-signs, and the opportunity to try relativelyimaginative designs at modest cost, may keepoverall levels of employment relatively higheven though the productivity of each individualanalysis may have increased. Certainly this hashappened in other ‘office-automation’ settingswhere the demand for new information anddata has outstripped growth in the productivityof generating data.

An Introduction 9

Factory construction can also reshape con-struction trades. The technology can be used toreplace skilled field labor with relatively un-skilled, routinized jobs in assembly lines. Flex-ibility in these settings has too often beenachieved the easy way — by laying people offwhen business slows. But technology can alsobe used to create for production workers rela-tively attractive, indoor jobs which are less subject to the vagaries of weather. Workers in theconstruction industry could then be treatedmore like employees of an automobile fabrica-tion facility than day laborers, with greateropportunity to acquire new skills as new tech-nologies are introduced, more continuity of em-ployment, and better identification with a firm.

b. Education. There is little doubt that thenew building technologies place new burdens onthe educational system. At first the demandsseem contradictory. There will be a need for in-dividuals with highly specialized skills and aneed for individuals with a broad perspective onmany aspects of the design and constructionprocess. In fact, the underlying demand is forindividuals with basic skills in architecture, en-gineering and analysis who can quickly acquirespecialized skills when needed. Lighting designprovides a particularly vivid example of theneed for unique combinations of skills. Goodlighting design requires knowledge of such di-verse areas as fixture technology, control sys-tems, and daylighting strategies.

There is an obvious need for architects andengineers familiar with the capabilities of com-puter-assisted design and analysis techniques.Architects will need to know more about engi-neering, and engineers will need to learn moreabout design. There are growing demands forindividuals who understand how to analyzeheat-flows in buildings, optimal dispatch of elec-trical equipment, and the capabilities and limi-tations of the variety of new materials. Andthere is an interest in individuals able to workas effective members of a multidisciplinaryteam.

c. Industry Structure. What will the technol-ogy do to the structure of the industry? Will wesee engineering firms displacing architects?Will smaller design firms be edged out by largefirms capable of mastering expensive new com-

puter technology? Will factory constructionchange the role of the small, independent home-builder who has been the mainstay of the indus-try for centuries? Will the small builder’s rolebe largely one of site preparation and assemblyof components manufactured by larger compa-nies?

Several of the participants argued that engi-neers will play an increasing role in the designof buildings, citing examples of architectureand engineering firms that had become engi-neering and architecture firms. There is no rea-son why the engineers should run away with theshow. To maintain control, however, architectsmust master the art of gracefully integrating en-gineering analysis into their designs. Computer-based systems may provide a good opportunityfor doing this.

The cost of powerful design equipment isfalling so rapidly that most small firms will beable to purchase quite sophisticated computer-assisted design and analytical systems within afew years. Thus, most members of the work-shop felt that small design firms would not bethreatened. If nothing else, the dynamic natureof the industry is conducive to small, relativelyspecialized firms that can be combined for spe-cific projects.

The role of the small builder, on the otherhand, may well change if factory constructioncaptures a growing share of the market. Grow-ing use of factory-made structural elements hasalready made the small builder more of an as-sembler than a craftsman, a trend that is likelyto continue. Will the small builder’s role be lim-ited to pouring a foundation and assembling aset of modules or panels? Will he become acaptive of major production houses? The ex-perts disagreed on this point.

d. The Dynamic Performance of the Industry.Will all of this new technology and the pres-sures of foreign competition lead to a perma-nent shift in the way the construction industryconducts research and adopts innovations? Atpresent, the evidence is somewhat ambiguous.

While there was one strong dissent, mostmembers of the workshop were concerned bythe shortage of research money in construction.Virtually all research is conducted by compo-nent suppliers and not by the building industry

10 Technology and the Construction Industry

itself. Chemical companies, for example, havedeveloped new materials for sheathing, roofing,piping, and adhesives. But research on comp-nents is not an adequate substitute for researchdesigned to improve the way the building per-forms as an integrated system or the way theconstruction process operates as a whole.

The largest U.S. home builder apparently hasno research budget. The professional associa-tions of builders and architects have researchbudgets that are tiny in proportion to the indus-try they support. The National Institute forBuilding Science has an extremely small re-search budget. Direct government support forbuilding-related research funded through HUD,the Department of Energy, and the Bureau ofStandards was never very large and has beendrastically reduced in recent years.

Failure of construction firms to conduct sig-nificant amounts of in-house research can leaddirectly to a relatively slow rate of growth inconstruction productivity. It can also havestrong indirect effects. Studies of manufactur-ing firms show that firms with significantamounts of in-house research are in a much bet-ter position to monitor research conducted byother firms and are much better able to exploitnew discoveries and innovations.

Two other major American industries sharethe problems of the construction industry. Thehealth industry and the agricultural industryconsist of relatively large numbers of relativelysmall establishments and firms — few of which

have the resources to conduct their own re-search. In both cases, the government has cho-sen to support such research. For reasons ofhistory, construction is treated quite differently.

5. Where Do We Go FromHere?

It is clearly possible to use new technology toprovide interior spaces that are more productiveand more comfortable, without significant in-creases in cost. New technologies allow the con-struction of structures that are more flexible,more free from defects, and less expensive tooperate. Unfortunately, it is also possible thatforeign construction firms will move more rap-idly to exploit these opportunities in U.S. mar-kets than will domestic firms.

The technologies of ‘smart buildings,’ com-puter-assisted design, and factory-constructiontechniques open a range of promising businessopportunities. One of the most fascinating is thepossibility of managing buildings as business-service companies capable of providing every-thing from comfortable and flexible officespace to advanced communication networks and‘value-added’ computer systems. The industry isclearly capable of delivering superior productswhere they are needed. But institutional prob-lems, and an antiquated set of federal, state andlocal policies, may make it difficult for innova-tors in the industry or their potential customersto exploit the possibilities.

2 Computers andConstructionHarry MileafAlton S. Bradford

Harry Mileaf

Slow Computer Use In ConstructionI’ve been studying the construction industry’s

involvement with computers since 1979, andhave done so in over twenty surveys. Each sur-vey dealt with samples that measured in thethousands. The results of each survey and theircumulative trend analysis have led me to besomewhat conservative in my near-term fore-casting. The studies have repeatedly shown thatthere is no revolution taking place. Progress andchanges have been evolutionary, and will con-tinue to be so in the near term — during therest of this decade. There are some prognosti-cators in our industry who have been muchmore liberal in their forecasting, anticipating arevolution in the industry in the not-too-distantfuture. I agree that revolution will come, butnot in the near term. The evolutionary processwill continue until after the mid 1990s, whenthe cumulative effects of computer use by thevarious influences in our industry, as well as thegreater sophistication of computer systems atthat time, will speed up the evolutionary paceto that of revolutionary proportions, if left un-checked. Evolution can be controlled, revolutioncannot. There is the potential that by the year2000 a major dislocation can occur in the de-sign industry.

By the end of this decade over 90 percent ofthe design firms say that they will be usingcomputers. This sounds like this alone will havea major impact on our industry; but, it probablywill not, because of what the computers are be-ing used for, and the projected growth of theseuses.

The average firm that uses computers hasbarely scratched the surface of potential appli-cations. The tendency is toward four or fiverote applications, those applications that areeasiest and most inexpensive to get started with,and which appear to have quickest productivitygains: word processing; spec writing; account-ing; number crunching. There is little integra-tion of these applications, almost no data baseactivity, and very slow growth in meaningful

graphic design systems. What little is beingdone with sophisticated graphic design systems(about 7 percent with the small firms and about12 percent with the large firms — 8 percentoverall) is almost limited to drawings not de-sign. This seems to make sense because drawingproduction is where the major labor effort is ina design office. But productivity gains in thisapplication are scattered and many times unat-tainable. Even if the productivity gains were at-tainable, the gain would only show up for thespecific projects being worked on. Even with afirm that is heavily involved with computers,only a small percentage of project work is han-dled by computer. The majority of work is stillbeing done in the age-old, traditional, manualmanner. This is why, even though computershave become commonplace in the design profes-sion, they have had little impact on the profes-sion. A staff of thirty sharing one terminal, or astaff of fifty sharing three, or a staff of twohundred and fifty sharing thirty will continuethis low impact.

Why Is This?Even the computers of today do not have the

abilities to fulfill the promise of tomorrow. Thecomputers still rely too heavily on the availabil-ity of individual applications programs to ac-complish individual tasks, and both thehardware and software are still too expensive toput the entire staff at the keyboard. The greatadvantage of the computer comes from thecomputer taking over a task and completing itwithout human intervention. The so-called auto-mated spec writing systems of today are notreally automated, but merely mechanized ver-sions of the old cut-and-paste method of specwriting. Too much human interaction is still re-quired. The same is true of the so-called sophis-ticated drawing systems, and the otherspecific-task activities being done by computer.As long as the computer continues to merelymechanize the individual tasks with the help ofhuman operators, and particularly without thetasks and data being integrated, progress willcontinue to be slow.

But We Cannot Be Misled By ThisThe improvements in the capabilities of com-

puters over the last five years have been im-mense, and their drop in prices, remarkable.These improvements will continue, likely in anaccelerated way to the point where their usewill have a dramatic impact on how design of-fices function, and will likely change the waythe entire industry functions. But when?

The specific applications computers of thepast and present, which rely on complicated ex-pensive programming, are already evolving intoexpert systems, systems which are not only de-veloped by experts in your field, but which alsocontain data bases of expert knowledge. Suchsystems will require less and less complicatedspecific-task software written in expensive codelanguage. The user’s dialogue with the com-puter will be in straightforward English. Somesystems of this type are already being used suc-cessfully in other industries. By the end of thisdecade, expert systems will be a growing forcein the construction industry.

Concurrent with expert systems, artificialintelligence systems are receiving a good deal ofattention in the academic world; and in the Jap-anese computer industry, it has become a na-tional effort to make it a realization in the early‘90s.

And There Is A New Force In TheMarketplace

The new force is the client, the one whofunds the new construction. Clients are chang-ing. They are becoming more and more sophis-ticated. They are starting to computerize morerapidly than the construction designers, EvenCADD vendors recognize this, and have di-verted much of their efforts from the slow-buy-ing construction designers to the corporateworld. Business, industry, institutional, and pub-lic sector organizations recognize that CADDuse in facilities management represents a goodinvestment, Facilities management, which washeretofore a heterogeneous practice is becomingmore organized; and corporations gettingCADD systems are starting to lay their con-

struction plans around facilities managementdata bases. Clients are gaining much moreknowledge and are building confidence and re-lying less on design consultants. Where manyonce relied on advice, there is a trend towarddictating their wants, While there always weresome clients who pulled the strings, there is agrowing number of CADD-using corporationsmaking the decisions.

There are shifting influences in the construc-tion industry, and the corporation client is mov-ing into the dominant influence position. Toassure the effectiveness of their facilities man-agement programs, these clients are now lettingcontracts to those design firms who can supplycomputerized data compatible with theirs. Thismeans that the design firm must have the samecomputer and software as each of the clientswho demands it, or access to the same. And thecorporate clients do not go for the small PCdrawing systems.

It Will Get Worse Before It Will GetBetter

As more and more clients adopt their ownCADD systems, the CADD decisions made bydesign firms will depend on who they want tohave as clients. Some firms are already into twoor three CADD systems to serve two or threedifferent clients. Little needs to be said abouthow the proliferation of computerized facilitiesmanagement in the corporate world will com-pound the problems of design firms, While de-signers have always formed temporaryconvenience partnerships to get contracts, cli-ents’ computerization will compound this activ-ity, creating strange bedfellows. And, sincemost design firms cannot afford to have manyCADD systems, there will be a trend towarddesigners becoming captive suppliers to certainclients, with the ball and chain being the com-mon CADD system, This period of confusion inwhich the computer will dominate client/de-signer award decision will grow throughout thisdecade into the early ‘90s, but will abate withthe new generation of computers and the fewercomputer manufacturers that survive the con-

14 Computers and Construction

tinuing shakeout. Compatibility will be less ofproblem, especially with the artificial intelli-gence systems and the tendency toward morestandard data bases. The clients’ power willcontinue to grow, and there will be increasingpressure for even greater productivity gainspromised by the system of the 1990s.

The Scenario By the Year 2000

a

Computers will perform the overall functionsof a design office in an integrated manner. Nolonger will individual manual tasks be repli-cated; the new generation of computers willform the core of the overall practice, and willbe used on all projects, from the initial planningright through construction and the continuingspace planning changes, remodeling, extensions,and maintenance.

Designers will use the systems to solve prob-lems, gather information, test designs, and toaccumulate knowledge from project to project.The designers’ instructions will be accumulatedin the computer and arranged into rational, or-ganized instructions. When the design is done,the computer will generate the sets of drawings,specifications, construction documents, sched-ules, estimates, RFQ’s, project control docu-ments, etc., with little or no professionalinteraction. Ultimately, paper output might notbe needed.

The Implicationsare that many manual functions in a design

office will be replaced. Professional functions ina design office are categorized by: (1) design;which is the creative, decision-making part of aproject; and (2) production, which is responsiblefor producing the manifestations of the designin the form of construction drawings and docu-ments. In the design phase, the computer willbe an invaluable aid to the professional, but inthe production phase, the computer will func-tion almost alone.

Almost eight out of ten architects will be af-fected by this. Unlike other professions, almost80 percent of the architectural professional ef-fort in a design office is devoted to the produc-tion of drawing and documents and other roteactivities. This figure is derived from the way a‘typical’ design office functions on a project.

Typically, design expense amounts to about 20percent of the total, while the drawings accountfor about 50 percent of the project cost. Draw-ing production, then, is about 2-1/2 times thecost of design. But draftspersons get paid con-siderably less than designers. According to a re-cent New York AIA study of architecturalsalaries at six professional levels, the averagecompensation of the high levels is often morethan 50 percent higher than the average lower-level architect. This means that for productiondrawings to cost 2-1/2 times design, about 3.8architectural draftspersons are used for each de-signer. When spec writing and other documentefforts are considered, the ratio of production todesign becomes four to one. About four out offive architects are threatened with dislocationfrom their profession in fifteen years — by theyear 2000.

In the engineering profession the problem issimilar, but the engineers themselves will be af-fected less. The engineering draftspersons, whoare generally not professionals, will be seriouslydislocated, but the engineers, only partly so,due to the growing number crunching and an-alytical capabilities of the next generation ofcomputers. The growing independent action ofthe computer as it accumulates repeatable andbroadening analysis capabilities will continuallyreduce the need of certain engineers performingthose functions today.

The Solid Modeling Craft Will BeAutomated

In many instances, the 3-D color graphics ofthe next generation of computers will reducethe need for solid models, particularly as holog-raphy continues to develop. When solid modelsare needed, the computer driving a laser sculp-turing device will create the model.

Spec writers, cost estimators, and interior de-signers will be affected in similar ways. Theneed for specification and cost specialists willbe reduced to the caretaking, updating, andquality control functions. Interior designers,who function similarly to architects (and oftenare) will be affected similarly to the architects.

There Will Be Fewer IndependentConsultants

Aside from the computer competitive pres-

.

Harry Mileaf 15

sures causing this, the convenience and pro-ductivity of computer design will cause moreclients to do more of their own work in-house.Many of the larger clients who presently havetheir own design staffs, and use outside servicesfor overflow work will have less overflow. Andthose that do not presently have their own staffswill find it more convenient to establish theirown staffs.

Building product manufacturers, who pres-ently rely on the independent designers to havetheir products specified will adopt computerpractices to compete with independent archi-tects and engineers. In a few engineeringtrades, this has always been done; the next gen-eration of computers will provide new avenuesfor more of these efforts.

There Will Be Greater SpecializationBecause contract awards will in part be

based on computer compatibility and computerknowledge buildup, there will be a greater ten-dency for specializing in certain types of indus-tries, private vs. public, and agency vs. agency,in addition to types of construction.

Preparing For The DislocationThere are the optimistic in the design indus-

try that have predicted that those professionals,particularly the architectural draftspersons, whoare displaced from their non-design jobs, willmerely become designers. Doug Stoker andNick Weingarten of SOM pointed out the fi-nancial fallaciousness of that logic with somecold hard logic in the December 1983 issue ofArchitectural Record. The client simply willnot pay for overstaffed design, and the firm willnot pay what it cannot bill. The only way forproduction professionals to be absorbed in de-sign is for the number of design projects togrow. It is unlikely that the construction indus-try can grow large enough to absorb all of the

dislocated — the industry would have to grow400 percent in about fifteen years. I cannot re-call when that has last happened.

Other experts in the field feel the solutionwill come by itself. They expect other new jobs(now very specific) to be created by computers.While this has been true in some other com-puter applications where new industries resulted— particularly the computer industry — thesame does not necessarily have to happen inconstruction design. The construction industrycan be better equated to the automobile indus-try as it was impacted by foreign robotics.

This is an issue too serious to be left tochance,

Take It As An OpportunityReexamine the role of the construction de-

sign profession, There is already a questionabout whether many firms are really in the de-sign or drawing business. The computer is atwo-way street. While on one hand it will dis-place people, it can also open new avenues forthe enterprising. One such avenue is to play alarger role in the growing facilities managementbusiness. Bill Mitchell of UCLA has beenpreaching this for two years. There are probablyother potential areas for growth.

This should be made a priority study pro-gram by the major institutions in the construc-tion market: AIA; ASCE; ACEC; ASHRAE;CSI; NSPE; et. al., and should include acade-mia. It is entirely conceivable that governmentgrants could be had for this effort. There isplenty of time to prepare.

Today’s missed opportunities are tomorrow’sproblems.

Harry Mileaf is Director of Technology and ProductDevelopment, Sweet’s Division, at McGraw-Hill In-formation Systems Company. He is also Chairman ofthe Coordinating Council for Computers in Construc-tion.


Alton S. Bradford

Our mission is to plan, design and constructshore facilities for the Navy. This amounts toapproximately $2 billion in construction a year.We’re worldwide with six Engineering Field Di-vision offices to accomplish our design and con-struction. We also have nine Public WorksCenters that handle our operation and mainte-nance projects. (See Figure 1)

The basic building process is a time-phased,fragmented, ad hoc industry. Separate organiza-tions plan, design, construct, own, etc. In theproduct acquisition process, we bring people to-gether to do the design on a one-time basis andthen competitively bid the construction (with aseparate group). One would never do that withan automobile or aircraft. We design in-house,but about 90 percent is done on contract witharchitecture and engineering firms.

The building process presents many problemsand opportunities when we examine it for com-puter applications. (See Figure 2) In-house, weare doing computer-aided design (design cal-culation) using time-sharing and personal com-

puters. This includes structural analysis, energyanalysis of buildings and such. The work is be-ing done by the engineer at his desk, or thenearby computer computer terminal.

We also do guide specifications, as HarryMileaf mentioned, using a word-processing sys-tem. Guide specifications are documents usedto produce a contract (project) specification.The guide specifications and the specificproject specifications are both now being doneon a word-processing system.

We utilize computers to do project cost esti-mates. Material quantities are the input and theconstruction estimate, the output. The factorsfor labor and material costs, location, economicconditions, projected date of bid, etc., are pro-grammed in. The estimate’s and actual bids arestored in the system for developing and check-ing future budget estimates at the programmingstage.

Our Graphics Design System, a major ad-vancement in using computers, is well under-way. We’re installing a computer-based systemthat uses the language of the architect, engineerand building process people, i.e., three-dimen-

Figure 1

Alton S. Bradford 17

sional (3-D) models. Having always usedrenderings and models, architects and engineerscan now construct and view a 3-D model database. This model facilitates working with otherindividuals to define requirements and expecta-tions, We are also able to do two and three-di-mensional drawings directly from the data base.Automated production of drawings, specifica-tions, and cost estimates, from the data base, isin the future.

The four basic phases of the building processare quite distinct: ( 1 ) plan and budget (market);(2) design; (3) construct; and (4) own, operate,and maintain the building throughout its life.(See Figure 3)

We targeted our computer graphics to thatcritical decision period (three months) when theparameters and decisions for the building/facil-ity are set. We then use the computer aschanges in the design occur. We’d like verymuch to eventually, say within the next ten tofifteen years, get to the point where we canchange the design model and automatically pro-duce the drawings, specifications, and cost esti-mates.

It’s taken us about two years to get computergraphics into our organization. We have instal-lations in our six Engineering Field Divisionsand four of our nine Public Works Centers. Weare training as many people as possible in thenew technology.

The hardware consists of a desk, keyboard,digital pen, and menu of instructions which al-lows the architect/engineer to sit and do his de-sign work or interact with others involved in thedesign, (See Figure 4) Individuals, using a com-puter model, can develop the expectations for aparticular project right on the screen. It is sim-ply a work station for the architect or engineer.

We are using some 2-D graphics, but that’sonly normally communicable between engineersand architects. (See Figure 5) The emerginggraphics technology will allow creation of mod-els (three-dimensional) where you don’t need adegree in architecture or engineering to under-stand the project graphics. The technology is in-creasing as rapidly as the desire to depictobjects in the three-dimensional mode. (SeeFigure 6)

An actual 2-D example is where we take a

F re 2


standard room layout and reproduce it until wehave a string of rooms. (See Figure 7) We canthen mirror image the string about a corridorcenterline to produce a floor plan. We add di-mensions, notes, etc., and print the drawing.There’s no drafting involved. This is an actualdrawing that went out to bid. (See Figure 8)

Figure 9 shows a building floor lighting plan.Unfortunately, the black and white print cannotshow you the way we use colors. Color is acommunication medium, not only between indi-viduals, but between the engineer and the com-puter system. The Bureau of Standards isworking on the IGES (Initial Graphics Ex-change System), to enable graphic data commu-nication between different computer systems.

In the future, we’ll get away from the bigdesk units. We’re going to see much smaller,flat screen, desk top, 3-D units with more ca-pacity and capability. (See Figure 10)

Maybe a plasma-type screen or somethingnew. We expect, within five years, they will beas common as large desk calculators or personalcomputers are today. In San Francisco lastweek, we saw computer graphics on PCs. Tech-

Figure 3

nology is increasing rapidly, and prices are inthe acceptable range of 15 to 25 thousand dol-lars. This will be the salvation of many smallA/E firms.

He Here are some examples of 3-D graph-ics. Soon (five to ten years) we will be able torepresent an object in the machine as a solid. Ihave a few slides on this subject. This is a 3-Dwire frame model, with some shading. (See Fig-ure 11 )

Here is a building with color and shaded sur-faces and the lights turned on. (See Figure 12)

And here it is with the lights turned off. Wecould even pass the sun over the building andget the sun’s shading effect. (See Figure 13)

Graphics has always been a communicationsmedium. Now the architect/engineer can com-municate with somebody who wants a project,and develop a very clear expectation for the fa-cility or building. One brings a great deal moreto, and gets a great deal more out of, a 3-D pic-ture/mode compared to a 2-D floor plan or alist of numbers, letters, or a work description.

We expect widespread use of graphics duringthe late ’80s by the A/E firms (Figure 14).

.30%


We’re training our personnel and getting in-volved in the contractual aspects. Graphics dataexchange capability between systems will beavailable. By the late ‘80s, most of our designdocuments will require digital graphics databases in addition to the normal plan, specs, andcost estimates. We think the major integrationin the building process will be in the designphase. It is the easiest to get a handle on andutilize data bases for the specifications,drawings and cost estimates. Later (early ‘90s)we need to get the whole process together. Theexternal data base is an area that we should f0-cus on. This includes the Sweet’s catalog typeinformation, generic building products informa-tion, codes, regulations, etc. A project inte-grated data base which is a model from whichone would be able to directly produce a set ofdesign documents (plans, specifications, sched-ule, and cost estimate) appears feasible by theyear 2000.

The chart on Figure 15 gives another repre-sentation of the building process. We use multi-ple firms in the process. It depicts the ad hocfragmented, and time/work phased building

process. Therefore, data base development andstandardization will be very difficult. Here onesees the Sweet’s catalog type external productdata base, the main data base within the organi-zation, a project generic data base, and theproject specific data base. We’re learning as westart to do some of this with our in-house designwork to get involved in this process.

Impacts

These will be my personal views:The Nature and Form of Buildings

Use of computer graphics will yield more ap-propriate solutions. The building is a solution toa problem of need. Solutions tend to be unique.We’ll be able to give better solutions. We’ll beable to integrate building systems for energyand economy. It’s not amazing that most build-ings are stand-alone systems stuck together in abig box. There will be some standardization.The manufactured building industry is curiousabout this item. When we design buildings byassembling computer stored, pre-designed build-ing components, standardization will be re-

●

Figure 4

—


quired. This will allow faster and better designs.It’s going to be a slow evolutionary change.

Quality and Safety of BuildingsThese factors are driven by codes and regula-

tions. Computers will be used to check projectmodels against the codes, regulations, stan-dards, etc. There will be an increase in attentionto functionality (safety and quality) which willyield better buildings. On the whole, however, Iexpect no major changes resulting from the in-troduction of computers.

Cost and Affordability of BuildingComputers will shorten the building acqui-

sition period. This will reduce the cost and theexposure of the project to change (risk) and,therefore, increase the affordability. We’ll beable to better meet expectations. Therefore, thecost and schedules and things of those natureswill be firmer, easier to handle, resulting in anoticeable, but moderate change in this areadue to computer technology.

Industry ProductivityComputers will decrease the number of changesresulting from misunderstood expectations.Also, with computer technology, we will be ableto translate those unforeseen changes quicklyinto project bid document revisions. This willdecrease the time and effort (calendar time andmanual effort) required to produce project biddocuments, and result in a major increase inproductivity. There will also be a decrease inthe life-cycle resources. We’re going to beputting better buildings together, faster, meet-ing expectations, and with less changes requiredduring design and construction. The contractdocuments (drawings) are going to be clearer.They’re going to be automated off the system,just like letters coming off a word processor.Drawings will be corrected before they are pro-duced. It’s the old bit, that if you produce agood product at the end of the assembly line,you have less returns. We will be studying andanalyzing more options, with the objective of re-ducing, in addition to the initial cost, the life-cy-cle energy, operation and maintenance, andmanning costs.

Figure 5


On Changes in Job Skills, Skill Lev-els, Occupations

This is the big one. There’s going to be aslight net increase in jobs. There is great diver-sity in types of work in the building process.There’s going to be a decrease in the jobs asso-ciated with engineering calculations and the di-rect production of contract plans andspecifications. Some jobs definitely will change.One doesn’t need an architect to set hours anddraw a perspective. It can be done with a com-puter in minutes. I don’t know how familiar youare with computer graphics technology, but onecan actually walk through a three-dimensionalmodel of a project (structure) after the database is constructed on the computer. The database is constructed using simple drafting tech-niques; by putting lines, circles and squares, orparts and pieces of building systems together.It’s rather quick and easy.

A tremendous amount of information can beused beyond the design phase for building oper-ations including management of rental space,and furnishings. To produce the data during thedesign is not difficult. It’s the result of the inte-

rior design, structural design, etc. But to oper-ate and maintain a building and you need toknow where every person is, their telephonenumber, what pieces of furniture they’re as-signed, their floor covering, date of occupancy,etc. When you start managing change, the datadeveloped during the design, planning, and pro-gramming phases become very useful. Therewill be new jobs and skills required in develop-ing and using this type of data. However, thereis a major problem in standardization of com-munications across organizational lines. None ofthe ad-hoc groups in the building process needsall of the information developed during projectacquisition, and there’s no single overseer of theprocess. This creates a big problem area andcontributes to the inertia of the building pro-cesses. Change will be slow.

The Role of EngineersTechnology will enhance and improve the de-

signer’s and consultant’s capability to create,view, analyze (technically, functionally, and fi-nancially) and change the project model prior todocumentation or construction of the project.


This project information will be retained andupdated in machine usable form for latent usesduring the construction, operation and mainte-nance, and use phases of the project life cycle.As a result, the changes in the engineering of-fice environment will be:

(1) A decrease, if not complete elimination,of manual computations. Technical analysis anddesign will be by computer from building/project geometry data using external code, stan-dards, and product data bases.

(2) An increase in the need for technical ex-pertise that can use computers at a high level ofbuilding systems selection and integration.These experienced technical personnel will needto bring good interpersonal skills to the futureteam approach to effective problem solving.

(3) A sharp decrease in the amount of laborintensive drafting, coordination, and checking asa result of automated drafting systems. Con-struction documents will be a relatively fast,automated process. Present technicians anddraftspersons will be utilized to create andmaintain the computer graphics system anddata base.

(4) A change in the role of the engineer from‘a designer of buildings’ to ‘a designer of com-puter-based systems and procedures’ to be usedby experienced designers and skilled technicalpeople (paratechnical) to design buildings.

(5) An increase in the use of computer resi-dent, mapping and building process data bases.

In the future the professional engineering firmswill be called on:

(1) To establish, maintain, and operate com-puter-resident, mapping and building data basesfor the public and private sectors, and operatethese throughout the life cycle of the buildingsand facilities.

(2) To develop a clear, accurate, completeand timely project definition package (market-ing package/budgeting package).

(3) To provide the service of developing theproject definition package into a set of accurateand complete construction documents in a substantially shorter time than the present.

(4) To provide a management service, using aproject data base, throughout the life cycle or

Figure 7

Alton S. Bradford

major portion of the life cycle of the project.This could be an independent service or as partof a joint contract arrangement. This would bea design/construct, construction management(CM) effort with some test-operate-maintainrole.

(5) To provide a service to the professionalstandards organizations, large public and pri-vate building owners and other firms in the ar-eas of programming, procedures, standards,program certification, project data conversion,etc.

EducationA large percentage of the individuals coming

out of school into the building process, archi-tects, engineers, etc., have a good education intheir discipline. The problem is we also need ar-chitects and engineers to work together in ateam to put a building together. We spend agreat amount of time and effort training themto work together. They lack intra- and interper-sonal skills. When computers are used to ac-complish some of the work, they are going toneed the skills to shift into a team problem solv-

ing environment. Technical education has got toteach team and social skills. The best course Iever had was in construction planning and pro-gramming. Working in teams, we developedprojects from conception through to final designdetail. The building process will need technicalpeople skilled in working as a team player.

Organization, Number and Size ofEnterprises

Small A&E firms are going to survive. Ser-vice firms are emerging to do computer-aideddesign and drafting and to translate documentsfrom one computer system to another. The useof computers in the building process is pres-ently vendor-stimulated and user driven. Database development, a necessity in the future useof computers, is hampered by lack of stan-dardization, and the very nature of the process.However, the process is changing. Educationneeds to concentrate on the changes facing peo-pie, organizations, standards and traditions inthe application of computers in the buildingprocess. Teaching technology is not the prob-lem.

23

Figure 8

—


Establishment of structured informationaldata bases in the building process is one key tothe growth of computer utilization. The Na-tional Research Council (Building ResearchBoard) is looking at this and other questions onnew technological impacts to the building pro-cess. Based on some of the study work, thereare major changes occurring in the number, sizeand types of enterprises in the building process.

Conclusion

The federal building process can be de-scribed as a sequential, somewhat overlapping,set of easily definable functions. They are: plan-ning, programming, and budgeting; design andengineering; procurement and construction; op-eration and maintenance; and use. Or more sim-ply, planning, design, construction, and use.Although these basic functions will probably re-main the same, the trend in the federal sector isto contract out combinations of these functions.Combining the design and construction func-

tions into a single ‘turnkey’ or ‘two-step’ typecontract, contracting for the building using aperformance specification, and at the extremeend of this construction, staff, maintenance andoperation and the user simply pays for the ser-vice. Because of major social, environmental,safety, and of course, political concerns, therewill also be an increase in the complexity, num-ber and types of predesign (planning) studies re-quired to identify the benefits and disbenefits ofthe proposed construction. The list of studieswill, in addition to the present cost, scope, envi-ronmental, energy and schedule studies, be ex-panded to examine the functional, visual,esthetic, economic, social, etc., impacts on thepublic and organization environment. There willbe an increased need for easily understandableproject definition and fast, accurate schedulesand cost estimates to confirm and track projectexpectations. There will be an increasing em-phasis and therefore need to deal with changethroughout the building planning and designfunctions in order to hold major financial com-mitments to the latest possible point to assurethe lowest possible risk. This emphasis on deal-

Figure 9

Alton S. Bradford

ing with change will require early, more accu-rate, rapid communications of expectations ofthe building configuration, function, and cost.Likewise, there will be a need to expend lesstime and personnel resources on those buildingsthat don’t undergo drastic changes, or are of aless risky nature. This will result in an increasein standardization of building designs (or modu-lar designs), more reuse of acceptable designs,and a major emphasis on having the accuratedesign data available in an analytically usableform. There will be an emphasis on havingready access to and using the latest, most cost-effective materials, equipment, procedures, andbuilding systems, in lieu of waiting for these toshow up in federal standards, design guides orspecifications. In summary, there will be a needto proceed from idea to construction start in theshortest period of time with the least risk of fi-nancial loss.

Computer TechnologyComputer technology, presently available to

the building process, is changing more rapidly

than our ability to use it productively. Predict-able trends over the next 10 to 20 years are thatthe amount of storage available for computerprograms and data will be unlimited or verycost effective. The cost of better and morefunctional computer hardware will continue todrop at a steady rate while software capabilitywill increase at an exponential rate. The cost ofspecialized software together with the availabil-ity of trained personnel will continue to be themajor factors in system utilization. The com-puter terminal’s physical size will continue todiminish while storage capacity, speed and easeof use will continue to increase. Probably themost significant advancements in the next twodecades will be the further development of com-puter graphics modeling, hardware and soft-ware, for use in both the visual and analyticalinterface mode. New software technologies thatwill evolve include: a neutral, machine-t&ma-chine language; expert programs for buildingsystem design; automated drawings, specifica-tions, schedule and cost estimates directly fromcomputer graphic model; micro and macroproject products and building systems data

25

Figure 10


bases; and computer graphics solid modeling.Hardware advancements will include: flatscreens; laser readers, printers and storage de-vices; highly-specialized, plug-in ROM chipsand even holographic screens or units.

In summary, the changes in the building pro-cess and the concurrent changes in the productand services provided by the engineering profes-sion, will be as a result of needs of the buildingowner/user. Of course, there will be some itera-tive interplay between the capability of the pro-fessional firms and the perceived needs of, orbenefits to, the owner/operator. The major ad-vance in the use of computer technology in thebuilding process will be the engineer’s ability to

communicate real expectations with the owner,and to communicate with the computer, bothusing the language of graphics. This use of thetechnology will enable the professional to pro-vide the owner/user with the much neededproject information on which to base criticalplanning and financial decisions while also be-ing able to react to change without majorproject delays.

Alton S. Bradford is Assistant Commander for Engi-neering and Design, at the Naval Facilities EngineeringCommand of the United States Department of theNavy

Figure 11


Figure 12

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)

28

Figure 14

Computers and Construction

Figure 15

3

Richard Carl

Smart Office BuildingsRichard Carl ReismanMichael ClevengerPiero Patri

Reisman

Our topic today is the intelligent office build-ing, which could be the most tangible area forautomation in the world of offices. I am verydelighted to be here with Mike Clevenger andPiero Patri. My part is to tell you exactly whatis happening today, where we are now and pro-vide some background, and then set the stagefor Michael to tell you what is happening tomorrow, and for Piero to tell you what is hap-pening the day after tomorrow. They willdiscuss the near and not so near future in officeautomation, as well as environmental design andoffice furnishings and systems, and how the re-lated emerging changes will impact us all.

Today we will apply a quote which I amabout to read, which has become very common-place for automation, but we would like to ap-ply that more to ‘smart’ buildings of today. It isfrom the local Silicon Valley newspaper, and itsays, “Entering its modern form barely fortyyears ago, the computer already has permeatedalmost every aspect of American life. Yet noone even remotely familiar with the computerrevolution can sanely claim that the revolutionis beyond its formulative stages. In other words,you ain’t seen nothing yet.”

Well, let us apply that to buildings today. Inorder to do that and explain the impact of auto-mation on construction, I would like to set thestage and talk about some major events thathave happened.

Number one, in particular, is the telephonecompany divestiture. Since they have split upand since they are not doing certain things thatthey used to do for us, we are having to dothem ourselves, and we are looking to privateindustry to fill that gap. That has a phenomenalimpact, and it is hard to get used to.

Most people, and indeed office building ten-ants, are born with the expectation of the God-given right to have a dial tone all of their lives.When they do not have it, they do not knowwhat to do. Who do they go to? What are theproblems? The problems and impact have a rippling effect.

But the void has created some tremendousnew business opportunities as well. Not only hasthe gap created a void that everyone can rushinto to provide such services, but we have had aparallel event. While the phone company wasbusy breaking up, we have had a tremendousadvancement in virtually all kinds of computerapplications.

Therefore, we not only have a growth ofopportunity in that the role of the phone ischanging, but new technologies are creating un-precedented business opportunities as well. Thecombination of these events has triggered an ex-plosive growth in automation.

The impact on the construction industry isthat the building sponsor must wire up servicesin buildings. The imbedded base of wiring andequipment required to provide all services mustnow be installed as a regular part of the build-ing design.

So much for events. There area lot of play-ers running around, trying to get used to all ofthis. The building developers are the entities, ifyou will, that build the largest quantity of spec-ulative office space. They are the ones who willface the responsibilities, or perhaps embrace theopportunities would be a better way to say it, ofmaking sure that such services are provided. Ifthey want to stay around and be competitive,they will have to do it. They can determinetheir own involvement. They can be totally inthe office automation business, they can do itpart way, or they can arrange for someone elseto do it in their building.

There are corporations who are tenants orown their own buildings; i.e., some of themlease, some of them develop their own spaces.They are, as a rule, large enough to obtain theirown equipment on a non-shared basis, for exam-ple, purchase word processors or other equip-ment which might otherwise be shared bysmaller companies. They purchase large equip-ment themselves, so they are getting into the of-fice automation ‘act’ as well.

The realtors, so far, have been very far be-hind. They are not up to speed on what is hap-pening in shared tenant services. They are not

up to speed in leasing office buildings as build-ings which provide services as well as providingshelter. They will need to catch up and mayplay an important role.

The service providers are in the lead becauseso much of the office-automation revolution isvendor driven. They are, however, creating a lotof hype, and we are trying to sort out what is le-gitimate, leading, front-edge development andactivity from hype. We are doing our best toserve our clients by sorting all of that out.

Vendors are in the same situation, but theyare also grabbing the new business opportuni-ties. IBM has always made office equipmentand is now jumping in. They are making furni-ture. There is a tremendous impact on business,wonderful opportunities, and everybody is grab-bing at it.

Honeywell is a little different story. Theyhave always made building controls. Now, theyare getting into shared tenant services. So, ev-erybody from the large companies to the smallare revising profiles, in light of automationchanges and opportunities.

So, given all of these players, all of this back-ground, and the increase in automation, wehave need, then, for them to come together inthe ‘intelligent’ building, and an ‘intelligent’building is one then that combines two essentialingredients to make it intelligent. By the way,we are in the process of calling them ‘intelli-gent’ now, replacing the older term ‘smart.’ If Ilapse into ‘smart,’ please excuse me. The twoingredients are provisions for computerized(intelligent) building systems, and shared tenantservices.

Of the shared tenant services, certainly thetelephone services now are the biggest. They arethe most lucrative, and of the telephone ser-vices, long-distance resale revenues are the mostlucrative. Those are by far in the most demandin view of the phone company’s split-up, as Imentioned. But, there are other services, aswell, such as word processing, data, and a num-ber of other things which we will go into a littlelater.

The other ingredient that is in the ‘smart’

building is the building management services orsystems. These have been around a little longer.They are the dark horse that have come moreto the forefront since the spotlight has nowbeen highlighting office automation. I can walkinto a building and take my ‘key’ (actually amagnetic card) and put it in front of a plate,and all sorts of things will happen, even if it isSunday night. The lights will turn on the way tothe elevator and the elevator will allow me togo to my floor, and the lights will go on fromthe elevator to my office, and my office will notonly function with lights, air conditioning andshared tenant services, but a security systemprintout will let my landlord know exactly whowas in the building, where and when. That isgetting to be a pretty intelligent building sys-tem.

Everybody is getting into this now andscrambling into the act at different speeds. TheUrban Land Institute, which is probably thepremium organization of the real estate devel-opment businesses in the country, brought thesubject into focus in Chicago in June in the con-ference ‘Developing the High-Tech CommercialProject.’ We participated in that conference,and the conclusion of the conference was thateverybody is still problem solving, and we areall going to get out there in the next two yearsand build some more buildings and get back to-gether to compare what we have done.

What we are doing is doctoring up our build-ings in certain ways to make them ‘smart’ orready to be ‘smart.’ In our particular firm, weare trying not to let a project out of the doorthat ignores at least some of the design princi-ples which I will touch on briefly here.

We certainly are seeing a change in the me-chanical and electrical components of buildings.New demands in office equipment and officeenvironments require that more intense local-ized demands be met by more flexible systems.You cannot go into a building that is not readyfor it and put in a specialized installation andrun an extra grille into the ceiling when the sys-tem is not prepared for it.

Automated equipment is growing. Cooling is

32 Smart Office Buildings

not only required to keep us comfortable whilethe computers are generating heat, but moreimportantly, those computers cannot function ifthe environment is not properly controlled. So,we are seeing 25 to 50 percent more costs inmechanical systems right now. We are seeing aneed for 24-hour performance and flexibility.We are seeing a lot more flexibility and, thus,as a bottom line impact, we are generatinghigher quality structures.

There is a greater cabling and wiring need inbuildings. As I mentioned, we have to do thecommunications cabling ourselves since thephone company is no longer providing it. Weare seeing needs for local area networks. Weare seeing needs to accommodate more equip-ment. Indeed, in a 280,000-square-foot projectwe recently completed, everyone in the buildinghad an automated station, a screen and a key-board. The cabling requirements were abso-lutely immense. That project happened to be aretrofit.

We are looking for clean signal distributionand clean grounding. This affects certain tech-nical things that we do in the electrical installa-tion, but we are seeing the impact in thatcabling trays or racks are common in buildings.Teflon coated wiring is eliminating the largecosts of having to put all of these lines into con-duit, but the bottom line is still greater costs.

It may be obvious that we are needing thingslike increased power provisions in buildings tohandle all of the new loads, but there are archi-tectural things as well. We are laying out spacefor all of the equipment to make these build-ings ‘smart.’ We are putting in greater floor-to-floor heights to accommodate the plenums, thewire management, some of the other things thathave to be done in the buildings. These things,again, have a cost impact. If you take a thirty-story building and increase the height of thetypical floor by six inches, for example, andyour marble skin costs so much for each sixinches, you can start to see you are adding astory or two of height on the building, a big im-pact and a big cost item up front.

Even architectural design is affected by it.We are trying to deal with the aesthetics, aswell as the technical problems, such as accom-modating the equipment or satellite dishes, if

you will. The issue is how they look when setatop buildings. These things, as they impact in-dustry, perhaps may not be great, but we aredealing with those human issues, and I have acounterpoint to the lack of design mentionedearlier that I might get to later in the questionand answer period.

We are working structurally, preparing therooftop for equipment. We are preparing ourrooftops to bring signals in from the top, as wellas we have always done from the bottom.

Our tenant service requirements are typicallygenerating new products, such as flat wire andcarpet tiles. They are becoming more presenton the scene and they are developing more andmore. Michael will discuss this further.

Our building management systems are be-coming more sophisticated. I mentioned an ex-ample of security systems, but every system inthe building is now being run that way. Eleva-tors, for example, which might be more criticaland more important in high-rise buildings, nowtypically have call monitoring happening sixtytimes per second. Thus, the controller can reas-sign elevator cars to respond to calls so muchmore efficiently that we might reduce, say, ahigh-rise elevator cab requirement from twentyto eighteen and save square footage per floor. Iestimate that a $15,000 computer used in thisway in a thirty-story building would probablyincrease the building’s value by $1 millionthrough savings in usable area. That is a big im-pact.

We are seeing a lot of digital thermostat con-trol that gives absolute, pinpoint environmentalcontrol. If you put 68° on your thermostat, thenthat is what you will get. It will not be 69° or67°, it will be 68°.

The fire alarm system will do far more thanindicate the fire on a lighted panel downstairs.It will tell you what kind of fire is underway; itis going to lock the stair doors getting into thatfloor and open up the doors on the other floors;and it is going to do a number of things whichcan help with the fire fighting and save lives.

These things have been around for a while,but they are getting more sophisticated, and asI mentioned, they are coming more into thespotlight.Impacts and Trends

Richard Carl Reisman 33

Business services costs, as well as rental costs,will now greet the tenant who walks in the doorof the speculative office building. The tenant islooking for service as well as shelter. We do notfeel that as of today these services have given‘smart’ buildings the edge for making deals ver-sus buildings that have not had them. Indeed,there are probably under one hundred ‘smart’buildings up and running in the country rightnow.

We do see it in five years as being a dealbreaker if the services are not provided. Onejust would not go into a first-class office build-ing that did not offer it. But, it is our view that,while the tenant will be spending more throughhis/her landlord and/or service provider, he/shewill have significantly improved performanceand efficiency to offset additional costs.

Office buildings will cost more to build, butwill make that money back by improved operat-ing efficiencies and lower running costs. Also,we will make money back because people whobuild buildings have revenue opportunities toresell services. These sophisticated buildings willrequire more sophisticated people to take careof them. People need to be technologicallytrained. This is the shortage that we have rightnow. We do not have people who can ade-quately run out and really service computer-ori-ented systems. That is coming around. That willhave to come around.

As an industry standard, a Class A officebuilding will have these higher floor-to-floorheights, more expanded and more capableHVAC systems, roof signal communicationsand distribution for them through the building.

Integrated telecommunications systems pro-vialed in the building will simply be a standard,and also better acoustic design and more en-ergy-con-scious design. Light standards, such asglare reduction, all of these things are comingto be higher, but expected, standards.

Mike Clevenger will show you the substantialproportion of the stock of buildings that willhave to be retrofitted, but by far, most of thosebuildings will be able to be retrofitted success-fully. We will not have to junk all of our build-ings, but a short history of retrofit automationand many variables make predictions and priceestimating quite tricky.

For example, if there is a building that isabandoned and there is no tenant and no ceil-ings, it’s quite easy to go in and wire that build-ing in comparison to one that has ceilings andtenants in, in which case there would be greatdisruption, off-hours overtime and so on.

How much automation does a tenant use;what are the sizes of floors; how old is thebuilding; what is the type of construction; whatis the adequacy of the existing electrical service;what was the building used for before? A num-ber of factors make quite complicated the taskof predicting retrofit costs in general.

We are doing a lot of it, and as 1 mentioned,our most sophisticated automated example ofanything we have built in the last five years wasa retrofit condition, interestingly, in a newbuilding.

The new buildings, which were not wired bythe phone company, are perhaps the most de-manding. The old buildings that had the em-bedded wire base have cable running aroundthe building you could hook into and run sig-nals around. It is the recent buildings that donot have the embedded wiring that you have tobe careful of.

The big impact then is that we are going tohave the more expensive projects being a sumof the traditional shelter provision and the ser-vice unit, all better constructed and more auto-mated. So, it is not only shelter, it is alsoservice, and that is what I want to emphasizehere.

So, the basis of change is here for our build-ings, and we have seen a lot of it happen. Ev-erybody is trying to get into the act, but wenow see this explosive mushroom ahead of uscompared to what we have had, and as thattakes over and as we really go crazy with officeautomation revolution, we see a lot morechange coming in the future.

I would like to turn it over to MichaelClevenger and Piero Patri to tell you what thoseare.

Richard Carl Reisman is a Principal with Whisler-Patri,an Architecture, Planning and Interior Design firm inSan Francisco.


Michael Clevenger

This paper is a short compendium outliningthe key points:

1.) The Office of the Future has arrived andwill result in fundamental shifts in the planning,design, construction, and operation of specula-tive office buildings.

Up to the mid-1970s with the advent of themicro-computer technology, office technologyhad been confined to developments in telecom-munications, centralized data processing, repro-graphics, and word processing. The impact ofthese technologies on the work place were sig-nificant, but not revolutionary. From an officedesign and construction standpoint, little changeto the building development process has oc-curred since the Second World War, with theevolution of the high-rise office building. Butwith the emergence of the micro-computer inthe mid-1970s, and the related developments inadvanced distributive processing, electronicprinting, local area networks, software, micro-wave and satellite communications, a profoundchange in the very essence of the conventionaloffice development is now well underway. (Fig-ure 1).

Another driving force that’s propelling thischange is the break up of AT&T on January 1,1984. The deregulation of the telecommunica-tions industry has created near chaos within thelocal Bell company operating areas from thestandpoint of building wiring, and equipmentservicing. In effect, the building owner is nowable to directly capture telecommunications(and related office service offerings) within hiscaptured tenant market. This ability to resellcommunications services creates substantialprofit opportunities and risks for the building in-dustry.

2.) The Key Components of the Office of theFuture.

The key communication and office automa-tion technologies that are now converging on theoffice building include:• Electronic work stations from the most simple

personal computers, to high-performance pro-fessional workstations and word processors.(Figure 2).

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3.

These work stations are being integrated intosophisticated digital telecommunication sys-tems or PBX systems, allowing both localarea communication within the building aswell as communication into national and inter-national networks. In parallel to telecommuni-cation systems, these work stations are alsobeing integrated into high performance baseband and broad band local area network sys-tems, allowing both high-speed data and videotransmission throughout the building. Thesenetworks are gradually being integrated intothe telecommunication systems utilizing soft-ware that allows one system to interface withthe other. (Figure 3).Attached to the network are shared electronicservices including high-speed electronic print-ers, file servers, and sophisticated, high-qual-ity document scanning devices for documentinput. (Figure 4).Specialized application technologies are be-ginning to emerge on a shared basis, includ-ing video conferencing facilities, electronicpublishing centers, public access such as theSource, and CompuServe, and satellite earthstations that permit building tenants to accessdirectly long-distance communications sys-tems thereby completely ‘bypassing’ the localtelephone operating company system at at-tractive reduced operating costs.

) The Growth in Office Automation Over theNext Eight Years, Particularly the Growth ofIndividual Electronic Workstations or VideoDisplay Units (VDU) Will Create Severe Physi-cal and Operational Problems Within ExistingOffice Structures Which Have Not Been Ex-plicitly Designed for These New Technologies.

These problems will create significant shiftsin demand for commercial office space, both inthe location of offices, as well as the configura-tion and design of offices. Most importantly,this change will also result in a shift in tenantdemand for new services as part of the buildingtenant service offering. (Figure 5).

Some statistics in office automation growth:■ At the end of 1982, there were nearly six mil-

lion video display units in American industry.By 1990, this number is expected to grow toover forty million units in the U.S. alone, and

Michael Clevenger 35

SMART BUILDINGOVERVIEW

Figure 1


Figure 2

VIDEO DISPLAY UNITS

Time

Figure 3

AUTOMATION EQUIPMENTIN WORKSTATIONS

Time

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could reach eighty million units world wide bythe mid-1990s.At Xerox, in 1983, there was roughly oneVideo Display Unit for every ten employees.By 1986, this ratio will drop to one VDU forevery four employees. By 1988, the ratio isexpected to be one VDU for every white col-lar employee throughout the Corporation.While there is substantial growth in the num-ber and type of computer terminals, and at-tendant peripherals, a very small percentage,merely 5 percent of this growth can be ac-commodated in newly designed and built of-fice structures over the next eight to tenyears. The bulk of this technology must be ac-commodated in existing office stock suggest-ing that substantial office redesign andreconstruction will be required in the nearterm. Over the longer term, the miniaturiza-tion of product, the advent of fiberoptic tech-nology, and the increasing use of portable(and potentially) wireless electronicworkstations will begin to ease the physicalpressures on the building envelope. Anothermitigating factor will be the growth of the re-mote or (home worker) employee work force.Recent studies have forecasted that nearly 25percent of the office work force (primarilyprofessional and clerical) will operate in someform of remote location by 1992, This shiftwill absorb a fair measure of the demand inthe early part of the next decade.

4.) The convergence of these technologies, aswell as deregulation of the telecommunicationsindustry, will establish the building owner as aprimary information vendor and systems inte-grator for the second half of the 1980s.

This convergence of the real estate industrywith the communications industry will rival, ifnot exceed, the impact of the interstate high-way system on the hotel, motel, shopping center,suburban residential real estate, and recreationindustries. The convergence, however, will rad-ically change the building development processand the role of the building owner.

Each of the key participants and stakeholdersin the development process will be faced with afundamentally new set of planning issues to en-sure a successful development project.


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The key issues relate to:Changing technologiesBuilding obsolescenceChanging land valuesChanging regulatory issues associated withderegulationChanging real estate markets as telecom-munication technologies allow for develop-merit in remote areas and greater migration ofback office operations from the downtown tosuburban centers.Changing building operations associated withthe management of sophisticated buildingcommunication systems and other shared ten-ant services.

The office tenants will increasingly demandflexible building environments that will readilyadapt to changing technologies. Tenants will de-mand and most likely expect to share in theeconomies of scale associated with telecom-munications resale. Many tenants will requirethat their office automation systems be compat-ible with the building systems and networks,and that they can depend on the building oper-ator for service maintenance and equipment re-placement and upgrade.

The project lender will require assessments ofrisk and opportunity associated with the high-tech building. They will be concerned withvaluation as it relates to building obsolescence.They will want to assess the effect of thesetechnologies on land values, and what changesin demand and value will most likely occur overtime.

The appraiser will now have to update build-ing and land valuation assumptions and method-ologies to account for the effects of technology.Assessments of income, cash flow, and discountfactors for risk will be required to recognize thefundamental changes in both revenue and ex-pense in the high-tech building.

The real estate broker and builder are nowconfronted with a new product and new mar-kets for their wares. An office building is nowan information utility and communication ser-vice center. it is an automation emporium, elec-tronic conference center, and technology servicemanagement center. It is a complex envelop ofinformation workers, networks, and technologies

Small SinglerTenant Office

Figure 4

Time

Figure 5

POWER AND WIRING IN WORKSTATIONS

Time


interacting in a highly dynamic mode. It isthese products that the broker must now under-stand in order to market effectively to a newlyemerging tenant base.

Finally, the developer/builder who is centralto this process must concern himself with all theissues and perspectives of these issues outlinedabove. The developer/builder must radicallychange the development planning process to al-low for an integrated approach to planning thatmelds architectural design with systems design,with applications design, into a business planthat addresses tenant markets along communi-cation, automation, and applications segments.Feasibility studies will need to incorporate thesenew business opportunities requiring new finan-cial assumptions for risk and benefit. New part-nerships between the developer, automationvendors, service businesses, and telecommunica-tion companies will need to be assessed. Site se-lection will have to be evaluated from thestandpoint of micro-wave and satellite recep-tion/transmission performance. Regulatory con-straints of local public utility commissionsrelating to bypass and resale strategies will berequired. Tenant allowances relating to improve-ments for office automation will be a key ele-ment in the building pro-forma and marketingplan. Studies of competitive activity in thebuilding’s market are essential for no other rea-

other reason than to assess the cost of doingnothing in the new project. Most, if not all ofthese considerations will apply in varying de-grees for the retrofit and upgrade of existingstructures. (Figure 6).

5.) Summarym

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The office of the future has arrived!The building owner/developer/builder willbecome a key information vendor of the nextdecade,The building investor can expect significantnew profitability and risk with this highly dy-namic and turbulent new business.New partnerships will emerge between build-ing owners and automation/communicationvendors.Most of the explosive growth in office auto-mation/communications will occur in existingstructures.The key to success in the high-tech buildingindustry will be a radically updated planningprocess which integrates the planning for realestate development, telecommunications, of-fice automation, and office services manage-ment.The payoff for effectively planned projectswill be extraordinary.

Michael Clevenger is the Principal Technical Consul-tant in Real Estate Division of the Xerox Corporation,


Figure 6

PLANNING CHECK LIST FOR THE HIGH TECH BUILDING

Technology I s s u e s

Te lecommunica t ionsC a b l i n gOf f i ce Au toma t ionI n t e g r a t i o nS o f t w a r eS e r v i c e sc o s t s

F i n a n c i n g I s s u e s

V a l u a t i o nAsses smen t o f R i skF e a s i b i l i t yP a y - b a c kT a x I m p l i c a t i o n sL i fe Cyc le Cos t ingA l l o c a t i o n o f C o s t sBreak -even Ana lys i sC o s t E s t i m a t i n gP r i c i n g

R e g u l a t o r y I s s u e s

D e s i r e I s s u e s

L o c a t i o nS i t e C o n f i g u r a t i o nB u i l d i n g C o n f i g u r a t i o nS t r u c t u r a l D e s i g nF l o o r C o n f i g u r a t i o nV e r t i c a l / H o r i z o n t a l D i s t r i b u t i o nTenant AllowancesF l e x i b i l i t yAn tenna S i t i ngBu i ld ing Sys t ems

O p e r a t i o n a l I s s u e s

Vendor Se l ec t i onT e c h n i c a l S u p p o r tMain tenanceT e n a n t S u p p o r tS e r v i c e s O r g a n i z a t i o nMarke t ingS e r v i c e s A d m i n i s t r a t i o nC o n t r a c t A d m i n i s t r a t i o n

L o c a l P r a c t i c e sPub l i c U t i l i t y Commiss ion Regu la t i onsR e - s a l e P r o v i s i o n sT a r i f f S t r u c t u r e sFCC ActionsAT&T Sett lement Impacts


Piero Patri

I am going to look at our crystal ball approxi-mately through to the beginning of the 21stCentury, basing my predictions on 30 years ofexperience — not in research — but in thepractice of architecture, planning, interior de-sign and, more recently, in facilities manage-ment. I am aware of the research that iscurrently underway at NBS, HUD and else-where and am a little awed by the researchpower in attendance here. I fully expect to learna lot more today than I will teach anyone.

The subject of ‘smart’ buildings has beensomething I have been involved in for a longtime. I have here articles that read, The Elec-tronics Man In His New Office, and The BraveNew World With Home Electronics. They aredated December 1972. Pete Valentine, Presi-dent of Comsul Ltd., communications consul-tants, and I were interviewed then and talkedabout the future of ‘smart’ buildings. It hastaken a little longer than we thought for theseideas to come to reality, but the concepts haveobviously been around for a long time.

Today I will talk about, one, the future of‘intelligent’ or ‘smart’ building technologies;two, their general impacts; and three, their im-pact on the future of building construction andrelated industries.

First, with regard to building technologies, Ithink all agree that what Richard Reisman andMichael Clevenger talked about earlier is not a‘flash in the pan’ or ‘pie in the sky.’ It is not aquestion of ‘if' but ‘when’ or ‘what form’ or‘how,’ as Bob Gold said. The cost effectivenessand demonstrated enhancement of productivityfrom office automation clearly point to their in-creased future impact on how buildings will bedesigned to facilitate their application. This,along with reduced costs of building ownershipby means of sophisticated building systems, in-dicates that ‘smart’ building will be the rule —not the exception — by the turn of the century.

Again, going back in my professional experi-ence, I want to mention two related trends thatare merging with ‘smart’ building technologies,and they are simply the utilization of factory-built components that have been developing foryears as a means of reducing construction costs

and time, as well as improving quality; and two,flexible building systems to accommodate in-creasing organizational changes — that 37 per-cent a year churn that Michael Clevengertalked about — and also the rapidly evolvingintelligent building technology.

We do not know precisely what the full im-pact of office automation and smart buildingtechnology will be over the life of a buildingten, twenty or fifty years from now. So, as ar-chitects, we must build in flexibility or adapt-ability y.

I predict that the ‘smart’ building itself andthe trend toward factory-built components andflexible building systems will merge to create abuilding that will be qualitatively different fromthe traditional building we see today.

I would like to take a moment to quote astatement by Joseph Newman of Tishman Re-alty and Construction Company. “In the newage of buildings, buildings will be better placesin which to work, live and interact. Buildingswill run more efficiently, be more responsive tothe needs of their occupants, and will more ef-fectively accommodate the new high-tech toolsof business. More durable, better designed, eas-ier to maintain, and higher-quality materialsand products will be utilized, A lot of this iscoming out of other areas like NASA andspace. In the new age of buildings, more atten-tion will be paid to increased construction pro-ductivity and expeditious building cycles. Notonly will buildings be more intelligent, providingmore effective life safety, security, energy con-servation, communications compatibility andenvironmental control. Those who design, build,manage and own buildings will be smarter.”

Well, what does that really mean? As youmight expect, these ‘smart’ buildings will be-come still smarter, and they will be active, notpassive. For example, the building managementsystems, by means of sensors placed throughoutthe building, will see, hear, smell, breathe,move, think, prepare and react to changingbuilding conditions. AI, artificial intelligence, isgoing to be another element that will eventuallycontribute to buildings interacting with theiruser. Buildings will not just sit there, passive, asthey have in the past. Actually, Arthur Clark’s2002, I think, will turn out to be a pretty accu-

Piero Patri 41

rate guess. So we had better watch out forHAL.

With the advent of speech recognition tech-nology, voice commands will activate the lightsand air conditioning, or command a remote-con-trolled robotic element of a wall to move. And,most importantly, speech recognition will makethe computer accessible to everybody and asuniversal as the telephone. In other words, onewill not need to know how to type or anythingabout computer programming. This is comingvery soon. There are already specialized piecesof equipment on the market that are capable ofsome level of both voice recognition and synthe-sis.

Clearly, these ‘smart’ buildings are going tobe more complex, and their elements may notbe all of the buzz words we are talking about,but only those that really make sense. They willbe modular, standardized, integrated, miniatur-ized, light-weight, micro-environmentally con-trolled, and energy efficient.

The next practical step in ‘smart’ officebuilding design will probably be utilization ofraised access floors for wire as well as air distri-bution, which will provide individualized envi-ronmental controls for the user. This, alongwith glare-reducing reflected ambient light willcreate a whole new series of design opportuni-ties for the office ceiling.

‘Smart’ buildings of the future will also behighly flexible. That is the key word: easilyreconfigured, relocated or replaced. They willtake advantage of space technology and will beprecision built with the help of computer-as-sisted design combined with robotic manufac-turing.

What we think of traditionally as the build-ing elements — the furnishings and the elec-tronic equipment — will all be wired togetherto create an integrated continuum with no cleardistinction between them. This is the qualitativechange we think will take place. Walls will pluginto floors. Furniture and equipment will pluginto each other and then into walls, floors, andceilings. Everything will be pre-wired. In my re-view of the literature in preparing for thispresentation, it was interesting to note that a re-cent study showed that electrical work is one ofthe areas where there seems the greatest poten-

tial for improvement in construction technology.So the ‘smart’ building will be an information

utility, not just an enclosure of space. The entirebuilding will be like a piece of electronic equip-ment. For instance, with flat screen technology,walls can become electronic displays either ofinformation or simply color and pattern, creat-ing the possibility of changing the whole char-acter of the office instantaneously.

Signal compression technology that is takingthe broad band width of video and reducing itto utilize existing telephone wires will result inevery telephone having a video screen so everycall will be a video teleconference, if desired.

In the future, other building types will be‘smart,’ not just office buildings. For instance,more working, shopping and learning will takeplace at home with the help of computer andvideo networks. Donald Sullivan of Arthur D.Little sees the automated house of the futurebeing smaller and containing fewer objects,with robots moving walls and furnishings to ac-commodate different needs. In other words, thehouse itself is a robot.

Professor Carolyn Dry of the University of Il-linois has studied how the ‘intelligent’ house canphysically adapt to the various needs of the dis-abled and the elderly, compensating for limitedstrength and mobility. Japanese researchers arealready working on robots to move hospital pa-tients in and out of beds.

Hotels have also started to be ‘smart,’ track-ing when you are in your room and when youhave left for improved security, providing fin-gertip control of the room’s environment, andmaximizing effective management by providingup-to-the-minute billing information at checkoutand alerting the front desk as soon as the roomis available for the next lodger.

‘Intelligent’ buildings will probably be moreexpensive because of their complexity, eventhough they will be computer-designed withvery efficient use of materials and to minimaltolerances. Shorter construction times and thetendency of electronic equipment to go down incost will probably help to keep costs in line.

In any case, any greater cost will be morethan compensated over the long term of owner-ship by the added capabilities in building main-tenance and user productivity. The


demonstrated enhancement of productivitythrough office and building technology has al-ready increased corporate interest in ‘smart’ fa-cilities. Now a Facilities Manager can prove tothe CEO that spending money to make a build-ing ‘smart’ clearly has added value to the com-pany’s bottom line.

In terms of the general impacts, almost allnew buildings in the future will be ‘smart’ tosome degree, and many existing buildings willbe retrofitted to be ‘smart.’ Telecommunicationswill continue its decentralizing effect. Particu-larly because it is not only moving back officesout to the suburbs, it is also moving office workinto the home. So, I think not only will we havemore suburban sprawl, we will probably alsowitness rural sprawl.

Video teleconferencing will eventually comeinto its own. Its promise up to now has not beenfulfilled, but it clearly is coming and will nodoubt reduce business air travel and affect thehotel industry as well.

In general, therefore, regional land use, em-ployment, density and transportation, as well asland values, will be affected. It should be notedthat complex telecommunication technology hassome centralizing aspects whose impact onland-use distribution has yet to be fully felt. Ithink in the last decades of the 20th Century,access to telecommunications channels, such asteleports and fiber-optic highways, will be asimportant to development as access to riversand bodies of water were in earlier centuries,and access to freeways and airports are now.Availability of sophisticated telecommunica-tions will change the way we use and valueland, giving new meaning to the real-estate ad-age ‘location, location, location.’

There is no question in our minds that therewill be other significant economic impacts. Indescribing the buildings of the future, I sug-gested that there will be an integrated contin-uum of building elements — walls, ceilings,floors, furnishings and electronic equipment allwired together into an information utility. Ihave suggested that most of it will be manufac-tured, pre-wired, and ‘assembled’ at the site.

This could imply the merging of the con-struction and furnishing industries with the tele-communication and computer industry. The

construction industry, even though fragmented,is the largest industry in the United States,contributing over 200 billion dollars a year tothe GNP and employing 10 percent of the U.S.workforce. To quote Marvin Citron of Forecast-ing International, “Telecommunications hasbeen the fastest-growing industry in the worldevery year for the last 10 years and will be thelargest industry in the world and will havetouched and changed the lives of most of thepeople living when the century ends.”

What we may witness is the merging of thelargest existing industry in the U.S. with ourlargest emerging industry. Inevitably, this willhave enormous impacts on the way buildingsget built, and organization and ownership of theconstruction industry, and the number and typeof jobs in it.

Richard Reisman mentioned earlier thatIBM has expanded into the furniture businessand Honeywell has diversified its services. An-other important example of this merging is rep-resented by Steelcase Furniture Company’sacquisition of Dorm Architectural Products,manufacturers of totally-integrated wall, floorand ceiling systems. This is a logical expansionfor a furniture manufacturer because, in the fu-ture, everything will be linked together. Follow-ing the pattern of other manufacturingindustries, such as automobiles and now com-puters, I foresee there will be fewer and largercorporations in the construction business, andthese companies will be highly automated,more capital intensive, and less labor intensive.

How will this impact construction jobs?There will be fewer traditional constructionjobs, as I have already mentioned, with lessfield work, although there is a bright spot interms of retrofitting existing buildings to ac-commodate this new office technology. Eventhough there’s less field work, more work willbe done in the factory, but most of that workwill be done by robots. So there will be a capon factory jobs.

Clearly the need for skilled technicians willincrease; that is, white- and gray-collar jobs willincrease, while blue-collar jobs will diminish.This also applies to the operation and mainte-nance industries as well. The maintenanceworker in overalls with a hammer sticking out

Piero Patri 43

of his pocket, walking around in the bowels of abuilding, will become a technician in a whitecoat, sitting at a console, checking readouts.

The practice of architecture will change andtend to merge with industrial design and engi-neering as a result of buildings becoming prod-ucts of industrial design and a manufacturingprocess. CAD will increase in sophisticationwith professional expertise programmed into thecomputer system as described by Harry Mileafearlier.

The good news is that some new jobs willalso be created. There is clearly a need for moredesign engineers, architects and industrial engi-neers, more CAD specialists, ‘smart’ buildingretrofitters, laser, electronic, and fiber-optic spe-cialists. We in interior design also see a greaterdemand for the handiwork of artists and arti-sans in response to the ‘high-tech/high-touch’needs of the electronic office worker.

The bad news is fewer jobs for field construc-tion workers and no increased need for factoryworkers. Problems will exist for traditional ar-chitects and drafters and for blue-collar build-ing operations and maintenance people.Michael Clevenger mentioned the reductions inthe users of these ‘smart’ office buildings fromthe ranks of the clerical and the middle-man-agement people whose jobs will be automated.

I cannot predict whether the net result ofnew jobs will balance the old jobs and what ef-fect expanding industries like leisure and healthcare will have. If we are to believe some predic-tions that by the year 2000 four million jobswill be taken over by computers, there willclearly be significant changes in employmentpatterns that will certainly affect the buildingindustry.

Therefore, it seems reasonable to assume thatsignificant retraining and even re-educating willbe required for workers within the constructionindustry, as well as those forced out of othertraditional professions I mentioned.

The U.S. construction industry currentlyseems fragmented and ill-prepared to deal withthis upcoming problem. Crucial to success willbe a suitably educated and trained workforceand a coordinated research and development ef-fort by the U.S. construction industry to de-velop and disseminate appropriate technology.

I have already mentioned the problem of thelack of compatibility between equipment andthe lack of coordination between regulatoryagencies. To be successful in this transition, wemust also deal with the problem of the de-skil-ling and dehumanizing of some of these jobsand the resultant growth in job dissatisfactionamong the electronic-office workforce, aworkforce that will be better educated, withmore job mobility and higher expectations, anda greater willingness to voice dissatisfactionswith employers and work conditions, includinglitigation.

Just to touch a moment on foreign compe-tition, it is clear that the other industrialized na-tions have a better-educated workforce in theareas of engineering and manufacturing. As anexample, the Japanese graduate several timesthe number of engineers per year that we do.They are world leaders in robotics and appearto be ahead of us in computer-controlled, fac-tory-built housing. Therefore, as more buildingconstruction takes place in the factory, they willbe extremely competitive.

To summarize, by the 21st Century we areclearly going to be in the Information Technol-ogy Age and the Industrial Age will be over.There may be a lot of potential scenarios, but itis clear that this change is going to have pro-found impacts on the building industry. Specifi-cally, buildings are going to be incredibly‘smart,’ complex, active environments andcostly.

Secondly, ‘smart’ buildings are going to beeverywhere, and not just ‘smart’ offices, but‘smart’ homes, hotels, hospitals, etc. They willimpact land use, density and transportation. Inother words, they will impact our whole societyand the way in which we function.

Thirdly, we believe we will see the mergingto some significant extent of two mammoth in-dustries, construction and telecommunications,with a net loss of jobs and an increased demandfor highly-skilled technicians and, with this, theneed for re-education and retraining.

Lastly, it is really exciting to be here to ad-dress this pressing need in the construction in-dustry. I hope this forum will continue becauseover the next several years. We must carefullycoordinate government policy and private indus-


try goals to fully realize the enormous potentialthese forces promise.

Some After-Thoughts

There is a pressing need for a better-coordi-nated research effort in the U.S. ConstructionIndustry. This effort should involve the fullrange of people in construction: design profes-sionals, building material and furniture manu-facturers, contractors, building owners,academics, telecommunications and office auto-mation manufacturers and service providers, aswell as government officials. There is also a

fundamental need for more indepth studies onproductivity gains attributable to the implemen-tation of office automation and telecommunica-tions systems, especially at the middlemanagement level of organizations.

This research and exchange should serve asthe basis for the development of a national pol-icy regarding the future of the Construction In-dustry, particularly as it relates to the computerand telecommunications industry. It would bemy hope that this Committee would serve as animpetus toward accomplishing that goal.

Piero Patri is President of Whisler-Patri, an Architec-ture, Planning and Interior Design firm in San Fran-cisco.

Modular Structures andRelated TechniquesDon O. CarIsonEric Dluhosch

Don O. Carlson

I want to very quickly cover the backgroundof light-frame residential construction. A brieflook at history, a look at where we are today,and some looks at where we might go and thepossible impacts.

The biggest change that we had in this na-tion in housing was when a guy by the name ofTaylor, a carpenter in Chicago, created whatwe call balloon framing — the first use of two-by-fours in 1833. This was the major departurefrom the old European system of heavy timbersand heavy masonry construction.

Strange as it looks, that system really turnedthe United States into a nation of homeowners.One hundred seven years later in 1940 in La-fayette, Indiana, Jim and George Price came upwith factory panelization. About twelve yearsafter that in 1952, this man, A. Carroll Sanford,invented what we call the toothed metal con-nector plate, This created the component indus-try, which in a sense allowed site builders tocompete with what was going on inside factoriesby panelizers.

About 1973, the next big breakthrough wasthe flat-chord floor truss, again, metal-plate con-nected. Simple as it looks, it enabled us togreatly conserve our natural resources by mak-ing it unnecessary to use heavy-dimension lum-ber in our floor systems.

If you think about America’s industrializedhousing machine and visualize down the centerof that picture a big piece of machinery, thereare five manufacturing segments. At the farleft, we have what we call the productionbuilder, the big-volume site builder; next, thepanelized-home manufacturer. Across from thatwe have the mobile-home manufacturer, themodular-home manufacturer, and the component manufacturer.

As to who builds what in the U.S. housingpie, these figures are based on our research for1983. The site builders do about 51 percent; thepanelized, 26 percent; the mobile, which weprobably should more accurately call the HUD-Code home today, builds 19 percent; modulars

about 4 percent. Other segments of this indus-try include the dealers for the factory-builthomes, the component manufacturers who buildfor the production builders, and of course thespecial-unit manufacturers, who are all factorybuilders, but they don’t build housing. Theybuild everything else except homes and apart-ments.

The production builder builds single-familyhomes, low-rise or garden apartments up tomid-rise apartments. We call him a productionbuilder because he usually builds in metro cen-ters, and one house after another. In the metrocenter, he is served by the component manufac-turer who usually sells these units erected. Inother words, when the component truck leavesthat house, it’s weathered in and the buildercan take one month to a year to finish the in-side, if he wishes.

Turning to the component manufacturer, thisindustry was created by Sanford; today thereare two thousand of these companies across thecountry, primarily serving production builders.They are among the most sophisticated ma-chine people because they will serve up to onehundred different builders at one time.

Component manufacturers make wall panels,roof trusses, floor trusses, gable ends, plus othercomponents for homes. They use highly sophis-ticated machinery. This $52,000 componentcutter could be compared to a carpenter with ahand saw over his knee at a job site or even acircular saw. There’s not much comparisonwhen it comes to the kind of quality you canget into a factory to the lack of quality in our,as someone said, primitive methods at job sites.

Component manufacturers all make rooftrusses. Today this roof truss is engineered forthe specific house in the specific area where it’sgoing to be used, for span, wind load, snowload, live load, dead load and so on. It’s createdwith metal connector plates. You see the in-verted truss there in the background.

Additionally, the industry is becoming moresophisticated. Here they’re using what we callmachine-stress rated lumber. This is lumberthat’s run through a nondestructive testing ma-

Figure 1

Hud-Code (Mobile)Home.When built to the Manu-factured Housing Con-struction and SafetyStandards Code, admin-istered by the Depart-ment of Housing &Urban Development, andplaced on a permanentfoundation on landwhich IS sold with thehome, this variety ofhousing becomes virtu-ally indistinguishablefrom any other type ofhousing, except that theunit will be more afford-able, ranging in pricefrom 5 percent to 30 per-cent less than otherstyles of housing in thesame area,

Figure 2

Finished PanelizedHome.Panelized home manu-facturers, approximately600 across the U. S., arethe most versatile pro-ducers of architecturalstyles. Their homes canrange from low-cost va-cation cabins to expen-sive mansions in excessof 10,000 square feet.

48 Modular Structures and Related Techniques

chine to actually find out how much it willbear. This puts this industry’s products on apart with steel and concrete.

Component manufacturers also machinedoors literally by the thousands. Turning next tothe panelized-home manufacturer, there areabout six hundred of these companies — ofwhich probably twenty-five are large size.They’re very versatile in what they build. Theycan take an architect’s blueprint and create thehouse that the customer wants. One of the larg-est plants happens to be in Fort Payne, Ala-bama, the old Kingsbury Home plant, probablyhalf a million square feet under roof.

Today, the important thing to remember re-garding all of these phases of housing that we’rediscussing is that it is a duplicative process.We’re all building the same way. Two-by-fourstuds, usually sixteen inches on center.

In the panelized plant, if a panel such as thiswould have sheathing on it, windows inserted,siding on the outside, and then it’s delivered tothe job site in that condition, even thoughthere’s insulation between the studs, we call it‘open-panel,’ or ‘open-panel panelization.’ If thatwall panel is finished on the inside and the wir-ing, plumbing, and so on is put inside that wall,then it becomes closed-panel.

Some of our panelizers use cores, mechanicalcores. This little self-contained building will con-tain one or two bathrooms, the furnace, the hot-water heater, and usually the electrical junctionbox. That structure goes down on the deck first,and then the interior and exterior partitions andthe roof system goes up around it.

Also included in this panelized industry, eventhough they don’t build panels, are the two-by-four pre-cutters; and we do include the log-home manufacturers, of which there’s abouttwo hundred and fifty. We also include thedome-home manufacturers in the panelized seg-ment, of which there are around sixty, Now,the dome manufacturers actually panelize usingfive triangles to create a pentagon.

Turning now to the modular home manufac-turers, like the panelizers, the log, and thedome, they build to our model building codes;that is, a conventional building code. There areabout two hundred modular manufacturersacross the nation. Their technique in construc-

tion is very similar to what goes on in a mobile-home plant, except they’re building to differentcodes.

This is a typical kind of jig they use for theirroof system.

Here’s one of the newer plants which hap-pens to be Summey Corp. down in Georgetown,Texas. Their technique is to fabricate theirwalls on wall-panel machines at the head end ofthe line and then tip them up onto the floor sys-tems as they go down the production line; andthen in the far background, you see the modu-lar boxes, as we call them, getting ready to beshipped out of the plant,

The technique in many plants flows along aproduction line with fourteen to sixteen stations.The flooring systems are stacked up there atthe right. They put down their resilient flooringand their carpeting. They put in their plumbingfixtures, interior partitions, exterior walls and aroof system as the units go down the factoryline.

Modulars are about 95 percent completewhen they leave the factory if they are going tobe a single-family house. We call the modularthe strongest of all construction systems used today simply because it’s glue-nailed, plywoodconstruction all the way around. Even the mar-riage wall has plywood glue-nailed onto the wallstuds. This makes each half of the house essen-tially a self-contained box beam, and themodulars are traditional over-builders. If ittakes two two-by-fours to do the job, they’ll usethree.

At the job site, if the terrain is rough, they’llplace them with cranes. Now, that wet wall of amodular will weigh up to twenty-six-thousandpounds, and yet, as you can see, it’s being totally supported by cables at just two points.

A major trend along the coast, the EastCoast of the US. and the Gulf Coast, is whatwe call the stacked modular, up to five or sixstories tall. These units are sold primarily nowas recreational condominiums. They’re very,very attractive.

As in all industrialized construction, whichcovers all of these units, the biggest saving is inyour construction loan interest costs. A projectof this magnitude, if it’s modular, can be fin-ished in about six months compared to about a

Don O. Carlson 49

cut construction timefrom more than one yearto less than six monthswith resultant interestcost savings.


year if it’s site-built; and a project of this sizewill probably save up to $100,000 per month onconstruction loan interest costs.

Finally, the HUD code manufactured home,which we used to call the mobile home. Ofcourse, they’ve not been mobile for many, manyyears. This industry has two of the greatest ad-vantages going for it ever visited on any seg-ment of housing: one, it has a nationalpreemptive building code; and two, as of aboutthe middle of last summer, you could financethese units just like conventional real estate,providing they were permanently mounted onfoundations on their own lot.

Trends in this industry are to make theseunits look more and more house-like, to makethem more appealing to the consumer/buyer.

Construction technique is the same as we usefor anything else, two-by-four studs, sixteeninches on center. In this case, you can seethey’re getting their shear strength from glue-nail on the interior materials. However, when itcomes to insulation, you can order what youwant — R-1 1 or R-19 walls.

One of the departures is lighter frame con-struction than we use in most other housing.Like in this particular mono-roof system,they’re using two-by-threes instead of two-by-fours. Well, the question is: What do you wantto buy, a Chevrolet or a Cadillac? These homesare in the Chevrolet class.

Going down the production line, they’re simi-lar to the modular production lines: the floorsystem first; then their plumbing, partitions,wall systems and roof systems put on at theend.

By law, the mobile must have a metal chassisbeneath it, and you can identify them if you canget down underneath to see that it has a metalchassis. If you see this, you know that it’s aHUD-Code unit.

Manufactured-home dealers — there arearound fifteen thousand of these dealers (proba-bly nine thousand handle mobiles), and the restare into panelized, combination mobile-modular,the log, the dome, and so on.

The special-unit manufacturer, as I men-tioned earlier, is a factory builder. He buildsthings like doctors’ offices, prisons, motels, ev-erything except private housing per se.

One of the difficulties in marketing today isto tell the difference between a modular unit,which is what we’re looking at here. Those unitsbeneath it are not chassis — they’re transport-ers. They’ll go back to the job site after thisunit is set at the site.

Here’s the mobile, or HUD-Code, home.Both mobiles and modulars have house-type sid-ing, roofing, windows, and doors. They’ve gotthree and four 12-roof pitches. They look likelittle houses, but depending on the marketyou’re in, the mobile (HUD-Code) homes aregoing to run anywhere from 10 to 35 percentless costly than the site-built, comparable unit.

They’re striving to make these HUD-Codehomes appealing to the consumer. And whenthese units are placed on permanent founda-tions, such as this particular project in RanchoVentura, California, which went on permanentfoundations and was sold with the lot, they lookgood; but the price in that area, even though itmight sound high to you, was $71,000 to$91,000. A comparable site-built house startedat $130,000. As you might guess, they sold likehotcakes.

The interiors of HUD-Code units are veryprofessionally decorated today. The kitchens usebrand-name appliances. If there’s a choice, ofcourse, between good, better and best, theyprobably go for the good because we’re talkinglow-cost housing.

Other Trends in Our Industry: Because ofthe rise of the component industry, the com-puter has been used for many, many years(over twenty) because every roof truss we buildhas to be engineered on a computer. Todaywe’re getting computers into wall panelization.In this case, a girl can look at a builder’s blue-print and do the input into this computer. Thecomputer will actually drive this wall-panel ma-chine out in Gardina, California; and that ma-chine will turn out walls for a three-bedroomhouse in about three-and-a-half hours. However,it’s limited. They can’t build gable-end wallssuch as this. So there are many other semi-automated systems of wall panelization. This is justone. It happens to be a wall-panel plant inChino, California.

The high-speed plotter has already replaceddraftsmen to a great degree inside our compo-

Don O. Carlson 51

Figures 5 and 6

Log Homes and DomeHomesare considered part ofthe panelized homegroup There are ap-proximately 250 loghome manufacturers inthe U.S. and Canada,mostly small firms, andabout 60 dome homemanufacturers Whilegreatly desired by someconsumers, the totalnumber of units of bothbuilt each year IS lessthan 150,000


nent plants. That high-speed plotter is computerdriven, and it can do the work of about fivedraftsmen in about an hour.

One of the minor trends through the South(Louisiana, Texas), is what we call metal-plate-connected rough openings. It’s one of the tough-est jobs at a job site to get a square opening foryour windows and doors, and this componentsolves that problem for most of the apartmentsbeing built down in the Texas area.

Another trend that we expect to see more ofbecause it makes so much sense is the perma-nent wood foundation, sometimes called the all-weather wood foundation. This is made frompressure-treated lumber and plywood; and asyou can see by this scene, you can build it any-time, including in a blizzard. You don’t have toworry about what the climate is outside.

The permanent wood foundation creates abasement level that is just as livable as the up-stairs. And, depending on where you are andwhat insulation is being done, this unit willrange anywhere from 20 to 50 percent lesscostly to heat in the basement area. Since thiswas invented by NAHB and a few other groupsback in 1969, we’ve built about one hundredseventy thousand of these. We expect them toproliferate.

Another trend is that the big builders are get-ting bigger. These figures show the top one hun-dred home builders. Now, these top onehundred cut across all lines that I’ve mentioned.In 1982, they built 304,000 units; in 1983,377,000 units. The percentage of what theybuilt went down, as it always does, during a pe-riod of prosperity in housing simply becausemore small builders come into the marketplace.

Japan — let me just touch on that briefly. Iled a study mission to Japan in April of thisyear. When I left this country, I was very smugabout our superiority in housing technique, mar-keting, manufacturing, and so on. It took abouta day and a half for those ideas to get knockedout of my head. My conclusion today is thatthey’re about eight to ten years ahead of us inmarketing techniques and manufacturing tech-nology.

This is how they sell their homes. You’relooking at an aerial view of a model citywherein sixty to seventy builders bring their

homes into one place. Mr. and Mrs. JapaneseHome Buyer can go in there. After they pickout the architectural design and their housestyle, they can sit down with a salesman at acomputer, do the final analysis right on thatcomputer, literally draw the house on the com-puter. Then they can go in a make selections ofall of their wall finishes, what color they wantthe kitchen cabinets and so on.

If the order is finally approved, the salesmancan punch a button on the computer, and theorder is electronically transmitted to the fac-tory, and the house starts down the productionline.

In terms of code, they have a national codeset by the Ministry of Construction. They wanttheir homes to not only be energy efficient, butcapable of standing up to earthquakes, their ty-phoons and so on. Of the ten largest Japanesecompanies, about four have capabilities of com-pletely testing the total house inside their laboratories.

This machine is capable of hitting that full-size house with winds and rains of 140 miles perhour, and those windows don’t blow out.

In terms of conveyorization and automationin the factory, they’re much further advancedthan we are. That happens to be a wood panel,a stressed-skin wood panel plant up in Matsu-moto, Japan. That production line went at asteady rate of fourteen feet per minute; it liter-ally never stopped. Every station was controlledby a sidebar computer, which in turn was con-trolled by a master computer.

They’re deeply into robotics for the steel pan-els they build. This is a robotic unit to createsteel trusses. They wouldn’t let us photographthe wall-panel system, but it was all roboticallywelded. The members came down very, veryquickly; went into a system where eight roboticwelders hit it all at one time and then movedthe panel out; and it only took a matter of a fewseconds to create a complete steel-wall panel.

The Manager in that plant told me very glee-fully, “We’re building houses the way we buildcars.”

This is a new material invented by MisawaHomes. That white panel you see at the endthey call precastable autoclave light weight ce-ramics, or more simply PALC. The PALC

Don O. Carlson 53

Figures 7 and 8

The Major Trendamong HUD-Code (mo-bile) homes is to makethem look more andmore like ‘conventionalsite-built dwellings. ’ Thetop photo shows howpanelized garages canbe placed in front of dou-ble-section HUD-Codehomes to make themlook like typical Californiatract homes; the lowerphoto shows that the‘conventional home look’is even being adaptedfor single-section homes.


panel in one unit there gives you your exteriorfinish, your interior finish, your structural sup-port, vapor barrier, and insulation.

In talking with all of these Japanese compa-nies, I naturally asked the question: What areyou going to do regarding the U. S.? They allsaid, “We’re not going to do what we did to youin automobiles, However, we would like to formpartnerships with major U.S. companies andbring our technology to the U. S.”

Misawa claims they will have a factory inthis country within three years.

Even by Western standards, what they’rebuilding is attractive.

Today we already know how to build afford-able houses which are also affordable to oper-ate, even with present levels of technology,without going into a sophisticated $20,000 solarsystem. This is a building we built inCarpinteria, California, to house our office facil-ities. It has an all-weather wood foundation, aheat pump, an air-to-air heat exchanger; and, tomake a long story short, we run thirty-sevenitems of electrical equipment, twenty-fourlights, and the heating, the air conditioning, thefurnace fan and the air-to-air heat exchangerfans, and the whole ball of wax, costs us about$2.50 a day to operate.

The foundation was built in a factory in twodays or — pardon me — one day by two menwho had never seen a wood-foundation blue-print before. The building was built in a factoryin eight days. The foundation went in on theground in one day, and the building was set inabout a half a day.

But then as we always say, building at thesite is ‘building by surprise.’ So after the build-ing was set, it took us eight weeks to move insimply because the environmental people in thearea wouldn’t let us move in until every singleblade of grass was planted, and they picked outthe blades they wanted planted.

Possible Changes and Impacts: As I men-tioned, Japan is eight to ten years ahead of usin CAD/CAM manufacturing, controls, con-veyorization, automation, and robotics. They dowant to form U.S. partnerships, and I think, ifnothing else, we need some sort of a study tocope with what’s going to happen in terms oftheir future intentions in housing in the U.S.

Other Possible Changes and Impacts: Wenow have one national preemptive buildingcode. That’s the HUD Manufactured HousingConstruction and Safety Standards. We havethree model codes, which are used by the restof the nation — the basic, the uniform and thestandard. Beyond that, there’s anywhere fromseven to actually fifteen thousand local or re-gional jurisdictions that decide on what goesinto a house. I think what we need is a nationalpreemptive building code, performance-orientedto certain locations, revised to include knownmethods of cost-cutting (the NAHB has a li-brary on what we already know about cost-cut-ting), and the new performance code can bemerged to include the three model codes andthe one HUD Code.

We probably need a similar national preemp-tive zoning and infrastructure code. Using theknown techniques of cutting down costs in subdivisions, this would cover things like streets,sidewalks, sewers and so on; this, I think, wouldbe one of the major methods we could use to re-duce costs of housing in the U.S.

Today we have a Department of Housingand Urban Development. It never seemed to methat was a logical marriage, simply becausethere’s not an awful lot in common between thetwo. When you’re talking about urban develop-ment, you’re talking probably about rehabilita-tion. You’re talking about heavy construction,old infrastructure. Housing deals with thingsthat will go further out in the country. It maymake sense, therefore, to divide the two.

Additionally, we have no less than three Gov-ernment agencies who get their fingers into thehousing pie with inspections, mortgage insur-ance and so on, Perhaps the time has come tomerge the FHA, the VA, and the FarmersHome Administration and their separate codesunder the Department of Housing and have aseparate Department of Urban Development toconcentrate on revitalization, primarily throughfree-enterprise zone systems.

It seems to me the only way we’re going tobe able to rebuild our cities is the way we builtthem in the first place. They were built in thefirst place literally like free-enterprise zones.

Other Possible Changes and Impacts: TheJapanese are well along in working toward util-

Don O. Carlson

*

55

Figures 9 and 10

A Major Problemfacing the housing in-dustry today IS the inabil-ity of people both withinand outside of the indus-try to discern the differ-ence visibly betweendouble-section HUD-Code (mobile) homes,shown in the abovephoto, and double-sec-tion modular homes,shown in the lowerphoto Mobile homes arebuilt to the HUD-Code,modular homes are builtto any one of the threenational ‘model’ buildercodes which in turn havebeen adopted by statesand cities. In general themodular homes are builtwith a much heavierframing system than ISused by the mobile-home industry The ma-jor difference is in thefact that, by law, theHUD-Code (mobile)home must have an inte-gral metal chassis be-neath each section; themodular section, on theother hand, IS simply de-livered on a flatbed trailerwhich is returned to theplant after setting Never-theless, since both unitsare beginning to useconventionally-pitchedroofs, house-type siding,windows, and doors, it isvisually most difficult todiscern differences Themajor difference IS incost where the mobile ISbuilt to meet the Chevro-let budget, and the mod-ular IS more like theBuick or Chrysler bud-get


ity self-sufficient homes and apartments. If wetap Mother Earth and Father Sun, I don’t thinkit’s too far a conclusion to come to that we caneventually, not too many years down the road,have a home or an apartment complex that’s to-tally self-sufficient of utilities.

I think one of the solutions to our energyproblem is right under our feet where, youknow, if you go down into the earth, regardlessof where you are, even three or four feet, youhit an even temperature, which is alwayswarmer in the winter and cooler in the summer.We’re tapping this in the building inCarpinteria, and I think that’s one of the rea-sons that our heating and energy costs havebeen so low.

Also, we’ve got to mentally reposition ourtrees to be renewable and harvestable large-cornstalks, and not just museum pieces. The Ameri-can forests have to be repositioned in our mindsto be enclaves of multiple use rather than just alow-use bank vault for two or three people thathike into the wilderness forests every year.

Perhaps we should consider home projects orcommunities for the homeless. How manyhomeless are there? You hear figures rangingfrom three hundred thousand to three million.Who can count the homeless? You can’t findthem. The point is there are a lot of them outthere. Perhaps some of these families should beallowed to involve themselves and build theirown experimental low-cost homes; and there’s

all kinds of experimental systems that we coulduse, whether adobe, pre-cut logs, dog-bone (pro-file) lumber, etc. It maybe possible to developsystems that we could export to underdevelopedcountries.

Other Changes and Impacts: I think we needa national 10 percent home mortgage plan. It’saxiomatic that when housing is going up, thecountry’s prosperity goes up and vice versa.Why should we continue to crucify the Ameri-can economy on a destructive down cycle ofnew home construction?

Our present mortgage interest tax deductionsystem has been historically insufficient to headoff recessions in this nation. If we had this 10percent plan aimed at the first-time buyer, Ithink we could achieve a steady rate of two mil-lion starts every year. This would bolster 330groups of separate businesses and industriesthat depend on housing for a large share oftheir cash income. Literally tens of thousandsof individual companies are involved in these330 groups.

It would obviously increase employment andcertainly increase the Government’s tax incomeat all levels, helping to reduce the deficit, and, Ithink, finally head off recessions and possiblesocial upheavals that could occur if too manypeople are homeless.

Don O. Carlson is Editor & Publisher of Automation inHousing and Manufactured Home Dealer Magazine

Don O. Carlson 57

Figures 11 and 12

Constructionof all homes in theUnited States today IS aduplicative processsince all types of resi-dential buildings aremade with 2x4 studwalls spaced 16” o.c., forall exteriors Thesephotos show typical pro-duction scenes in a mo-bile home plant. In thebottom photo, theworker IS shown spread-ing glue on studs towhich gypsum drywall orwood paneling will beglued and nailed This ishow a HUD-Code homewall achieves a majorportion of its shearstrength from externalglue nailed sheathing,which the mobile indus-try does not use Produc-tion steps for mobile andmodular homes withintheir respective factoriesare quite similar

58

Figures 13 and 14

-~-~Since the IntrOdUCtion of the Department of HOUSing & Urban Devel_ opment COde fOr the mObile-home indUstry in 197

6, mOst mobile homes tOday are insu_

lated (or can be aCCord_ Ing to the CUstomer's order) just as Well as any other tyPe of reSidential hOUSing, One departure is seen in the lOWer

Photo, is that because of its Chevrolet Price range, the rnobile horne wil! use

2x3 members in iis mono ;oo( trusses rather than 2x4 's, Nevertheless, the rOof sYstem. is engi-neered for that sPeCific horne in the sPecific geographic area where it Will be delivered,

L- ,.. --.: I . . ..,-

II

Don O. Carlson

Figure 15

59

Aerial Viewof one of the nation’slargest panelized homefactories, KingsberryHomes, Fort Wayne, AL,which is in excess of100,000 square feet. Par-ticipants in the nation’spanelized home industrynumber over 600, butrange from huge plantsof this size down tosmall retail lumberyardswhich panelize homesfor preferred builders.

Figure 16

Non-Destructive Test-ing of lumber forstrength qualities now isbeing performed by anumber of lumber pro-ducers for the compo-nent industry. Theindependent componentmanufacturer, whichmakes major house partsfor site builders, needsMachine Stress Ratedlumber for critical rooftruss projects such asnursing homes, commer-cial buildings andschools, and homes withunusually large clearspantrusses.


Figure 17

Floor Trusses,made of 2x4’s andjoined with metal con-nector plates on bothsides of each 2x4 mem-ber, are now used inabout 80 percent of US.homes and apartments.Floor truss actually is amisnomer becausethese ‘flat-chord’ trussesoften are used for roof-ceiling systems.

Figure 18

ComponentManufacturersoften assemble wall pan-els in the factory for useby site builders. Approxi-mately 30 percent of thesite-built homes andapartments utilize wallpanels made by the na-tion’s 1,800 componentfabricators.

Don O. Carlson

Figure 19

ComponentFabricatorsalso machine doorblanks to order for pro-duction builders. Theyinstall the windows to or-der, put in the hinges,put in the lock sets, andpre-hang the door in itsframe before delivery tothe site builder.

Figure 20

Wall Panel Machinesused by component fab-ricators today are capa-ble of making straightwalls or gable end walls.


Figure 21

ComponentFabricators are amongthe most sophisticated interms of machining, andmany use high-speedcomponent cutters(saws) as seen in thisphoto which are capableof five angle cuts on theends of 2x4 members atthe rate of 60 pieces perminute. In-plant qualitytoday far exceeds qualityat the job site,

Figure 22

About 95 Percentof all component fabrica-tors make roof trusses,and this is a mirror of theroof systems for singlefamily homes and apart-ments in the U.S. today,These triangular trussesall are engineered for thespecific in a specificgeographic area by com-puter.

Don O. Carlson 63

Figure 23

Some Componentmanufacturers use com-puter-driven, high-speedKellner wall panel ma-chines which are capa-ble of turning out walls

Figure 24

All Stylesof in-plant home builderstoday use simple or elab-orate cutting depart-ments to preparemembers for wall panels,roof trusses and floortrusses


Figure 25

A Typicalwall panel productionline for either a compo-nent plant or a panelizedhome manufacturer mayconsist of a steel-toppedor wood-topped produc-tion table with roller con-veyors on both sides.Some wall panel ma-chines are totally fabri-cated of steel, andcontain lugs to hold 2x4members in positionwhile they are pneumati-cally nailed. When a wailIS finished on one side itis said to be built by an‘open-panel panelizer;when a wall is finishedon both sides (and hasplumbing and electricalinside) it is said to be a‘closed-panel’ panelizer

Figure 26

Mechanical CoreStructuresare made by bothpanelizers and compo-nent plants. The self-contained structureshave a completely fin-ished bathroom, the hot-water heater, thefurnace, electrical junc-tion box, and sometimesthe wet wall for the ad-joining kitchen. By doingall of this electrical andplumbing work inside aplant, the in-plant pro-ducer can save from$300 to $1,500 over thecost of plumbing andelectrical work done atthe site. In construction,the mechanical corestructure is placed onthe deck of the home orthe concrete slab first,then the panelized homeIS erected around it.

Don O. Carlson 65

Figure 27

More and More Plantstoday are multiple pur-pose plants. This factoryin Austin (Georgetown),TX, produces both mod-ular units and panelizedunits.

Figure 28

Jigs Are Usedin both mobile and mod-ular plants for fabricationof complete ‘half-house’ceiling systems, whichwhen complete, aretransported by crane tothe house productionline and set in place ontop of the half-housebox.


Figure 29

Some Modular Plantsbuild their homes withboth sections joined to-gether to insure perfectfits. At the end of theproduction line, the twohalves of the house aresplit apart for transportto the job site. All modu-lar homes are heavilysheathed with plywood,and they usually are builtwith unusually heavyfloor decking and roofsheathing.

Figure 30

A Small OfficeBuilding, built to resem-ble a home but parti-tioned like an office, wasbuilt in a mobile homeplant in San Bernardino,CA, in eight days. Itswood foundation wasplaced in the ground inone day, and the build-ing was set on the foun-dation in one day. Thisstructure could havebeen occupied in lessthan three days after de-livery to the site.

Don O. Carlson 67

Figure 31

Many of the Nation%component manufactur-ers located near metro-politan centers sell theirmajor house parts‘erected. ’ Thus, by thetime the last componenttruck leaves a job sitefor a site builder, thefloor trusses are inplace, the walls are inplace, the roof trusseshave been added, andthe home has been com-pletely sheathed, orweathered in. Thebuilder at the site thencan take as long as hewishes to finish thehouse at the site usingsite subcontractors,

Figure 32

Many ComponentFabricators, such asthis one in Ogden, UT,have separate buildingsfor the production of wallpanels, floor trusses androof trusses.

68

Figure 33

The Settingof modular homes fre-quently is done by crane.It is also fairly routine toset mobile homes bycrane, providing space isavailable. By havingthese half-house sec-tions completely finishedinside a factory, the ‘cos-metic and stitching upwork’ to be done at thejob site usually can behandled in less than oneweek, and the family canmove in quickly. Thespeed saves consider-ably on construction in-terest loan costsbecause of the muchfaster occupancy time atthe site.

Figure 34

This Is Wherethe modern U.S. housingindustry got its start. Theinvention of the 2x4 or‘balloon’ framing systemin Chicago in 1833 madeAmerica a nation ofhomeowners.

Modular Structures and Related Techniques

—

——


Eric Dluhosch

It is encouraging that the impact of techno-logical change on the building industry is re-ceiving national recognition and Congressionalattention. The question is: Why now, and whythe focus on building technology?

Clearly, there must be a feeling of uncer-tainty about the future performance of this im-portant sector of the American economy, calledthe building construction industry, which ac-cording to the Report of the President’s Com-mittee on Urban Housing was expected toproduce enough new homes between 1968 and1978 to ‘provide a decent home for every Amer-ican family’ during that decade. The dream ofan affordable decent home seems to be reced-ing, rather than becoming reality. For this rea-son alone, it is good to meet here and look atthe problems of change and innovation again.For, in the meantime, we had Operation Break-through, the energy crisis, and the effects oftechnological change on the steel and automo-bile industries. If one adds to all this the manychanges in American life styles, and continuingdemographic age and geographic redistributionof the U.S. population, and the incipient entryof Japanese and European home manufacturersin the U.S. market, uneasiness may easily turninto alarm,

The fact that we are meeting here, and thefact that the problem has been recognized asworthy of national attention, brings hope that astate of alarm can be avoided, and that lessonshave been learned from past mistakes, and thatanother ‘crisis’ situation can be avoided.

If there is indeed an uneasiness about the fu-ture of the building industry, the first questionto be addressed is whether we are, in fact andas a matter of perception, dealing with a bona-fide manufacturing industry, or whether it maynot be more useful to regard the home-buildingindustry as a service industry, since it is thehome-building industry which I wish to discuss.In many respects it is indeed similar to manyother service industries, such as health, educa-tion, recreation, and communications, for thehome building industry delivers much morethan just a short-term consumer product. Be-yond building houses, it is inextricably involved

in providing a host of other services, from fi-nancing to financial security, from status toostentation, and from despair to pride. For theremainder of this discussion, and in order toprovide a better conceptual frame for the fol-lowing suggestions to be made, I will proceedon the assumption that home building is indeedas much of a service than a product, and that itacts as such in an integrated and highly coordi-nated manner in providing a host of specializedservices, regardless of the fact that it may beregarded as highly fragmented as a productionindustry. This makes it also possible to neutral-ize the perennial controversy of fragmentationvs. integration, and also makes it much easier tolook at technological change as a subservient as-pect of service, rather than as the purely tech-nical calculus of production efficiency.Technological change per se may thus beviewed as secondary to the achievement of de-sirable and/or feasible human goals, ratherthan as a quasi-autonomous end product. Be-yond that, the assessment of change, if relatedto service, allows a more inclusive definition oftechnology, i.e., the inclusion of ‘soft’ technol-ogies as an equivalent partner to past over-emphasis on ‘hard’ technologies.

Thus, if the operations of the home buildingsector are viewed as a continuum of multi-fac-eted but integrated services, it is not only possi-ble, but necessary, to include such ‘soft’technologies as planning, programming, design,management, scheduling, procurement, andgeneral goal setting and decision-making in ourconsiderations. Institutional constraints can belegitimately factored in as part of the servicemission of the housing sector, and questionssuch as the environmental impact of housingand quality of various life-style options can belinked to qualitative as well as quantitativestrategies for the deployment of concrete ‘hard’technologies (products, materials, systems, andassemblies). Based on the imperatives of ser-vice, technology assessment of hardware avoidslimited definitions of what may or may not beassigned to a narrowly defined construction sec-tor, thus allowing for the transfer of both tech-niques and products from the ‘outside.’ Theintention is to break out of existing conceptualcages, and to broaden the scope of the discus-

Eric Dluhosch 71

sion to include experiences and opportunities of-fered by all emerging and new technologies,regardless of their origin, while keeping in mindthe ultimate goal of a quality environment forall citizens, with least damage to be inflicted onour already strained natural resources.

Keeping the above in mind, what then arethe major technological changes which havehad an impact on housing? Is there a new anddifferent way in which we plan, design, procure,and assemble our houses today that is differentfrom that of a few decades ago?

I submit that indeed changes in home build-ing techniques and materials have been exten-sive and significant, even though, on thesurface, the actual appearance of the averageAmerican home has changed very little. Thereare two reasons for this: the first is the nature ofthe product, the house, as a symbol of socialstability and financial equity; and the secondhas to do with its long-term life as an invest-ment asset tied to land and location. Realchange has occurred, however, in the way thehouse is being put together, or, to use theproper technical term, assembled. Here majorchanges have affected the selection of substitutematerials, the introduction of mechanizedequipment and hand-held power tools, the deliv-ery to the site of prefabricated components andassemblies, and the substitution of traditionalfasteners, such as nails, staples, nail-plates,glues and zippers.

In that sense, the industry has learned its les-son well as an aftermath of the failed expecta-tions of Operation Breakthrough to create aviable mass market for fully-prefabricated mod-ular units by large quantity producers on largesites. In general, the trend has been away fromso-called ‘proprietary’ or ‘closed’ systems, to-wards a more evolutionary (and more orderly)emphasis on highly-rationalized subsystems,components, and elements, produced under con-trolled factory conditions, and supplied at con-trolled cost and quality.

In addition, the disappearance of large tractdevelopments in the seventies has forced pro-ducers to serve a more diversified market ofscattered sites distributed over larger geo-graphic areas. This has led to more careful con-siderations of ease of transportation, handling,

and product customization in assembly.Let me list some of the more dramatic

changes which have occurred along these lines:

Planning and Design

● More compact site planning, with savingsachieved by providing better planned and lesswasteful infrastructure services (i.e., sewers,water, power, and communications).

• Introduction of new dwelling types for newlife-styles such as cluster housing, zero lot linezoning, ‘theme’ villages, garden apartments,condos, and other ‘specialty’ types.

■ Better space utilization by more compact planlayouts, and the combining of functionalspaces into lofts and galleries, including theprovision of unfinished spaces for future ex-pansion.

• Better understanding of energy saving sys-tems as part of integrated design packages,using design as a means to minimize energyconsumption. This includes both active andpassive systems, such as solar heating, trombwalls, insulation sandwiches, atriums, solargreenhouses, and many more.All of the above-listed developments have

generated new markets for new products, suchas ‘life-style’ supermarkets for do-it-yourselfers,TV home-improvement programs, and newmagazines for yuppies and other new life-stylegroups. New home owners have become moresophisticated in their understanding of the waytheir homes are constructed, and thus may beexpected to demand better quality and higherperformance from their houses in the future aswell.

In terms of new techniques, the gradual in-troduction of low- and medium-cost microcom-puter systems in the design of housing has ledto the establishment of national as well as localdata bases, readily accessible to professionaland layman alike, thus allowing both access to awide range of services, product catalogs, andother related life-style information.

The linking of computer-aided design pro-grams with compatible software, with the ca-pability of almost instant energy calculations,cost estimating, inventory checking and design-


originated production control of automated ma-chines, has made it possible for the first time tocontrol the entire process by means of fully in-tegrated design-decision programs. Thus, deci-sions made in the design office can beelectronically linked with inventory and costcontrol, procurement, as well as controlling pro-duction in the factory, scheduling assembly onthe site, and delivering a customized house, asper specifications, at a guaranteed cost to thehome buyer. In addition, the increased memorycapacity of the new generation of microcomput-ers allows for simulated or real-time testing ofalternative designs in terms of cost, productionease, and customer acceptance. Given this ca-pacity to manipulate and combine, standardiza-tion by repetition becomes redundant, since it isnow possible to program the computer to takecognizance of complex and/or sophisticatedcompatibility rules for dimensional and/or posi-tional coordination, without necessarily repeat-ing the end product. This promises more, notless, design freedom in less time at equal, if notlower, cost to the end user.

As an extension of the above, it is now tech-nically feasible, both in the US. and to an evenlarger extent in Japan, to combine computer-aided design directly with the sales office,where the customer can actively participate inthe design of his or her future home plan and atthe same time get instant feedback on cost anddelivery.

Many of these innovations have been intro-duced piecemeal and, more often than not, weredeveloped independently of each other and on alimited application basis. It is now becoming ev-ident, especially in view of the Japanese exam-ple, that a fully-integrated, computer-aidedsystem which covers all aspects of decisionmaking from design to erection is not only feasi-ble, but virtually inevitable. This, in turn, willsignificantly affect the entire practice of design.An opportunity will be provided for the de-signer to again become a true ‘master builder,’since he or she will be able to assess the conse-quences of each design decision on every aspectand phase of the total design-delivery process,rather than having to depend on time-consum-ing and indeterminate processes of delegatedcontrol. The impact on design-office organiza-

tion, professional decision-making roles, andeducation is yet to be assessed, but surely willbe dramatic.

Beyond that, the capability of computer-aided design-delivery systems to communicatewith each other may be expected to have anequally dramatic effect on all other aspects ofdecision-making in the construction industry,both in terms of horizontal and vertical commu-nication flow, to wit:Horizontal:● Quick access to powerful local as well as na-

tional data-bases on a fee-for-service basis(e.g., Specwriter, AEPIC, etc.)

● Nationally coordinated and periodically up-dated catalogs of products, assemblies and en-tire home packages, including performanceand cost data (e.g., a Sears catalog of build-ing)

● Linkage between electronic-specification databases, testing, and code administration. Forexample, a given design can be matched byentering its specification ‘profile’ into a code-checking program, to give the designer instantfeedback on code violations or alternativecode-compliance rules

• Electronic control of inventories, linked tocost and availability

● Customized, as well as automated, productioncontrol

• Robots for productivity and quality control● Positive cost control and accurate quantity es-

timates, linked to design● Testing and comparison of alternative design

solutions against all or some of the above.Vertical:• Elimination of ‘back-f-the-envelope’ bidding• Bidding based on combination of best or least

expensive modular packages, rather than low-est overall estimate

● Direct end-user input into design process, al-lowing simulated as well as real customizationof plan, linked to instant cost estimate of de-sired solution

● Time-lapse monitoring of energy consumptionas part of budgeting home-maintenance ex-penses

• Scheduled operation and maintenanceroutines as part of electronic home-controlsystems

Eric Dluhosch 73

■ Full-service professional services that are inte-grated both horizontally and vertically andare multidisciplinary. Elimination of divisionbetween design and production.

Product/Process

■ Substitution of cheaper and/or better perfor-mance products, with better characteristics interms of handling, connections, interface andmaintenance ease

• Substitution of hand tools by power tools, andeventual transfer of most conventional site op-erations into the factory

● Introduction of computer-controlled machinesin production process. Increased diversifica-tion of end product

● Introduction of robots, both in production andin the home

● Gradual shift from ‘constructing’ a house bymeans of semi-processed and extensively site-modified materials to fully-processed and pre-coordinated elements, assemblies or entiremodules. Elimination of waste in cutting andother manipulations on-site.

Some examples of products or processes now onthe market:Materials:■ Annular ring- and spiral-shank nails● Single-layer siding/sheathing■ Improved paints● High-pressure, melamine-laminated, counter-

surfacing materials● Prefinished siding● Stress-rated lumber■ Self-sealing shingles• Epoxy coatings for plywood• Polyethylene vapor barriers■ Rubberized/plastic, single-sheet roof mem-

branes● Hardboard roofing panels■ Fiberglass insulation blankets/sheets• Prefinished large ceiling panels■ Prefinished tapeless, vinyl-covered, gypsum

drywall• Resilient tension flooring, applied without ad-

hesives and stapled only at edges● Solar-film window glass● Vinyl-extruded window sash.

Assemblies:■ Split-ring trusses■ Component wall panels (stapled or glued)• Wall-hung closets• Prehung doors and windows■ Pre-fab stairs• Wood foundations● Fiberglass modular bathrooms/showers■ Raised bathtub assembly with above-floor

trap• Washerless faucets■ Single-vent bathroom plumbing■ Snap-on pipe connections• Water-saving faucets, toilets, and shower

heads● Compressed-air-assisted toilet flush■ New air-to-air heat exchangers■ Self-diagnosing appliances.

The above list is far from complete, but is of-fered here as a sample of the rich variety ofnew products and assemblies which have en-tered the market since Operation Breakthrough.The impact of these innovations on all aspectsof construction practice is both subtle and all-pervasive. There is a clear shift from traditional‘craft’ skills to industrial-type ‘assembly’ skills,even on-site. In general, no work that can behandled mechanically (with some rare excep-tions, such as brick laying), is done manually.There is a parallel tendency to reduce the num-ber of joints by larger basic elements, and tomanage jointing operations as much as possiblefrom the factory. Joints constructed on-site aremore accurate and tighter due to power handtools, better joint compounds, joint fillers, andcover strips, all of which promise easier mainte-nance (as well as better performance) and meanless or minimal maintenance. Diaphragm con-struction permits the use of thinner wood sec-tions and wider spacing of framing members.The list goes on. As a consequence, homes areput up much faster and require less labor inputper unit. Quality control has shifted, to a largeextent, from the site to the factory. This has se-rious implications on inspection and code en-forcement. In fact, the whole system of codeadministration and enforcement is due for ex-tensive revision and will rely more and more oncomputerized data banks and mixed material/performance specifications.


Training of construction labor will require anew approach to specialized skill development,as well as periodic retraining in mid-career.

Unions will have to cooperate in negotiatingnew trade responsibilities, options for trade inte-gration, and a certain degree of skill reorienta-tion on a continuing basis.

Current distinctions between designer, devel-oper, contractor, and producer will becomeblurred, with integrated ‘full-service’ organiza-tions — teams providing comprehensive design-to-delivery services, possibly including financingand periodic upgrading options.

As a service sector, construction will rely onmaterials from both traditional constructionsupply sources, but also from formerly non-con-struction-oriented industries, such as electronics,plastics, fabrics, etc.

New specialities, such as geodesic domes,space-frame structures, inflatables, and fabric/tension structures are already entering the mar-ket as mature industries and are expected to in-vade the leisure and recreation segment of thehome-building market. Different skills in bothengineering/design and production/assemblywill develop as demand for these ‘exotic’ struc-tures increases.

With the exception of the mobile home, thetrend will be in the direction of ‘open’ or cata-log component systems.

Emphasis will be on the development of ‘fool-proof’ and easily maintained joints and connec-tions, allowing easy installation andmaintenance-free operation.

Factory production will continue to rely evenmore on computer-controlled machines and ro-bets, and will compete with conventional con-struction for a diversified and customizedmarket.

Craft skills will become part of a lucrative,but limited, market for retrofit, conversion, re-habilitation and historical preservation.

Houses will be sold with component warran-ties by manufacturers and may be financed bycomponent mix rather than as a finished prod-uct.

The development of plug-in, zip-in, and hook-up connections for telephone equipment, andthe use of plastics in plumbing, heating, andelectrical equipment will ease maintenance

problems, both in terms of currently outrageousservice fees for even minor repairs, and as an in-tegral part of self-monitoring devices, combinedwith home security, climate control and com-puter-controlled communication centers.

Much of routine maintenance will be per-formed on a do-it-yourself basis, with the pos-sibility of linking computer-controlledmonitoring systems with pre-recorded or locallybroadcast TV do-it-yourself instructional mes-sages. This will help the home owner to diag-nose, as well as correct, minor failures orcommunicate for help with warranty servicecenters.

Impact on Policy

Historical experience has shown that innova-tion responds to change, and change to innova-tion, in most unexpected ways, and that itusually manifests itself first at the interface ofthe frontiers which appear on the horizon of ourexpectations. If we fail to search for signs ofchange on the horizon of our hopes and expec-tations, crisis usually forces change and imposesinnovation. Much of our past reaction has beena response to crises of various origins, ratherthan the expansion of our freedom to act. Oper-ation Breakthrough has been mentioned beforeand may be seen as a reaction to the housing‘crisis’ of the sixties. The energy embargo of1973 precipitated another ‘crisis.’ Few of uswho have devoted years of our professional livesto the ‘solution’ of these crises have continuedto receive support for continuing our efforts,even though the ‘crisis’ may have lapsed. In-deed, we are asked to respond to new emergen-cies, to study new problems, to re-tool for newresearch. The tragedy is not that these projectshave failed, for they have not — at least not en-tirely — but the cost at which their limited suc-cess was purchased.

Thus, after having responded every five yearsto a new ‘crisis,’ it is my humble opinion thatwe do not need or deserve another ‘break-through’ or another heroic ‘if we can put a manon the moon’ effort.

What we need most is genuine continuity andthe removal of unnecessary institutional barriers

Eric Dluhosch 75

and restrictions, which have stunted sustainedefforts to take the long view of things, andwhich impede the ability to carry experimentsto their full maturation, including the chance offailure.

Since innovation by its very nature is impos-sible to predict — for then it would cease to beperceived as true innovation — it may be moreuseful to remove existing constraints which pre-vent us from breaking out of present conceptualcages and to develop a climate of confidence forlong-term institutional as well as private centersof excellence, which may or may not invent newgadgets, but which will act as powerful intellec-tual and technical brain trusts, and whose mem-bers will act as a vital source of basicknowledge and understanding for both govern-ment and industry. The former to act as a facili-tator, the latter as producer. In concrete termsthis implies:■

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m

Agreement on long-term national goals, be-yond party or factional concerns;Assurance of long-term support for so-calledcenters of excellence in universities and not-for-profit think tanks;Removal of institutional barriers, restrictiverules, and bureaucratic interference withlong-term research and development;A clear mandate for short-term initiatives andresearch, without false promise of long-termand sustained support, if not expected orlikely to be forthcoming;Clear allocation of responsibilities and com-mitments to research and development be-tween government, industry and theuniversities;Monitoring of objective assessment of new

•

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m

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technology as to its side effects, and in rela-tion to long-term goalsRemoval of conflicting jurisdictional rules be-tween local and national levels of governmentNon-adversary partnership between govern-ment, industry and universitiesReview of all restrictive zoning, based on newtechnical and life-style conditionsOperation and maintenance of urban infra-structure systems made independent of dis-continuous political mandates. Establishmentof minimum quality standards and technicalperformance criteria for capital investment inthe public sectorShort-term policy cycles to be coordinatedwith long-range national goalsAppointment of ‘technology watchers’ bothdomestically and abroad (based on Japaneseprecedent). Regular reporting to Office ofTechnology AssessmentEstablishment of national data base and in-formation exchange for construction technol-ogy advancement and dissemination ofresearch results and reports by technologywatchersEstablishment of regional construction tech-nology centers, say on the model of DutchBowcentrum, including affiliated continuedtraining and education programsSet up bonded warranties for new productsand processes to be introduced in market fortesting purposesUpgrading of equipment in trade schools anduniversities.

Eric Dluhosch is a Professor at the Massachusetts In-stitute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Energy In BuildingsDavid E. ClaridgeJohn P. Millhone

David E. Claridge

Overview of Building EnergyUse and Economic importance

I will begin with a brief overview of the eco-nomic importance of energy use in buildings.This somewhat overlaps John Eberhard’spresentation but has a different emphasis.

Consider the items that directly affect energyconsumption in a typical commercial officebuilding. These include the electrical and me-chanical systems, lighting, elevators, insulation,upgraded windows, and measures to reduce airleakage. The cost of these items will vary frombuilding to building, but will typically be onefourth to one third of the cost of the building.Thus, the construction cost of energy-related as-pects of a building is a very significant fractionof the building cost.

The energy to operate a building typicallycosts fifty cents to two dollars per square footper year — perhaps ten percent of the totalrental cost. These two items will thus contribute35 to 40 percent of the total cost of owning andoperating a building.

The cost of energy used in U. S. buildings isapproximately $150 billion per year or aboutfour percent of GNP This is essentially equiva-lent to the gross farm income, so we spend asmuch for the energy used by buildings as theincome generated by all farming activity in theUnited States. Everyone recognizes the impor-tance of the agricultural industry to the coun-try, but the magnitude of energy use inbuildings is not so widely recognized.

I don’t have hard numbers on the buildingconstruction employment due to the energy-re-lated systems and components, but it must ex-ceed one million jobs. I have examinedengineering employment in the energy systemsarea, and it appears that about 100,000 engi-neers work in all facets of the HVAC (heating,ventilating and air conditioning) field includingequipment design, equipment sales, buildingsystems design and specification, etc. Energy-re-

lated employment in buildings is clearly a sig-nificant factor in the national economy.

The importance and overall economic impactof energy use in buildings depends on how it ismeasured, but it is obviously more than onepercent and probably about five percent ofGNP? This is a significant factor in the nationaleconomy.

Energy Retrofit: A Case StudyThere are a numerous developments and top-

ics regarding building energy systems that couldbe discussed. I will illustrate an important pointwith a short case history.

We recently studied energy use and potentialmeasures to reduce use at the studentrecreation center at the University of Colorado.The University spends about $250,000 per yearon all types of energy for this 150,000 squarefoot building. A number of steps had beentaken to reduce energy use in this building sub-sequent to an earlier study of the building. Oneclassic measure implemented was reschedulingthe janitors to clean during operating hours in-stead of at night when the building was closed.This saved $25,000 per year in lighting cost. Arelated measure was delamping to further re-duce lighting energy use. Insulation was addedto make the locker rooms below the ice rinkmore comfortable, reduce their heating require-ments and decrease the refrigeration require-ments of the ice rink. A heat recovery systemwas added to the brine chillers to preheat hotwater and improve the system efficiency.

These measures resulted in savings of about$50,000 per year, but this year’s study found alarge number of additional measures which cansave an additional $70,000 per year for an in-vestment of $70,000. Many of these measureswere again very typical.

Outdoor air sensors are used to control base-board radiation heating in the swimming poolarea. These sensors were 11‘F out of calibra-tion. It is estimated that recalibration at a costof $100 will save $5,000 per year in heatingcost.

The usage recorded by a gas meter whichmeters clothes dryer consumption exceeded therated consumption of the dryers operated 24hours per day, and they are used less than 8hours per day.

Interestingly enough, many of the fixturesthat were delamped two or three years ago werefully lamped this year. The lamping crews hadreplaced all of the delamped tubes on their nextpass through the building. The ballasts must bedisabled to ensure that the building will staydelamped.

Reducing the exhaust air from a number ofthe building zones will show immediate benefit,Many fans continuously exhaust conditionedair. We also found that a pool cover would saveseveral thousand dollars a year — and this isn’tso typical, simply because few buildings haveswimming pools. There were a number of othersimilar energy-saving measures identified whichI don’t have time to discuss now.

The major point illustrated is that (with theexception of the pool cover), every measure rec-ommended by the current energy study was achange in building operation or an improvementin the energy-using systems within the building- not a change in the building envelope or con-figuration. This is typical of the majority of theopportunities for reducing energy use in thecommercial building sector.

Recent Trends

Recent trends in new building constructionshow a major increase in the number of installa-tions with variable air volume systems. Reheatsystems are not nearly as common as they werein the past. Variable speed fans and motors arenow being used in some buildings.

There have been numerous equipment im-provements in the residential sector. The sameis true in the commercial sector. Improvedcompressors and chillers are widely used; heatrecovery from exhaust air is no longer a nov-elty. This morning we heard about new com-puter applications in buildings. The level of

control which is possible today is much more so-phisticated than was available only a few yearsago. And this will continue to improve.

The use of unconditioned outside air for cool-ing when temperatures and humidity permit, socalled ‘economizer cooling,’ is an extremely ele-mentary concept; but it was very seldom usedten years ago. Today it is commonplace. Theuse of chilled water storage to permit use of off-peak power for cooling is not yet commonplace,but it is no longer a novelty.

Cogeneration of heat and electricity waswidely studied and discussed in the late 1970s,but was seldom used. Recent improvement ofthe natural gas supply situation has sparked fur-ther interest. Cogeneration is now actively mar-keted by gas utilities and is increasingly used.

Typical building shell improvements like in-sulation and better glazing are almost univer-sally used. Further improvements will come inthese areas, especially as high performanceglazing systems are perfected and marketed.Passive solar and daylighting are sometimesused in commercial buildings. I should also notethe improvement in electric lighting systems.Third-party ownership has led to a significantnumber of active solar installations on commer-cial properties.

While these changes have generally resultedin substantial (and sometimes spectacular) en-ergy savings, they have had a relatively minorimpact on the overall construction process. Theydo require a better understanding of buildingenergy flows and systems by the architects andengineers who effectively and efficiently designbuildings with low energy use, so the majorchange has been the need for improved designskills.

Future Trends

The last decade’s improvements in buildingenergy systems, equipment and materials willcontinue. Beyond these changes, I believe wewill see increased integration of components andsystems in buildings. The design process will re-

78 Energy In Buildings

quire practitioners with a deeper understandingof building energy systems and flows and whoknow how to integrate HVAC systems andcomponents with the other systems in efficientand functional buildings.

An example is inclusion of thermal mass toreduce energy use. You can seldom afford toadd mass to a building based on reduced en-ergy cost. However, if mass is planned for struc-tural, decorative or other purposes, it makes alot of sense to design so the building obtains amaximum thermal benefit from the mass.

We had a talk this morning about ‘smart’buildings or ‘intelligent’ buildings. Building con-trol systems will be much more than just energysystem controllers. They will often handle secu-rity, life safety systems, communications, etc.The energy related aspects of these systems willexpand to include control of daylighting, ther-mal integration, building tightness, indoor airquality, etc.

I believe that acceptance tests based on theuse of expert systems will eventually becomecommonplace. As we all know, after a buildingis built, the architect and engineer walk awayand seldom look at it again. We need to go be-yond just designing and constructing the build-ing. The design data should be used inconjunction with an acceptance test to let anowner know that when a building is accepted,the energy systems perform as designed. If theydon’t, the building won’t be accepted until theproblems are corrected. We don’t yet knowenough yet about building and systems perfor-mance measurement to develop comprehensivediagnostics immediately, but it will be possiblein a few years.

A related development will be diagnostic test-ing for existing buildings. Such tests will use amore limited data base but will still be veryuseful for maintenance and will provide valu-able information for prospective purchasers.

Rehabilitation and retrofit will be continuousfor functional purposes as well as for energypurposes. Perhaps one of the best illustrationsof this need is the Enerplex South Building nearPrinceton University. The Center for Energyand Environmental Studies at Princeton assistedthe design team and is now monitoring thebuilding — designed as a state-of-the-art build-

ing. Several cost-effective retrofit measureshave already been identified for this nearly newbuilding. Variable inlet fans are used in thisbuilding. Today, variable speed fans are viable.Installing variable speed fans, reducing thenight thermostat setting from 58°F to 55oF, andincreasing the supply air temperature from55°F to 60oF is projected to provide an addi-tional 21 percent reduction in the already lowheating requirements of this building. Note thatnone of these items will change the environmen-tal conditions in the building during occupiedhours.

This example illustrates that even state-of-the-art buildings can sometimes be improved bysystem changes. Consequently, I don’t believethat the existing building stock will be retrofit-ted and improved to the point where furtherretrofits are no longer needed after five years ortwenty-five years.

We can expect increased automation of theentire design and production process. Increas-ingly powerful CAD/CAM systems will beused as discussed this morning and more build-ings, assemblies and components will be manu-factured.

The changes discussed will lead to improvedbuilding environments and improved buildingquality. Both will be increasingly important infuture buildings. Cost-competitive techniqueshave been discussed at length and are impor-tant. However, note that Japanese automobilesare not cheaper than American automobiles,but they offer higher quality; and the Americanconsumer has learned to appreciate and pur-chase this quality. This will affect future build-ing purchases as well.

I expect these trends to provide an impetusfor industrialized construction. Energy consider-ations will not single-handedly bring about in-dustrialized construction, but will encouragethis transition. Tighter buildings with less airleakage will generally use less energy, and it isclearly easier to achieve reliably tight construc-tion with industrialized construction techniques.

Finally, I will note an issue of particular in-terest from a university perspective. Thesechanges will require a more integrated designteam whose members have better skills and bet-ter education than is generally available today.

David E. Claridge 79

This will require changes in university curricula.As a specific example, we’ve had a lot of recentinput from leading practicing engineers who saythat the education received by HVAC engi-neers is deficient. The basic and applied ther-mal sciences education received by the typicalengineer entering the field is less than one se-mester of his total education. It has been statedthat HVAC engineers take much longer to be-come productive than structural engineers andothers. This area must be addressed by universi-ties.

Conclusions

Observation of the energy-related changes inbuildings during the last decade and consider-ation of projected changes indicates that:

● Energy-related changes in buildings will notrequire major changes in the structure of thebuilding industries;

● Technical developments will continue to im-prove energy efficiency for the foreseeable fu-ture. The degree of change will depend onenergy prices;

■ Energy retrofits will continue for decades;• Consumers will demand improved environ-

mental and construction quality in buildings;■ Energy-related factors will contribute to the

trend toward industrialized construction; and• Universities will need to provide better engi-

neering education in the building sciences.

David E. Claridge is an Associate Professor of Civil,Environmental and Architectural Engineering in theBuilding Energy Engineering Program at the Universityof Colorado


John P. Millhone

I’m going to discuss two topics. First, I’m going to talk about the energy use in buildings,covering both residential and commercial, to es-tablish sort of a data base for this subject. ThenI’11 talk about residential energy use and what’soccurring in that area. Dave will talk aboutcommercial building energy use. We’ve madethis split with the understanding that we occa-sionally waiver into each other’s area becauseour interests are in both areas.

The office I head at DOE handles the regu-latory and the research activities of the Depart-ment. Usually I find myself tormented by theregulatory parts of the job. So it’s a great plea-sure for me to be able to talk about some of theresearching kinds of things, although we hadgotten into some regulations.

The energy use in the building sector is about26 quads, 16 of those in the residential area, 10in the commercial area, and here you can seehow the energy is used for different purposes inbuildings: space heating, water heating, refrig-eration dominates in the residential area; spaceheating, lighting and air conditioning in thecommercial area. (See Figure 1).

In the residential building sector shown inFigure 2, here the six percent mobile homewedge refers to Don Carlson described asHUD-built, manufactured homes. When wetalk about some of the modular and other man-ufactured portions of that market, that wedgewould increase.

Figure 3 shows square footage of buildingsrather than energy use in buildings. It indicatesthe diversity of different types of buildings,when we talk about the commercial buildingsector.

Now, what this means from a technical per-spective is that there are a lot of different kindsof buildings that you are dealing with in termsof design materials or what have you when youtalk about commercial buildings.

With that as the introduction, allow me tomake a couple more points as far as energy usein buildings in the U.S. is concerned. The 26quads represents about 36 percent of the na-tion’s energy. The energy use in buildings in theU.S. has remained fairly stable during the past

ten years in the 26 quad range. However, withinthat energy use, there have been some changesthat are fairly interesting. Natural gas use haschanged very little, gone down a small percent.Petroleum use has declined fairly rapidly, goingfrom about 18 percent to about 10 percent.Making up that gap has been a fairly signifi-cant increase in electricity energy use in build-ings, rising from about 50 percent to 60percent.

The coupling that I think is starting betweenenergy, the electricity use in buildings, and theelectricity industry is becoming increasingly sig-nificant. As you know, a number of changes aretaking place in the electric industry, and I thinkthat interaction will be recognized as increas-ingly important.

As we look forward the gap between energysupplies and demand is expected to tighten dur-ing the last half of the 1980s and remain fairlytight during the 1990s, creating some upwardpressures on prices. I hate to get into price fore-casts, although we do some of that work, but Ithink that the pressure on prices will becomemore compelling during the latter portion ofthis period.

Some forecasts have been made about howenergy will be used in buildings. Space heatingwill remain fairly high. Space cooling will be-come an increasing share, particularly in com-mercial buildings. Lighting will go down a bitas we get some more efficient lamps and fix-tures and increase use of daylighting. Waterheating will remain fairly stable.

The question that comes out of the energyuse in the buildings portion is: to what extentwill energy costs drive change? I believe that itwill be a moderate-to-major driver during thisperiod assuming the trends I’ve reveiwed arenot interrupted. The possibility of interruption,however, means that there’s an element of un-predictability about the extent to which energycosts will influence construction.

One of the things that should be mentionedalthough it’s a fuzzy area, is the extent to whichthe embedded costs of existing buildings will bea significant factor during the next few decades.Many buildings erected when energy was not asignificant cost factor will be in use for some

John P. Millhone 81

1980 ENERGY CONSUMPTION BY END-USEFigure 1

RESIDENTIAL BUILDINGS SECTOR Flgure 2

81 Mi l l i on O c c u p i e d Units in 1 9 8 0- 6 9 % O w n e r s- 3 1 % R e n t e r s

\ 6 %

MobileHome

EIA 1981 Annual Report to Congress, Volume 3, Supplement 3


time. The cost of building new structures willlend a certain economic and energy appeal tousing existing buildings rather than replacingthem with new ones.

I think that the relationship with electricityalso will become increasingly important.

Now, I’ve completed my remarks about theenergy use in buildings, and I’ll look more spe-cifically at how some of these affect what’s tak-ing place in the residential sector, and stray afew times into the other areas. I’ve followed theoutline, looking at the new and emerging tech-nologies, the way these technologies may be ap-plied and impacts on the building constructionindustries. I will go through the first part of thisfairly quickly and spend most of my time on theimpacts.

If we look at residential or commercial build-ings, we really look at three interacting systems:(1) the building envelope itself; (2) the HVACequipment that meets the needs of the peopleusing the building; (3) the community energysupply or utility system that supplies energy tothe buildings. The efficiency that comes as theend result depends upon the relationship andthe interaction among these three systems.

Now, when I talk about the technologies, Imean first, the building systems and HVACequipment and then the community systems.

I think you might look at some of the kindsof technologies that are currently taking placeas far as building systems are concerned. Thekinds of things such as insulation material be-coming significantly higher and possibly chang-ing thermal resistivity. Coating that may be puton the outside of buildings may be either reflec-tive of the energy coming in or absorbing, de-pending upon what is desired, and what servesthe energy value of that building most effec-tively. Some ‘smart’ glazings make it possible tohave two panes of glass with some material be-tween, where electrical current may be passedthrough the material, causing it to be reflectiveor let light through, depending upon what iswanted,

I think these are areas in which work is beingdone on new technologies that should emerge inthe near future.

We could spend a lot of time on indoor airquality. I think that area will be important, but

not one I particularly want to discuss at lengthat this time.

I think another important area here is theretrofitting of buildings. It’s harder to identifywhat research opportunities there are in the ret-rofit area. But because of what I think is thesignificance of retrofit of buildings, questions ofengineering, optimization and selection will be-come increasingly important.

Also in the building equipment area, thereare some very promising things going on. Ther-mally-activated heat pumps that have a COP of1.7 to 2.0 should be coming into the market-place in the 1990s. We already have heat-pumpwater heaters that are twice as efficient as elec-tric-resistance water heaters. Combustion heat-ing equipment with efficiencies over 90 percent,and advanced lighting concepts that have im-provements from five percent to over 100 per-cent already exit. These high improvementsnormally involve some device for replacing anincandescent light with a flourescent light, butthose technologies are available.

Integrated appliances are those which maybe made into a single unit by moving thermalenergy one way or another, rather than the sep-arate major appliance units that we currentlyhave.

Micro processors allow us to be much moresophisticated in our building control strategy. Sothere is a lot of technology there as well.

In the community systems area, I think theprincipal technologies of interest are districtheating and cooling. Reducing the cost of dis-trict heating and cooling can be accomplishedthrough lower piping costs, meters that aremore accurate, heat meters, and automatedcombusters, five to 25 megawatts, self-con-tained coal-fired or petroleum-fired combusters.

This has been just a quick mention of someof the technologies, but it’s representative of asort of seething, exciting area of technologicalresearch that includes many, many more thingsof the kind we’ve discussed.

The next question is the way these technol-ogies will be applied. One thing I think we al-ready know, and have demonstrated fairly well,is that we now can build residential buildingsthat are extremely energy efficient in terms of

John P. Millhone 83

reducing heating requirements in cold climates.That was one of the first targets at which weaimed. Single-family residences that have an en-ergy requirement of something like one or twoBTUs per square foot per degree day can be,and have been, built. These residences have aheating bill of a couple hundred dollars. Weknow how to do this. Less time has been spentattempting to make buildings energy efficient inhot climates where cooling is the principal con-cern, but we’re talking about engineering appli-cations not significantly different from thosethat we have used successfully in the cold- cli-mate areas. Therefore, I think that with theapplication of research in this area we’ll be ableto solve that problem as well.

1 think the significant point in many of theseareas is that it’s not really the absence of tech-nological capability that is going to slowprogress. 1 believe it’s going to be more a prob-lem of ‘know-how.’ Getting information abouthow to use the available technologies through-out the infrastructure, and also some economicconstraints, may be a hindrance, but not a lackof technology.

There will be an increase in attention givento how these technologies can be applied to ex-isting residences. The quality of constructionwill also be given more attention. So far a largepart of the research in the residential and com-mercial building areas has been spent looking athow component parts of buildings work. In-creasingly important, now and in the future, willbe to determine the interaction of these compo-nents and how to put all of the parts together sothe entire building operates efficiently.

Similar kinds of changes can occur in thebuilding equipment area. The increased ‘enve-lope’ performance of newly-built residences willcall for smaller-sized HVAC equipment. Themost cost-effective retrofits in existing resi-dences will often be done in the equipment arearather than ‘envelope’ retrofits.

As a result of the coupling of utility policywith building policy, more attention will begiven to utility load management. Micro-proces-sors can be used to monitor how building equip-ment operates in terms of its demand forelectricity. Such systems will enable utilities tobetter match load factors with demand rates.

COMMERCIAL BUILDINGS SECTOR4 4 . 6 B i l l i o n S q u a r e F e e t i n 1 9 7 9

Sales

Figure 3

EIA Nonresidential Building Energy Consumption Survey: Lodging 3.8%Building Characteristics 1981 4.5%


As a result of the technologies and otherthings that I’ve mentioned, there'll be more dis-trict heating and cooling systems initiated. Notthe large central systems that we’ve seen, butmore neighborhood-sized community systems.

With regard to the impacts of technology onthe building construction industries, DonCarlson’s paper contains some thought-provok-ing points. As a result of reading his paper, I’mnot as confident about some of the things I saidhere as I was before. Nevertheless, I will goonin an attempt to continue to stimulate somemore of the lively discussion that we have had.

Continued and increased attention to energyperformance in new residences, along withmany other factors, will contribute to pushingup the costs of conventional, single-family resi-dences. Concern for affordability will continueand grow. The shift to multi-family dwellingscompared to single-family dwellings will con-tinue, and a shift to smaller residences will oc-cur. Some residences we’re seeing now arereally very small in size. There are condomin-ium units of as little as 240 square feet, whichis about one-sixth of what is generally consid-ered to be the usual size.

There will be great concern for the quality ofconstruction because of the recognition of itssignificance to energy performance. Tighterhouses will cause increased attention to indoorair quality and other safety issues, adding po-tential cost for improvements. The move tomanufactured, modular and prebuilt housingwill continue at a moderate rate.

I come from rural Iowa, and despite the pre-dictions of his elimination that have gone onsince the turn of the century, the family farmerstill hangs on there pretty tightly. I think thatthe home builder is much the same breed, andthere will be many home builders around longafter the forecasts of their demise have runtheir course.

There will be some increased labor shifts.This is a controversial question, and maybe wecan target it. At several points here, I havetalked about the impact of technology on laborand tried to predict where the impact mightleast affect skilled or moderately skilled labor,It seems tome that it’s at least arguable thatmanufactured housing will lead to some reduc-tion in the skill level required for workers.

Home builders will continue to expand intothe multi-family and small commercial area.The retrofit activity will increase and providejobs to some of those unable to find employ-ment in new construction. The retrofit field willbecome more sophisticated, however, involvingcomputer simulation of various retrofit technol-ogies.

The heating, cooling and appliance manufac-turing industries will remain active, althoughtheir product lines will change. However, ifthese industries fail to make the product im-provements that may be called for, they willleave the door open for increased foreign com-petition.

The interaction between building energy con-servation activities and the utilities’ planningpolicy will become more apparent. This willlead to increased planning and management ac-tivities in terms of that interaction.

Investment in district heating and coolingsystems will create construction jobs in urbanareas. This is another area where I think me-dium and mid-level skills could be employed.These systems could be included very effec-tively when considering investments for renovat-ing the urban infrastructure.

John F? Millhone is Director of the Office of BuildingEnergy Research and Development at the United StatesDepartment of Energy

6 ConstructionTechnologiesRichard L. Tucker

Richard L. Tucker

I’m not sure I agree with some statementsmade in previous papers. Rather than disagreewith them, I'll just discuss the fact that there isa concerted interest and concern, particularlyamong the private community in this country,over the cost of construction itself. This is prob-ably evidenced most closely by the BusinessRoundtable. The Business Roundtable is nowright in the middle of Phase Three of a rathermassive effort to look at the whole issue ofgrowing costs in construction projects.

As you know, the Business Roundtable ismade up of chief executive officers of the na-tion’s largest corporations. They’ve put severalmillion dollars of direct funding into this pro-gram, just trying to get a handle on the cost ofconstruction and on what can be done to im-prove it. I would encourage you to write tothem and get a copy of their reports. They have23 separate reports that have been published.The reports are free, including a summary re-port entitled “More Construction for theMoney.”

They’re now into Phase Three with an effortto try to educate the nation about all of the dif-ferent factors relating to construction costs andabout what should be done to improve thesefactors.

I have a different classification of construc-tion than what John Eberhard presented, Myclassification results from a purely technologicalperspective. My four major categories include:residential buildings; non-residential buildings;engineered construction; and industrial con-struction. I would claim to you that these fourcategories are very distinct in terms of the typesof workers that are involved in them, in termsof the types of construction companies, and interms of the types of designers that participatein the projects.

Residential construction is dominated princi-pally by architects, if there are any profes-sionals at all. There are many house designersin the world that don’t have any type of degree.The people that work in residential construction

are relatively unskilled, compared to those thatwork in the other types of construction.

MR. EBERHARD: Did you say residentialis dominated by architects?

MR. TUCKER: I say if there are any profes-sionals, it’s dominated by architects. It’s reallydominated by the people that push and developthem as far as the technical aspects of it areconcerned.

Now, I’m not talking about the land develop-ment, John, I’m talking from the standpoint ofthe structural design, the components that gointo it. All of this is a technical classificationrather than a marketing classification.

Non-residental buildings are certainly domi-nated by architects. The engineering componentin buildings is relatively small compared to thearchitectural component.

The engineered construction probably shouldbe classified as civil engineered construction.That is, it is dominated by the civil engineeringcommunity: highways, dams, bridges, thosekinds of things.

Industrial construction is dominated by othertypes of engineers: chemical, mechanical andelectrical engineers. These projects includepower plants, process plants, and other similarareas.

The size of the industry is one of the prob-lems that we have. We don’t know how to mea-sure the size. Figure 1 came out of the BusinessRoundtable study in which they tried to com-pare the Census Bureau’s numbers and theirown estimates. On the left, it shows the total in-dustry in the United States comprised $229 bil-lion for 1979. The Business Roundtable wentback and took data that they had from theirown companies and showed some rather majorchanges in it and put the size at a round num-ber of $300 billion a year.

This also shows, if you believe these numberson the right, the relative magnitude of the dif-ferent components of the industry, and it showsperhaps a different set of numbers than whatJohn gave us yesterday in his presentation. Anyway you look at it, the industry is very largeand the opportunities for change are significant.

Similar data from the Roundtable show theconstruction cost index and that it is, at best,subject to dispute. It’s part of the problem wehave; we can’t measure anything we agree on.Nonetheless, the construction cost index, as youlook at numbers from back at 1967, shows thatover the past fifteen years or so constructioncosts have gone up approximately 50 percentmore than the rate of inflation as a whole forthe nation.

The productivity index is just as controver-sial. I could show a variety of statistics. They allshow the same kinds of trends, and that is thatover the past fifteen or twenty years or so, con-struction productivity has dropped, again about50 percent, compared to the rest of the econ-om y.

Now, the Roundtable is very concernedabout this. In contrast to some of the thingsthat we were discussing yesterday, what thesecompanies are saying is they’re only going toput a certain amount of money into construc-tion, and unless the productivity goes up,they’re not going to build as much. Indeed, thenation’s larger companies have quit building asmuch as they have. It’s a crisis as far as they’reconcerned.

One of the unique characteristics of construc-tion is that it’s very heavily dependent upon jobsite labor, and productivity almost translates tothe productivity of the craftman’s time. You’renot going to find the numbers in Figure 2 in theliterature because I made them up,

(Laughter.)MR. TUCKER: But I made them up with a

certain amount of background, and you canfind a lot of numbers in the literature that arecompatible with these. I’ve shown these figuresall over the world and to many of the compa-nies in the United States, and what they tell meis that if anything the top number, showing 40percent productive labor time, is a little bithigh, and they feel that perhaps it realisticallyshould be lower than that.

That doesn’t mean that craftsmen aren’t busymore than 40 percent of the time. It means thattheir time is not necessarily spent productively.

TYPICAL CONSTRUCTION WORKER TIME Figure 1

PRODUCTIVE 40%

UNPRODUCTIVE

Personal 5%Ju r i sd i c t i ona l 15%Poor Methods 20%Administrative Delays 20%

Figure 2

$ 1495

9 4 6

I 546

2 9 9

11 59

26.47

9 9 0 3

4 9 0 0

$ 6 9 014 .2

2324 5

146

2 6 5

9 9 0

4 9 0

TOTAL NEW CONSTRUCTION $22895 $3000

88 Construction Technologies

However, we have a lot of work sampling stud-ies and other data that show — I guess the par-ticular extreme is the nuclear power plants —that 30 percent is about all of the time thatthey’re busy at all on some projects.

If you look at the sources of the other 60 per-cent of craftsman time, then some of it perhapsis personal. I put five percent down there. Somepeople might claim that it’s higher. Ten percentis about as high as you can find anyone thatwould realistically claim that it is on the aver-age.

Jurisdictional problems may be due tounions, but not necessarily so. Even the meritshop companies have a kind of artificial juris-diction that they’ve established where one craftdoes one thing and one craft another thing.Carpenters don’t put in conduit, for example,even though they’re quite capable of putting inconduit. There are lots of jurisdictional prob-lems. Operators can’t unload the truck, It takesa particular craft that has the stuff on the truckto unload their stuff. Perhaps that’s some wast-age of time.

Perhaps the ones that we should focus on aremostly the bottom two, the poor methods andthe administrative delays. The methods them-selves are the things that relate specifically totechnology and the technology of putting thework into place, that of physically making theattachments.

Administrative delays relate pretty closely tothe computer issues that Harry was talkingabout yesterday. These projects have many par-ties participating in them, and the communica-tions are very tough. I could show you someother figures that would show you magnitude,but I won’t because of time.

If we want to see the opportunities for im-provement from a technological standpoint,then we probably should look at the differentareas of a project as they take place. These areshown in Figure 3, as well as indicators of in-efficiency.

Then if you look at the sources of ineffi-ciency, and the things that might be indicatorsof inefficiency, how difficult is it to estimatecosts for an area, how sensitive is that area todesign, what’s the lead time for schedule in thearea, how much rework takes place, and so

forth, then you can begin to get some kind of afeel for it. The numbers in Figures 4-7 representthe opportunities for technological improve-ment. The manner in which we developed quan-titative numbers was to survey ratherknowledgeable people in some of the nation’slargest companies and ask them to rate these ona scale of one to ten. The number one meantthat it was very easy to do something, a tenmeant that there was a lot of difficulty and hada lot of inefficiency associated with it.

Then we took those average ratings and mul-tiplied them by the percentage costs of a totalproject and broke them into four sectors. Thepower sector is one, and if you look at that sec-tor (Figure 7), then it’s obvious that the lengthof the bar, which is a combination of the rela-tive cost impact and the difficulty on a project,it falls into the piping and mechanical equipment installation and electrical category.

Heavy industrial projects (Figure 6), such asprocess plants and steel mills, show the samemajor areas: piping, mechanical equipment, in-stallation, electrical. Piping shows up muchmore dominantly. As a matter of fact, piping isnot only the largest portion of those projects,but also the most inefficient element of thoseprojects, and so the length of that bar is ratherobvious.

Now, remember this is a $60 billion per yearindustry. So it’s not something to sneeze at. It iscomparable to the size of the housing industry.

Light industrial plants are more building ori-ented, and as a result, the things that relate tobuildings and some other things begin to be-come prominent. The structure, for example,begins to be a prominent area in light industrialbuildings.

Then the structure, the enclosure skin andthe interior finishes, are all very prominent, andas you can see, electrical is relatively more im-portant in buildings than you would think. Fromthe presentations we heard yesterday, electricalis going to be increasingly important in build-ings.

Well, these are where we should probably beputting our attention. If you look at the areas ofhighest technology potential, then in buildings itfalls into the structure, enclosure skin, interiorfinishes and electrical; in the other sectors, intothese other three areas.

Richard L. Tucker

Even in buildings, I might advise you thatplumbing, piping, those things are not insignifi-cant. They’re areas that justify attention.

If you look at an industry-wide basis and tryto focus on the areas that have the greatest po-tential for this $300 billion a year industry,strictly from a technological improvementopportunity, then the piping, mechanical equip-ment, installation, electrical are the highest ar-eas of potential. This is a weighted scale. Thehigh areas of potential involve the structure and

setting of vessels in the HVAC systems, install-ing special equipment and instrumentation, andare not incompatible with the things that weheard yesterday.

Some areas have lower potential, We com-plain a lot about roofing in buildings, and it cer-tainly has an impact from a long-rangeoperation standpoint. It has very little impactfrom the standpoint of efficiency of installingthe project itself. The same thing is true withinsulation and painting. Those are relatively

a

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9

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DIFFICULTY IN ESTIMATING COSTS

SENSITIVITY TO TIMELINESS & QUALITYOF DESIGN

NECESSARY LEAD TIME FOR SCHEDULING

PROBLEMS IN OBTAINING PROPERMATERIALS (CONSTRUCTION EFFORT—NOT DESIGN)

UNPLANNED REWORK ON YOUR TYPICALPROJECTS

WHICH REQUIRES THE MOSTCOMMUNICATlONS BETWEEN ENGINEERING& CONSTRUCTION TEAMS

PROBLEMS IN MATERIALS HANDLING &DISTRIBUTION

SENSITIVITY TO PREFABRICATIONTOLERANCES AND ACCURACY

NUMBER OF DIFFERENT CRAFTS REQuIRED

DEPENDENCE ON FOREMEN COMPETENCE

CRAFTSMAN SKILL NEEDED TO PERFORMOPERATION

REQUIRED SPECIALIZED TOOLS &EQUIPMENT FOR CONSTRUCTION

NECESSARY COORDINATION WITHSUPPORT CRAFTS (SCAFFOLDING. WELDINGTESTING, ETC )

MOST WASTED TIME AMONG CRAFTSMEN

WASTED TIME WAITING FOR INSPECTIONS

I CIVIL MECHANICAL OTHERS

89

Figure 3


small portions of projects, and they’re relativelyefficient compared to the other aspects of theprojects.

We went through some number systems andtried to take just those three areas of highestpotential and estimate the savings on a nation-wide basis per year, if you could just makethose three areas no more inefficient than theaverage of the rest as a whole. So this isn’t thepotential that we could improve those, but justbringing them down to the same level of ineffi-ciency as everything else, and as you can see inFigure 8, the potential savings are significant.

If you’re wondering what the average cost ofthese projects is, this is based on a $25 millionbuilding because that was what was reported bythe companies, and it shows an average savingsof $91,000, even though those three areas aren’tthe highest potentials for buildings.

Incidentally, the structure is only an area ofpotential because of its relative magnitude inthe project. It’s a relatively efficient area of aproject compared to the other areas of a build-ing project.

I think the average cost of light industrialprojects was about $120 million, and the heavyindustrial, about $200 million, and powerplants, about $500 million. On a nationwide ba-sis for the gross industry then, the figures showthat we could save about two billion dollars ayear by just improving those three areas, not tosay the other areas that are of higher potentialin buildings.

Then you can go back and look at the activi-ties that go into each of these areas. We pickedsix of these areas: electrical, instrumentation,piping, equipment installation, and then webroke the structure into two areas because con-crete and steel construction have distinctly dif-ferent characteristics.

We’ve investigated them pretty carefully.(Figures 9-14). We took the activities involvedin steel construction, for example, setting thecolumns, setting the beams, making the connec-tions as shown in Figure 14. The temporaryconnections and the final connections, putting inshims and cleaning the anchor bolts seem to bethe major things in steel construction. We deter-mined how much time each of these takes. Set-ting the column takes about 35 percent of the

time in the cycle; setting the beams, 25 percent;final connections, 20 percent; temporary con-nections, 15 percent. I wouldn’t claim to wantto bet a lot of money on the accuracy of thesenumbers, but they’re as good as I’ve seen.

Then we asked the people in the field, the su-perintendents in charge of these operations, torate each of these areas on the basis of howcomplicated it is, the complexity of that par-ticular activity, how much skill, the level ofskill required for that activity, and then the de-pendence on accurate technical information forthat activity because of this interface betweendesign and construction that takes place, andthat’s what the ratings here indicate.

Invariably, what we find is that the ones thattake the most time are also the ones that ratehighest on all three of these areas. So it’s possi-ble to determine which kinds of activities tendto lend themselves to this inefficiency. It issomewhat subjective, but about as quantitativeas we can make it at this stage.

Figure 13 is for concrete; constructing theform, setting the reinforcement, locating theforms, placing the concrete, aligning the forms,removing the forms after you’ve got the con-crete placed, and so forth.

From this we focused on six activities and ex-amined technological improvements that wouldlend themselves to major changes.

What we find in concrete work is that the de-signers, the structural engineers, architects, andso forth, tend to design the concrete structureas it’s going to be in the final building. Theydon’t tend to put much detail in design on howit gets in place. They will show where the re-inforcement is located. They don’t say anythingabout imbeds. Architects love to put a lot of im-beds in places for electrical boxes and thosesorts of things, and those just play havoc withthe construction crews because those imbedssomehow are supposed to be there when it’s fin-ished, but they’re not designed on how they’reattached to the forms while you place the con-crete in them. When you put some kind of elec-trical box into the concrete form, and youdepend on the workers in the field to somehowhold it in exact position while you place the con-crete around it and push it around, it causes alot of difficulties.

Richard L. Tucker 91

The lack of communication between design-ers and the people physically constructing thesethings causes lots of problems. Well, in the costof concrete structures, the cost of the concreteform work itself is roughly equivalent to thecost of the concrete, the cost of the concreteand the steel. The cost of just the form work isroughly half the total cost, and it’s the most vol-atile thing. If you talk to a construction com-pany, they’ll always tell you that they couldcare less about how much concrete it takes be-cause they can figure that up pretty good, butthey put all of their attention on figuring outhow to design the form work and how to reusethe forms.

If you look at all of the other elements ofconstruction, whether it’s electrical, instrumen-tation, equipment setting or anything else, you’llfind that the common thing is making connec-tions; that is the common problem that wastes

EARTHWORK. . . . . . . . .

FOUNDATIONS . . . . . . .

STRUCTURE . . . . . . . . .

ENCLOSURE SKIN . . . . . .

INTERIOR FlNISHES . . . . .

ROOFING. . . . . . . . . .

PIPING . . . . . . . . . . .

PLUMBING . . . . . . . . .

VESSELS. . . . . . . . . . .

HVAC. . . . . . . . . . . .

MECHANICAL EQUIPMENT . .

SPECIAL EQUIP INSTALL . . .

ELECTRICAL . . . . . . . . .

INSTRUMENTATION . . . . .

INSULATION . . . . . . . .

COATINGS AND PAINTING .

FIRE PROOFING/PROTECTlON.

BUILDINGS

all of the time in the construction industry:making any kind of connection, whether it’s abeam to a column, a beam to a beam, electricalwire that you’re putting terminations in, what-ever. The connections are the things that havethe very high level of inefficiency. We haven’tyet learned how to do that with robotics or anyother kinds of machines. It still takes peopleand is a very inefficient operation, a lot ofstanding around all the time they’re doing it.

Now, I want to talk about the breakdown be-tween design and construction. I spent a lot oftime studying a large precast erection project afew years ago in Houston. It had about 2,500beams and columns and double-Ts that had tobe put in place. We were studying the effi-ciency of the erection operation rather care-fully. The vertical scale on Figure 15 is thenumber of pieces that were erected each day.The horizontal scale is time. As you can see, the

7

—

I

Figure 4


pieces/day varies all over the place. The factorsthat cost time are fit-up problems.

Figure 16 illustrates that if you put a dou-ble-T on a ledger beam that you have some tol-erance. One inch is typical. We took severalstructures and compared them. The one-inchtolerance that these were designed for resultedin a five-inch bearing area plus or minus a halfinch. You can see the range shown in aboutseven thousand measurements. What this says isthat we need to integrate the design, definition,construction sequence much more and have alot more interaction between the designers andthe others. This is the potential impact of thatintegration. I’ve also put this on the handout.

In terms of combined impact of all of thesethings, I suggest to you that we’re going to seesome rather major changes. I’m claiming that

Figure 5

EARTHWORK. . . . . . . . .


STRUCTURE . . . . . . . . .


INTERIOR FINISHES . . . . .

ROOFING. . . . . . . . . .

PIPING . . . . . . . . . . .

PLUMBING . . . . ● . . . .

VESSELS. . . . . . . . . ,

HVAC. . . . . . . . . . . .



ELECTRICAL . . . . . . . . .


INSULATI0N . . . . . . . .


FIREPROOFlNG/PROTECTION.

LIGHT INDUSTRIAL

43

technological changes are going to be made inthe construction aspect of the industry, regard-less of whether there’s a Government programor not. The climate is here, We’re going to haveto have more integration of the design and con-struction. We’re even going to get the ownersinto these things. We’re going to find more ma-chine-driven construction processes instead ofpeople-driven construction processes, and we’regoing to find some major revisions in contractstrategies. Instead of completing a design andputting the thing out for competitive bids, we’regoing to have to get the contractors in on it atan earlier stage. We’ll have to have contractsthat will speak to that point.

Richard L, Tucker is Director of the Construction in-dustry Institute at the College of Engineering, Univer-sity of Texas at Austin.

10

.—


EARTHWORK. . . . . . . , ,


STRUCTURE . . . . . . . . .



ROOFING. . . . . . . . . .

PIPING . . . . . . . . . . .

PLUMBING . . . . . . . . .

VESSELS. . . . . . . . . . .

HVAC. . . . . . . . . . . .



ELECTRICAL . . . . . . . . .


INSULATION . . . . . . . .


FIREPROOFING\PROTECTION .

H E A V Y I N D U S T R I A L

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EARTHWORK. . . . . . . . .


STRUCTURE . . . . . . . . .



ROOFING. . . . . . . . . .

PIPING . . . . . . . . . . .

PLUMBING . . . . . . . . .

VESSELS. . . . . . . . . . .

HVAC. . . . . . . . . . . .



ELECTRICAL . . . . . . . . .


INSULATION . . . . . . . .


FIREPROOFlNG/PROTECTION .

POWER


I n d i v i d u a l Project Basis ($ mill ions)

Buildings (25 million)

Light Industrial ($120 million)

Heavy Industrial ($190 million)

Power ($470 million)

.006 .039 .046 $ .091 mil l ion

.241 .174 . 2 5 8 $ 0 . 6 7 3 m i l l i o n

3.802 1.002 1.410 $ 6.214 mil l ion

5.060 3.046 2.744 $10.850 mil l ion

G r o s s I n d u s t r y B a s i s ( $ b i l l i o n s )

B u i l d i n g s ( $ 6 9 b i l l i o n ) .017 .108 .128 $ . 2 5 3 b i l l i o n

Light Industrial ($33 billion) .067 .048 .071 $ .186 billion

Heavy Industrial ($33 billion) .667 .176 .247 $ 1.090 billion

Power ($27 billion) .292 .176 .158 $ .626 billion— . —

Total ($162 billion) 1.043 .508 .604 $ 2.155 billion

*Assumpt ions

Figure 8

1 . Labor component is 25% of a project .2. I m p r o v e m e n t would al low Piping, Mechanical Equipment and Electr ical

t o a c h i e v e a v e r a g e i n d i c a t o r r a t i n g s .3 . N u m b e r s i n p a r e n t h e s e s a r e t o t a l p r o j e c t c o s t s .


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Richard L. Tucker

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97

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Figure 16

Structural SystemsWendel R. Wendel

I’m going to talk about what we’ve been do-ing at Space Structures in the hardware area aswell as the software area.

By hardware I mean the physical nuts andbolts, and by software I mean the computer-aided techniques that we build at Space Struc-tures.

Secondarily, I want to talk about the devel-opment of a new organizational position ofSpace Structures in the industry as a systemsspecialist. I want to cover eight concepts.

One is the standardization of design/fabrica-tion process. We want to get away from theidea that you’re going to standardize a compo-nent and you’re going to mass produce thosewidgets and send them out the door, and that’sgoing to save building technology. That’s a mis-taken idea. It will always be wrong, It willnever apply. The idea is that you standardizethe process of how something’s built.

Secondly, I want to talk about new formsand shapes. We basically have a box mentality.All of the buildings we are sitting in right noware box shape. There are a lot of other formsand shapes which may be much more appropri-ate in many different applications. We reallyare just beginning to touch upon those possibil-ities.

Third, 1 want to talk about the use of light-weight building materials. Our specialty isworking with aluminum, working with mem-brane materials, working in plastics and glass,Light weight materials open up the market-place. Space Structures is based in New Yorkbut we have offices throughout the world.We’re not just a New York firm or a regionalfirm, but a world firm.

1 want to talk about the three Rs of build-ings. I’ve almost never or rarely talked aboutthis, but we have a bunch of people out theredesigning buildings which are basically monu-ments. We really should start looking about thethree basic Rs, which means relocatability,readaptability, recyclability of the building.

The fifth one we want to talk about is the

restructuring of the labor which goes into build-ing with new building technology. In our ownexperience, we find 90 percent of the work doneis in the shop, only ten percent in the field. Wenever build anything in the field. We only as-semble it in the field. We fabricate in ourplants.

I also want to talk about the new market outthere which extends the building technology. Iknow we are having our guest here fromNASA talking about NASA technology comingback to the building industry. I actually thinkwe can get more than the technology fromNASA, and I want to talk about what our pro-grams have been in those areas. The market-place is not just terrestrial. You’ve got to thinkon a global, galactic scale. Eventually, we wantto change the name of the corporation fromSpace Structures International Corporation.Our plans are once we get something in space,we want to change it to Space Structures inter-galactic Corporation.

We also want to talk about quality, quality inthe sense that buildings should be structural art.We somehow get the idea that we’re findingcheaper and cheaper ways to put up buildings,and that’s really what the needs are. But that isnot the real cost of buildings. We could reallybuild most buildings as pup tents, and basicallyprotect ourselves from the environment, fromthe rain, the weather conditions and things likethat. A lot of the cost of buildings is it’s socialstatus indicator, the costs which go into a build-ing, and if we’re doing that, we should at leastspend the money in the planning to create bet-ter looking buildings.

Most buildings I find are really trashy, indus-trial designs. I think there’s a lot more whichcan be done, especially if we use technology inthose areas, and I think we can be much morecreative.

And the last item is the development of thenew teams. As a systems specialist in the indus-try, I see the industry greatly changing. I’vefound in my thirteen years in building my com-pany we’ve seen a change in that amount oftime. We’ll talk at the end about where those

changes come about and how the new teamsare being put together.

As I said, Space Structures’ philosophy is‘where visions take shape,’ and we’re going totalk about space networks, new forms, newshapes and new systems, and we’ll talk aboutthe second generation of space frames. In theproducts that we do, we do space frames whichwe call Octa Hubs and Orba Hubs, two differ-ent systems, and the new designs tool is calledSSCAD, Space Structures Computer AidedDesign.

Back in 1980, I invented two new spaceframe systems. The red one in my hand (seeFigure 1) is called Octa Hub. The one in myleft hand, the golden, brass colored one is calledthe Orba Hub system. They were inventedabout six weeks apart from each other. Both arepatented systems, and basically it’s the result ofabout ten years of work in doing different typesof structures, mainly specializing in domes.

We decided to get into the space frame areaafter I had sold two contracts, one for a bigatrium and skylight on the Hyatt Hotel in Crys-tal City, Va. and one for three sports enclosuresfor Aramco.

Figures 2 and 3 show the Octa Hub system,which 1 invented in 1980. Our basic material isaluminum here. It’s an extrusion bolted to-gether with square tubing where the tubing cantake various wall thicknesses. We’re using pinsrather than bolts to put it together to reducedown the amount of on-site installation time.With an Octa Hub system, we typically mightbe doing a million dollar job and charging only$50,000 for the installation.

Figures 4 and 5 show details of the OrbaHub system. It is a solid aluminum ball. Ta-pered ends, struts, and multiple types of fin-ishes can be put on the system.

A space frame can be a very simple struc-ture. Figure 6 shows a flat structure that mostpeople expect when they think of space frames.Here in the United States we expect spaceframes to be little atriums or canopies. Butspace frames can take many forms. Figure 7shows the Federal Express Pavilian at the

Figure 1

106 Structural Systems

Figure 2

Figure 3

World’s Fair down in Knoxville I did for Fed-eral Express back in 1982. It’s a multiplatetype of design. The whole building is a spaceframe, as is the laser tower.

I now want to talk about SSCAD, which isone of the main tools and the assets of spacestructures. We started writing our own programback in 1973. At that time we were buyingcomputer time from Boeing and McDonnellDouglas. About three and a half years ago, webought our first computer, and we started fur-ther development of SSCAD to give us a totalknowledge system.

One of the things we’ve seen in some of thetalks yesterday about design, we’ve almosttalked about computer systems basically replac-ing the pencil. Well, at Space Structures, thecomputer systems replaced the pencils andeventually we go up and we’ll take everybody’spencil away from them. We’re going to goldplate it, put it up on the wall and say, “The lastday a pencil was ever used at Space Struc-tures.” We want to eventually get there.

But what we want to say is also the computersystems can extend the design process. The ideaof computers replacing what’s being draftedright now is fine, but that’s not the real impact.The real impact is when we change the designprocess, change the possibilities, change the po-tential.

SSCAD is a computer system designed inabout ten main sections. Each amount of thepie on Figure 8 indicates about its magnitude.We use the system from the proposal stagesthrough design, through loading, which meansloading up the structure for analysis, and werun our analysis, our finite element anaylsis, onit. We use it for post-analysis processing. Wegenerate all drawings from it. It’s used in plan-ning out the fabrication, material management.It’s used to plan out the installation of the rig-ging, which is used to lift the structure, and it’sused to store historical data.

We found that while virtually all the com-puter hardware we wanted was available, soft-ware was basically not applicable. We spentalmost three times that amount in our own in-house software development over the years aswe have on hardware. You have to plan onthose types of expenditures if the system is

Wendel R. Wendel 107

really going to work. You have to look at havingan integrated system which can grow with thecorporation.

Our basic system uses a Hewlett Packard9000 series 32 bit processor, and we have ashared resource management system. This isthe fastest equipment available right now, andit’s probably the right direction rather than ourmain frame direction. We look at going both di-rections. The shared resource management ap-preach gives us capability of having almostunlimited units connecting the others, sharingthe resources through a mainline data-storagearea, and we can hook up to our system. Rightnow we’re running five separate units on it, plusone up in Cambridge. We can run 140 or 150units with no problems.

SSCAD is menu-drive type program. Figures9 and 10 show two sections of menu-driven sys-tem. We can teach people how to use the sys-tem in one day. We often have architects andengineers coming for one-day sessions at SpaceStructures to design their projects. Within anhour’s time they can be using the system. It istruly user friendly. In most of the computer sys-tems you’re keypunching in numerical informa-tion. You really want to be putting in graphicalinformation. You want much more sophisti-cated programs. That is where we have spentour money.

Figure 9 shows how the menu basically hassoft keys on it. You hit, let’s say, number one,preprocessing menu. You bring it up (Figure10), and you say you want to generate a spaceframe geometry. So you hit another one again,and you can get it to generate all different typesof forms and shapes. In space frames, you cando horizontal, vertical, sloped, towers, trusses,multi-layers, pyramids, multiple plates, steps,conical domes, cylindrical, anything the mindcan imagine. The idea of a space frame as be-ing a little horizontal form is very much limitedin network thinking. Network thinking givesyou the capability of looking at a lot more dif-ferent forms, and you get efficiency out ofform.

Figure 11 shows a design for a hanger for a747, a large, curved form. For this aircraft, you

Figure 4

Figure 5

need 196 feet clear span going into it, and theSSCAD system shows the types of forms you


can generate. This form was generated in lessthan two or three minutes on the computer.You basically define the outlines of the struc-ture. You can generate the form. You canmanipulate and transform it.

Using color coding, we can color the outermembers, the diagonal members, the innermembers. The program enables the user to lookat a drawing and modify it, and make designdecisions and look at the options.

We find often when architects come to ouroperations and spend a day with us designing intheir particular project; we can review 20 or 30design concepts. In contrast, in the design pro-fession, you say 50 percent of the time is spentpushing a pencil. The result is that often thefirst design on the paper typically is the last de-sign on the paper. It doesn’t give you muchflexibility.

We went into network design because withthe complexity and the sophistication of build-ings, you want the capability of many differentforms and shapes.

Figure 12 shows a ridge type of form, aStroh’s Beer project we’re building for a retrofit

project in Detroit. The geometry here was gen-erated in less than one minute, the SSCAD sys-tem is all graphically oriented.

Figure 13 is a bottom view looking from thefifth floor below. The architect wants to say,“What am I looking at up inside the building?”So we said we’ll move you in space down, andlook up inside the building itself.

Figure 14 is a multiple folded type plateform, joins two buildings together, built over inSomerset, New Jersey. Again, some new formswhich can be appropriate for the particularapplication.

In network design, you can create almostanything your mind can imagine. Basically youcan take your visions and you can put them intoreality.

A multi-folded plate for an entranceway for acorporate headquarters, an exciting type offorms. The folded plate is one type of spaceframe form which has a lot of advantages.

You can also marry structures together. Fig-ure 15 shows a cylindrical form with a dome ontop. This is a structure we did for the U.S.Steel Corporation for an aquatic application for

Figure 6

109Wendel R. Wendel

a tanker top which we did about six years ago.I want to show you what the computers can

do besides generating just the graphics and thedesign space. That’s only about ten percent ofthe potential use of the computer systems in thewhole design and fabrication process.

This is a drawing which is color coded basi-cally showing a structure. I’ll take a new GSAbuilding built in Boston. It has a big atrium, 90feet by 120 feet. With computers you can basi-cally see how the structure performs. We cansimulate the deflection that might result from asnow load and model it very quickly, Figure 16shows just the top members. You can see howthe geometry shows the plate action. You cansee the deflection of the structure towards thecenter, and this way you can check it graphi-cally. You can exchange so much more in-formation, how a structure behaves, how itworks, using the computer system.

Different load magnitudes are shown bycolor coding using the eight different colors onthe screen. You can show where the highestcompression loads are, what the highest tensionloads are. Computers can give you a feeling for

the network and new design freedom which youcouldn’t have by doing it by hand no matterwhat happens. So the technological develop-ment of the computer systems have allowed thedevelopment of network systems.

The system also drives plotters which we useto produce assembly drawings of the structure.Everything’s numbered, the different hub types,all of the different strut types. The membersare numbered so you can ship it out in thefield. It takes about six minutes to draw it likethis, where by hand it would have taken useight hours three or four years ago. This givesus gigantic productivity gains and hundred-,sometimes thousand-fold reduction in time andexpenditures needed to design the structures.

The programs take the geometry and theloads and convert them into actual fabricationdrawings. Then we run computer-controlledequipment like our Wasino equipment, Japa-nese machines which are computerized con-trolled. Basically, we convert our design outputinto paper tape forms or magnetic-tape formsfor production instructions.

We’ve been able to reduce all of the hand op-

Figure 7

———

110

Figure 8

Structural Systems

erations used to machine something. You createa new design freedom. You create new types ofquality control because it’s computer run andcomputer generated. There are fewer errors oc-curring, and the system gives you the capabilityof variation very easily because we’ve standard-ized the process. The standard thing in SpaceStructures is how we design, how we exchangethat information, not the final end product.That means the network created can be veryvariable to meet the particular project’s formand requirements.

What we can do with the system is easilygenerate a drawing like Figure 16, a bank struc-ture with the whole space frame as the wholenetwork.

Figure 17 shows the actual structure underconstruction. In this case, it’s built on theground, off to one side of where the actualfoundation is, and assembled. It’s an 80-by-80foot space frame over in New Jersey. It’s abank building, and you just lift the structure up,being relatively light weight, working in alumi-num. You lift the structure up, put it in place,and it basically starts to give you more andmore of the structural form assembled as a net-work.

Figure 18 shows a conical form, using theORBA Hub system, which certainly would nothave been possible without our system. Everyhub and each different row is different in thegeometry and its orientation. Computer-con-trolled machines can generate those easily.

Figure 19 shows structure assembly for aproject we did for Skidmore, Owings & Merrillin Chicago. We assemble it in three sections,lift it up, put it in place, the main entrancewayfor this office building, and here’s what it lookslike from the inside. Again, the cone form gaveSOM a new shape, a new form they could eas-ily use. Somebody could easily fabricate it.

Figure 20 is a look up through the structureitself. Figure 21 shows a barrel arch form,which has certainly become very much morepopular during the last two or three years. Peo-ple are learning the value of the old idea of thearch which was a great shape back in Romanand in medieval architectural times. Somehowit became out of phase because the new materi-als didn’t allow it to be built very easily. With.


more sophisticated building technology, you caneasily go back to the value and the benefits ofusing the arch type of shape.

Figure 22 shows some of the hanger projectswe’re building throughout the world. We’re fin-ishing one at Miami International Airport, a226-foot clear span. Figure 23 shows how thestructure is assembled. We assembled it inthree sections on the ground, or multiple sec-tions, depending upon its length and the designrequirements. The structure is built out of alu-minum.

Figure 24 shows a step form at 1300 NewYork Avenue in Washington, D. C., we are do-ing for Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. Figure 25is a look up through the structure itself.

Different networks can have different formsand shapes. Figure 26 shows one being built inCulver City out in California right now.

Dome structures are also possible. Figure 27shows a dome stadium, designed for Toronto,capable of opening and closing. We’re talkingabout worldwide the building industry not beinglocally oriented. If you get into new technology,it opens up the marketplace. Probably about ten

percent of our work is done overseas.Tomorrow we see our movement where we’re

going to answer the phone at Space Structureswithin three or four years. Somebody is goingto call up and say, “I want to build a spaceframe.” The question will be back, “Is itterrestrial, aquatic or space application?”

We have a new division at Space Structurescalled Starnet Structures which is going afterthe Space Program. It is the ‘Job Site in theSky Program.’

Figure 28 is a part of a Space City that wehave developed. We have our applications in totwo NASA contracts right now. We’ve beentalking to Grumman, Lockheed and Spar onpossible joint ventures going up to the MannedSpace Station Program.

The drawings are conceptual, what we callcartoon drawings in the aerospace business —what something could potentially be like. Butyou have to think, if you’re in the building in-dustry, on a galactic scale or else you’re goingto limit yourself, and the Japanese are going tocome in tomorrow.

Well, lets start thinking, you know, twenty

Figure 9—


years ahead of them and start moving in thosedirections.

We should quickly talk about how structuresshould have some structural art form to them.We’re creating structures; we’re creating envi-ronments. They have to have a value to themother than just enclosing and being a climaticenvelope. They should have a good design tothem, and the structures are more and morewith network design being able to be expressedas structural forms, and I think it has a greatvalue like that.

Figure 29 is Caesar’s Palace out in Las Ve-gas, and is an example of all the structures atSpace Structures which are designed aroundthree basic goals: structural efficiency, projecteconomy and system elegance.

What’s the team work that’s being put to-gether? We see ourselves as part of a new team.In the past, teams typically combined archi-tects/engineers, the general contractor and theowner. We see two new members becoming in-volved in the initial design stages of the project.Ourselves as a systems specialist, and a con-struction manager.

Almost 80 percent of all of our contracts are

negotiated; more than 50 percent of them rightat the front end of a project, typically underPhase One of the contract. We work with archi-tectural/engineering firms and help them in de-sign and development during Phase One of aproject. With the computer systems, you’re ableto budget the project on the first day and tradeideas back and forth. With the new team wehold meetings at the beginning of a project, andget everybody who is going to be involved withthe project at initial meetings. You can saveowners hundreds of thousands and millions ofdollars in a project if everybody who is a majorparticipant in the project comes together. Wehave spent some long, twelve-hour sessions onsome projects. When everybody walks out ofthe door, there has been participation. The ar-eas of responsibility and their direction arepretty well tied down. You can pick up from sixmonths to a year by expediting a project on theway. The marketplace has recognized how im-portant this organizational strategy is and hasresponded.

Wendel R. Wendel is the President of Space StructuresInternational Corporation in Plainview, New York.

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MaterialsAlbert Dietz

Albert Dietz

I might start off by saying that a great dealof what I was going to say has already beensaid, but I’ll have to repeat some of it just thesame.

First, I want to make a few general observa-tions. I don’t know of any new or revolutionarymaterials that are being used now or are imme-diately in sight, unless the space industry comesup with some surprises.

That depends, of course, on what is meant by“new” and “revolutionary.” Some peoplemight consider that some things I want to talkabout are new and revolutionary, but to methey are not. They’re in the evolutionary stage.They may have been considered new and revo-lutionary fifteen, twenty, twenty-five years ago.They are now going through the stages that ev-ery new material has gone through, the long,slow process of development and acceptance bythe industry.

Masonite took about twenty-five years to be-come a broadly accepted commodity. Gypsumboard is another instance. Even portland-ce-ment concrete had to go through a long periodbefore it was generally accepted. That’s beentrue of building materials right down the line,and it’s true of the materials we’re talkingabout today.

We can’t discuss all materials. I’m going toconcentrate as a case on the new group of ma-terials and composites based on polymers. Imight review, however, very quickly some ofthe older types of materials.

We have structural, nonstructural and auxil-iary materials: Structural being those that carryloads, including steel, concrete, timber, ma-sonry; nonstructural, such as flooring and insula-tion; and auxiliaries, those materials such asadhesives, sealants and coatings, which are usedin conjunction with other materials and maynot be seen at all. There are developments in allof them but they are not particularly revolution-ary.

Another classification of materials is non-me-tallic, metallic, organic, wastes and byproducts.

Developments are occurring in all of them butnone really revolutionary. There is one area,however, in which a great deal can be done,and in which there are real opportunities, andthat’s in waste and byproducts. We’re tearingour cities down and having a terrible time try-ing to find out what to do with the rubble. Weought to be doing a great deal more to deter-mine how we can reuse that rubble rather thanthrow it away and bury it somewhere. That’s atremendous challenge.

Byproducts are another great challenge. Ifand when we ever solve the sulphur-dioxideemissions problem, we’re going to have millionsof tons of sulphur in one form or another, andwhat are we going to do with it? Byproductgypsum is one possibility, for example, andthere are many others. Sulphur can make avery good concrete. It can also make a verygood road building material. There are manywastes and byproducts, obviously, in which weought to be doing a great deal more than weare, agricultural wastes, for example.

The wood industry has gone a long way.What used to be considered wood waste andwas just burned because we didn’t know whatelse to do with it now goes into chipboard, avery valuable product. We’re using waste spe-cies we never had any use for before, makingthem into strandboard and other boards, valu-able products. These boards were made possibleby the advent of the high-strength synthetic ad-hesives. This introduces the field of combinedmaterials, or composites, the subject I’d like toconcentrate on.

What types of composites do we have? I’dlike to put them into three principal classes:particulate, in which particles are embedded ina matrix; fibrous, or fibers embedded in a ma-trix; and laminar, composed of sheet materials,bonded together and possibly impregnated. Un-der laminar, is the special subclass of sand-wiches.

The most important particulate building ma-terial is Portland-cement concrete, It has itslimitations, and by adding polymeric materials,we can come up with some rather striking im-provements.

The first approach is to impregnate standardconcrete with perhaps five to eight percent of amaterial such as acrylic, to produce a three tofourfold increase in compressive strength. Goingfrom 5,000 to 20,000 pounds per square inchhas not been unusual. Hardness also goes up, asdoes resistance to impact. Resistance to freez-ing and thawing increases because the poreshave been filled. The difficulty is it’s a slow, ar-duous, expensive process, requiring autoclavingor other means of impregnation and curing.

The second approach is to incorporate thepolymer while mixing the concrete, with vari-able results, some very good and some verypoor.

The third, is the substitution of a polymer forthe portland cement. In other words, concrete isbonded with a polyester, for example, instead ofportland cement. The recently-built HarvardMedical School Building (Figure 1 ) is an exam-ple. Wall panels are three inches thick, withfacings one-inch thick glass fiber-reinforced-

polyester concrete and core one inch of plasticfoam. No lengthy cure is needed, panels can bemade today, erected tomorrow. We don’t have afifty-year history of the material, a problemcommon to many of new materials, I shall comeback to this.

In fibrous composites, a great deal is beingdone. We’re taking a bit of a lead from thespace industry here in a crude sort of way. Ishould like to use several examples.

The first is the United States building at theBrussels World’s Fair in the 1950s. (Figure 2) Ithas a 300-foot diameter, cable-supported roofwith translucent sandwich-type panels consistingof glass fiber-reinforced polyester on an alumi-num grid; light in weight, tough, strong, andnow being used quite widely for industrial, com-mercial, religious and school buildings: roofsand sidewalls.

The next example illustrates the use of glass-fiber-reinforced plastics in shell forms. One ofthe problems with these materials is their low

Figure 1

Sandwich wall panelwith polyester-concretefacings and foamed-plastic cord

126 Materials

elastic modulus. Consequently, they have lowstiffness, and in order to make them work atall, curved inherently-stiff shapes must often beused.

Figure 3 shows the pavilions built for theUnited States exhibition in Moscow twenty-fiveyears ago. They are 24 feet high, 16 feet across,with canopies one-sixteenth inch thick and quar-ter-inch thick ribs, the stiffness coming aboutmore from the geometry than from the inherentproperties of the material itself.

The next illustration, (Figure 4), is anothershell form, the so-called House of the Future,built in Disneyland about thirty years ago. It isstill the house of the future, but it was a pioneering use of the shell in the form of a mono-coque. It was originally designed to be up forone year, was left up for ten and then posed areal challenge to the wreckers when the site wasneeded for something else.

Another composite application is a case his-tory illustrating a number of interlocking factorsthat have to be taken into account simulta-neously. About twenty years ago, the GreaterLondon Council decided to use performance

specifications for the exterior cladding of a pro-jected series of twelve 25-story apartment build-ings for moderate-income housing. Thespecifications said nothing about materials; butcalled for resistance to 80 mile per hour winds,a U factor of about 0.20, an acousticattenuation factor of about 35, one-hour firepenetration resistance, essentially zero flamespread, minimum thickness, minimum weight,and about a thirty-year life without appreciablemaintenance. No materials were specified.

Out of many conferences came a compositepanel (Figure 5). The outer face was a press-molded skin of glass fiber-reinforced polyesterloaded with mineral and turned out by a sports-car body manufacturer. The filling was foamedconcrete, weighing about 20 pounds per cubicfoot, reinforced with light wire. On the insidewas gypsum plaster, reinforced with glass fiberand abestos, with a vapor seal and binder of bi-tumen between the gypsum and concrete. To al-low for differential expansion and contraction,the outer shell was bonded to the concrete withexpoxy adhesive and a thin layer of polyure-thane foam.

Figure 2

Cable-supported translu-cent sandwich-panel roofof United States build-ing, Brussels World’sFair.

Albert Dietz 127

Figure 3 --

Glass fiber-reinforcedcanopies and stalks, pa-vilions at United StatesExhibition in Moscow

128 Materials

Figure 4

Glass fiber-reinforcedmonocaque structuralcantilevers, House of theFuture, Disneyland.

This was a composite of composites. It metall of the requirements of the British Fire Re-search Station. It weighed 15 percent as muchas standard masonry or concrete construction.The in-place cost as estimated by the builderwas more than competitive with the standardconstruction, because of speed and ease of erec-tion.

Four buildings were built, and then the othereight were scrapped, not because of any tech-nical problems. It was a technological success.It was a sociological failure. People refused tomove into 25-story buildings. They just didn’twant to live in them.

When only four buildings were built insteadof twelve, the economics changed. Subse-quently, five-story buildings were built, andstandard masonry construction was just as com-petitive as the composite panel.

This case illustrates a number of things. Per-formance specifications made possible the mar-riage of a number of different materials toperform the overall requirements. The resultwas generally successful. Over the twenty yearsthe panels have been up, they have behaved

quite well. There have been some blemisheswhich had to be repaired in situ.

The repairs, though successful, show. Thepatches don’t match the original material, andlittle spots appear on the surfaces.

The heavy aluminum windows were a failureand had to be replaced, with some damage tothe panels, requiring repairs. A hot fire in oneapartment broke through windows and scorchedthe outside surface, but did not spread (Figure6).

The engineers are in favor of the system, butit has not been used again.

One problem was: who would produce thesepanels? There was no existing industry. The lit-tle engineering firm that undertook this job hadto scramble around and find a panel molder inOhio, various suppliers in the British Isles, andbring all of the elements together in one place,where the builder assembled them off site anderected them, using the same equipment as forthe rest of the building.

This is a capsule illustrating some of thethings that can be done with composites, andsome of the problems that occur when we try to

Albert Dietz 129

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Figure 5

Composite wall panels.Greater London Councilbuildings.

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Figure 6

Greater London Councilbuilding showing the out-side structure.

130 Materials

introduce a fairly new material.What are some of the probable future devel-

opments? What are some of the effects on thebuilding industry? Plastics in general and thecomposites by and large lend themselves best toshop fabrication. They’re not good when itcomes to field fabrication, You can’t take ahammer and saw and cut off some pieces andnail them together. The trend is toward moreand more shop fabrication of finished compo-nents, and this is where plastics and compositesfit in particularly well, right in line with thetrend. New processes are involved, however,with which the building industry is not ac-quainted. Sometimes big presses are needed,sometimes materials and product handling aredifferent. Builders will have to get used tothem.

New building, forms are possible. The Houseof the Future, for example, looks entirely differ-ent from a standard house. The tension formfor the Jedda Airport in Saudi Arabia (Figure7), consisting of about 500,000 square feet ofTeflon-coated glass fabric, is another exampleof a new type of form. It’s a tent. At the Osaka

Figure 7 \

Fair, the United States building — air-sup-ported, vinyl-coated glass fabric — was anothertype of form made possible by the new materi-als (Figure 8).

Perhaps we can make contribution to energyconservation. The plastic foams are among thebest insulators that we have from the stand-points of efficiency and use. There also can beproblems with them as we found out with theformaldehyde.

Perhaps we shall have contributions from theSpace Program. In any event, we shall find thatour usual methods of fabricating parts forbuildings will undergo changes as we bring inunfamiliar materials including plastics, otherpolymers and composite materials.

Now, what are some of the influences affect-ing use of unfamiliar materials? One major in-fluence retarding the rapid adoption of thesematerials is uncertainty, particularly in two di-rections. The first is, how do they behave infire? Many are organic materials. Any organicmaterial can be destroyed by a hot enough fire.So how do we get around the problem of theirsusceptibility to fire? Of course, we use many

Tent roofs, 45 meterssquare, Teflon-coatedglass fabric, Jeddah Air-port.

.

. *

Albert Di`etz 131

materials in buildings that are susceptible tofire. That’s not a new situation, but there arenew aspects to it with respect to plastics, andthe fire tests that we generally make may ormay not be directly applicable to these new ma-terials.

There’s a great deal of work that needs to bedone on fire evaluation generally, and not onlyfor plastics and composites. This activity willhave to be carried on somewhere.

The second question is long life, longevity.How will these materials stand up for a long pe-riod of time? Here we come to a question ofdefinition. If you talk to the plastics people,“Oh, sure, these things will stand up for a longtime.”

“what do you mean?”

“Oh five or ten years.” A building five yearsold is practically brand new, out of the box, andwhen you tell them, “No, we’re not interestedin that, but we want at least twenty-five, thirtyyears, preferably fifty years,” the surprised re-action is likely to be, “Oh, no, we can’t promisethat.” So there is the question. We do not havegood ways of predicting long life, especially

with new types of materials. This is anotherfield in which a great deal of work needs to bedone.

There are other things we could talk about:education, activities abroad, and many more.

There are several areas for concentration.I’ve already mentioned two. One is fire, and Imean fundamental work on fire, not justASTM tests. These are very good tests and wehave very good commercial establishments forrunning tests. We need fundamental researchsuch as fire modeling and how to go from asmall-scale test to prediction of actual behaviorin large-scale fire. This kind of research is notthe province of any one company. It will be upto Government agencies, such as the Bureau ofStandards, which is doing good work, but is vul-nerable to changes in government policy. Uni-versities can contribute to such research. Thistype of work needs to be carried along and fullysupported for an extended period.

Long-term prediction is another area. We donot yet know how to make a short-time testwhich will accurately predict how materials, es-pecially new and familiar ones, will behave over

Figure 8

Air-supported vinyl-coated glass fabric roof,United States Building,Osaka Expo ’70 Fair.

132 Materials

a long period of time. So we have our test racksfacing south Florida and Maine and try to getsome idea from them, but those results are bothlimited and slow.

Information dissemination; this has beenraised before, and is a serious deficiency. In-formation just doesn’t get around well in thebuilding industry. There are thousands andthousands of small-scale builders, and it’s hardto get the information around. It’s very hard toget it together in the first place. It’s there some-where in somebody’s file, but it’s not gettingaround.

We don’t know how our materials really be-have in our buildings. These buildings constitutethe biggest laboratory in the world, but wedon’t really make a systematic study of our ma-terials in place, and therefore, we can’t developtests that will adequately predict their behavior.

The question of codes has been brought up

earlier. They are important, no question aboutit. Codes can stand in the way of the use of newmaterials. The question of performance codeshas been raised. A performance code calls for aneeded upgrading of the abilities of our buildinginspectors. You can’t have a performance codeand just any political appointee going out look-ing at your buildings to determine if theycomform to performance codes.

We ought to have systems of evaluations,such as are found in some of the Europeancountries, which we don’t have here. Thesethings are among the aspects that we have toconsider, and perhaps this panel should bethinking about them when looking into materi-als.

Albert Dietz is Professor Emeritus of the School of Ar-chitecture and Planning, of the Massachusetts Instituteof Technology

9 Commercial BuildingDesignsCharles H. Thornton

Charles H. Thornton

1 would like to address the subject of changesin building design, materials and processes asseen from the designer’s side. My area of activ-ity is the design of commercial, institutional,and multi-story residential buildings. Structuralengineers tend to not get too involved in one-story, single-family residential buildings, butmore in the high-rise, multi-level type of con-struction.

Recently in the New York Times, aboutthree or four weeks ago, there was an articleabout the cost to construct a project in NewYork City which pointed out an interesting fact:To bring a condominium on line in New YorkCity now runs $300 per square foot. One hun-dred dollars is construction cost, $100 is landcost, and $100 is interim financing and softcosts.

So we can sit here and address the problemof construction costs, how to do things, howemerging technologies are going to affect con-struction costs from a design side and a con-struction side, but we’re really only addressingone-third of the situation. The land cost is be-yond my ability to discuss, but the financingcosts and the length of time and the processfrom the time you conceive a project to thetime you occupy the project is the area in whichI think a major revolution is probably going totake place in the next decade. That’s probablywhere the major cost savings and major techno-logical changes will occur. They’re not going tobe technological in the sense of high tech, butthey’re going to be more within the process ofconstruction,

I’d like to address the design, materials andprocesses aspects. From the design point ofview, computers obviously are going to be theentity which will revolutionize the design busi-ness. It’s happening already. The things thatWendel R. Wendel talked about, all of that sortof thing, it’s coming rapidly. It’s in our officenow. It’s in a lot of offices — the ability to dothese things, do them quicker, do them better,look at more options and alternatives are all

here.But the big revolution is going to be the in-

terfacing of the software in the computer sys-tems within the design office with the rest ofthe construction team, and right now that hasn’thappened. This is where there’s really going tobe a revolution,

Wendel’s doing it because he controls his to-tal destiny. The present design, fabrication,erection and construction process is very spreadout, diverse and fragmented, I think the processis going to come together — that’s where a lotis going to happen. CAD and computers are ob-viously going to be a big step in the right direc-tion.

As far as structural engineering of multi-story buildings, as far as floor systems are con-cerned, we really have reached the optimum.We really can’t get any lighter than we havewith present materials. We use steel. We useconcrete. Anybody that’s attempted to get itlighter has had floor levelness problems, deflec-tion problems and all sorts of human-percepti-bility-to-motion problems. We have, in myopinion, reached the optimum in floor design.

If we take the example of a typical building,a forty-story, high-rise office building, it takesabout ten pounds of structural steel per squarefoot of floor area to support gravity loads.That’s the material in the floors and the col-umns. But it takes a total of about 20 pounds ofstructural steel per square foot when you getdone. The additional ten pounds of steel is to re-sist wind. If you go sixty stories or eighty sto-ries, the 10 pounds for gravity loads remainsfairly constant, but the contributing portion ofthe steel material to resist wind loadings iswhere the big weight increases start to pile up.

We could fool ourselves and attempt to makethe floor lighter, but if we’re going to get muchlighter than ten pounds, we will get sued whenthe floor deflects or bounces too much.

What’s interesting is that Wendel’s slides pri-marily addressed roof structures, enclosurestructures and the monumental or the architec-tural centerpiece of a project, which is the ex-citing part of the project. However, when you

look at percentages of area within a buildingproject, probably five percent of the area is inthat part, and 95 percent is the floors. So goingback to this point of the floors, I’m not sayingspace trusses can’t be used for floors. We’re us-ing truss systems in office buildings now be-cause we’re up to 45-foot spans. We want to getmechanical penetrations and make it a ‘smart’building. There is one major developer, Oxford,from Canada and the United States, who usestruss systems in all its buildings. There’s no rea-son why space truss systems couldn’t be used inthe same thing.

Trusses allow you to open up an interstitialspace in the floor to allow all of the mechanicalsystems to go through. Unfortunately, when youcompare it to conventional trusses and conven-tional beams, it’s still too expensive, but I thinkit’s going to get there. As more people likeWendel get involved and bring this total ca-pability together, I think there are good chancesthere.

Moving to the wind system and the NASAgroup, I’ll use one example. Around 1965, as wewere designing an 800-foot observation tower inMilwaukee, we sat back and said, “The gravity-load-resisting components of the project consti-tute about 10 percent of the job.” It was not anoccupied building — it was an observationtower. Ninety percent of the structural materialwas required to resist wind loadings. But whatis wind loading? Maximum design wind loadingis a one-inane-hundred-years mean recurrenceinterval. We design for a situation that happensonce every one hundred years. Now, that couldhappen next year, which it usually does, butyou’re putting in 90 percent of the material in aspecial tall tower to resist a one-in-one-hundred-years occurrence. Why not try a different ap-proach?

NASA, when they move the Saturn V fromthe assembly building to the launch pad, has asystem of servo-mechanism, hydraulically-acti-vated jacks to keep the Saturn V in a fairly ver-tical position. So we called up General Motors,Delco Division, who did that work, and weasked whether or not it was possible to develop

an active system which would sense accelera-tion, velocity and drift or motion of a tall towerand activate hydraulic jacks in the building con-nected to cables that extend from the top of thetower to the foundations. So when the buildingmoves, accelerates or displaces, these jacks acti-vate and the building is brought back to a verti-cal position.

Obviously, the concern is that the systemcould go out of whack and go in the opposite di-rection. Because, if the building is moving awayfrom the wind, you want the activated jack onthe windward side. If it’s jacking on the lee-ward side, you’ve got a problem since it willmagnify, not reduce, the movement.

Delco came in and priced the system, andconfirmed that it was totally reliable. This was1965. We’ve come a long way with home com-puters and other sophisticated control systemssince then. My feeling is that this active systemapproach in taller buildings, to eliminate theneed of putting 50 to 90 percent of the materialinto the building to resist a one-in-one-hundred-years occurrence, is probably an area that peo-ple should be looking at. It can be done!

The Citicorp Building in New York City andthe John Hancock Building in Boston both havetuned-mass dampers at their tops. Now, theseare not active systems. they are really passivesystems because they sort of lag behind andslow down the motion of the building. In themechanical machine design area, tuned-massdampers have been prevalent for years. Atuned-mass damper is a device that stops vibra-tion. It vibrates out of phase with the buildingand slows it down. It works in buildings, al-though it is not really an active system. I thinkthat is one area in which major innovations aregoing to develop,

Another way to try and do something techno-logically advanced is to reduce the amount ofmaterial in a high-rise building by doing whatthe home-building industry has done with theuse of stress-skin plywood. Stop and think aboutit. There’s no wind analysis done by an engineeron a one-family residence building, right? Windstability of a one-family residence is inherent in

136 Commercial Building Designs

the adhesion of the plywood through nails orglue to the stick-built system. Until the plywoodis put on the building, the frame is sort of flexi-ble. The plywood forms a stressed skin.

Well, the skin, using Professor Tucker’s fig-ures, becomes one of the two major cost compo-nents of a building, along with the structure. Ifwe can integrate the skin or enclosure into astructural system, we can achieve real economy.

We tried it recently on a very successfulproject in Pittsburgh for U.S. Steel Realty. Itwas nice that we were working for U.S. SteelRealty; they encouraged us to use an exposedsteel solution. It’s a fifty-five-story building. Itwas called the Dravo Building, but then it be-came the Mellon Bank Center Building. It usesa quarter-inch-thick steel facade. It’s the archi-tectural skin with the windows mounted in it.But it’s also a valuable part of the structuralsystem. Without it, the drift of the building isdouble the magnitude that we deem acceptableby human perceptibility acceptance standards.With the stressed steel skin, the movement is re-duced to one-half the magnitude.

We have an internal skeletal structure of col-umns and beams which safely resist wind froma stress point of view. However, the drift at thetop of the building would be 36 inches (H/250).When we put the one-quarter-inch-thick steelskin on, it acts as a stressed-skin, and we bringthe drift down to 18 inches (H/500).

We ran into an interesting problem in theprocess. Exposed steel is not fireproof. So wewent to the Pittsburgh Building Departmentand convinced them that the chances of a firetotally enveloping the entire exterior skin on thebuilding were quite remote. By the time thathappened, if it could happen, the buildingwould be unoccupied, and if the drift weretwice what we felt was acceptable by humanperceptibility, there’d be nobody in the buildingto perceive it anyway, so they accepted it.

It’s a new concept. It’s a concept of safetyversus human perceptibility and comfort. Codesdo not prescribe any drift or any accelerationcontrols. There are no human perceptibilitylimits on controls within the codes. The codesonly address safety.

Both the use of an active system and theintegration of the exterior skin in the wind drift

control system are areas where I feel the build-ing industry will make major revolutions in thedesign and construction of taller buildings.

Fireproofing. The steel industry has beenwrestling with this problem for years, but ifsomeone could come up with an inexpensive,thin, easily applied, durable fireproofing systemfor structural steel, I think you would see a ma-jor revolution in construction.

The aerospace industry has developed intu-mescence paints and sublimination coating ma-terials. They’re still too expensive. They areavailable, but somebody should try to develop alow cost fire-proofing coating system that isarchitecturally acceptable. This would change alot of what architects do in terms of structuralexpression. It would eliminate all of the materi-als that get sprayed on after which everybodyspends millions of dollars trying to cover themup so you don’t see them. Some of the alreadyavailable materials, particularly some of thesesubliming paints, actually look like an enamelfinish. They’re excellent, but too expensive.

Let’s jump to materials. Steel and concreteare the two major structural construction ma-terials. I have attended a lot of meetings withmany people who try to introduce composites(fiberglass, boron, and graphite laminates) intothe construction industry. The reason it’s notcoming in, besides the other reasons that Almentioned, is that concrete costs only six centsa pound; people lose sight of that. It’s probablythe cheapest, most abundant material around,and steel at 60 cents a pound, fabricated anderected with its strength ratio between concreteand steel is about one to ten is also a bargain.Concrete is six cents a pound; steel is 60 cents apound. So you use ten times as much concreteat one-tenth the price, and as Professor Tuckermentioned a minute ago, when you run out thenumbers in most major cities and you look atthe concrete and the form work versus the steeland the metal deck with the concrete, they bothcome out to be $6.00 to $8.00 per square foot.They’re competitive. You can’t get it any betterthan that, and so I don’t see much revolutionhappening in the area of structural systems un-less the new material’s cost can be reduced.

We, on occasion, have ventured into thedevelopment of esoteric materials for structures,

Charles H. Thornton 137

We usually end up getting very frustrated anddisappointed with the result. About twelve yearsago we developed a paper bridge for the inter-national Paper Company. It was meant to be atelevision commercial, but we found the mate-rial to have fantastic potential. Paper is a mar-velous material, and we thought it had fantasticapplications for concrete formwork and dispos-able formwork. You can make it waterproof,you can make it fireproof, and it’s strongerpound for pound than concrete. It’s basicallyprocessed wood when you think about it. It hasnever caught on as a construction material. Thepaper industry never caught on to it, but there’sno reason why paper in a honeycomb, cellular-type system could not be developed as aformwork system for concrete. It just hasn’thappened to date.

We’ve found that most new developments inthe area of materials occur in what I call adap-tive use of off-the-shelf items. It’s probably anarea that should be looked at further. A fewyears ago we designed and engineered severalsuperbay hangers for American Airlines in Cali-fornia. Each building held four 747s. We tookan H.H. Robertson or Inland-Ryerson type cel-lular electrified deck for a typical office build-ing floor and applied it to a hyperbolicparaboloid structure. We used simple spotwelds. It worked marvelously. This 230-footcatilever structure had only about ten pounds ofsteel per square foot in it. We were supposed tobuild eight of them. We only built two, and noone has done another one since.

In order to achieve this innovative structure,we had to deviate from normal practice. Theprocess was brought together. We were the en-gineers. None of the contractors wanted to ana-lyze the erection schemes; so we analyzed theerection schemes. Nobody knew how to main-tain the quality control on the part of the con-tractor; so we set up the contractor’s qualitycontrol manual. We stuck our necks out relativeto normal responsibilities and it worked.

There is a great tendency towardfragmention and diversity in our industry. Ithink the whole role of the designer and theconstructor has to be redefined. There havebeen many recent conferences, papers and hear-ings about designers (architects and engineers)

skirting their responsibilities relative to designof steel connections, for example.

There are hearings going on in Missouri rightnow to try and revoke a structural engineer’s li-cense for the Kansas City Hyatt collapse. Theengineer is saying it was the contractor’s respon-sibility. The contractor is saying it was the engi-neer’s responsibility. When you go and look atthe American Institute of Steel Construction(AISC) specification in depth, you find that it’sreally very confusing as to who is really respon-sible.

What has happened is, although engineersand architects have wanted to get more in-volved in the construction process, their insur-ance company, lawyer, ASCE, AIA, ACEC,and everybody else involved has said, “Youshall not be involved in construction means andmethods. You shall not be involved in erectionsequences. Stay out of it. Don’t use the word‘approved’. Don’t get involved, and keep it frag-mented.”

Well, in spite of this approach for the lasttwenty years, there are still too many problemsand too many lawsuits. I think what’s happen-ing is the ACEC, ASCE and AIA are startingto come back and say, “I think that the design-ers have to play a bigger role in the construc-tion process.” Further justification of moreinvolvement is in the fact that one-third of theproject cost relates to an interim financing cost.Designers should get closer to the constructionprocess through their computers (CAD) andlink the design to the construction by takingcontract documents and converting them intomill orders and shop drawings (CAM) to bringthe whole process together. That’s really wherethe big savings can take place.

Here are a couple of examples. Turner Con-struction Co., on a $80 million Westin Hotel re-cently built in Boston, decided they were goingto slip-form the concrete core of the project. Noone had ever done it before in Boston. I toldthem I thought they were crazy because of thedifficult local trade jurisdictions and strongunions in Boston. But they decided they weregoing to take a crack at it. They brought theunions into the picture early and made thempart of the process.

Since Turner was involved as the construc-

138 Commercial Building Designs

tion manager early in the game, we, as design-ers, agreed to use a slip-formed core. We alsoagreed we would use a flying-form system, andwe would design the precast facade so that itcould be incorporated into the flying-form sys-tem. So when the building form went up, theprecast pieces went up with it, and when theypoured the floor, they inserted the windows,and in record time they had an enclosed build-ing so that the other trades could come in andwork on the remaining systems within an en-closed, heated environment.

Had we not worked together on the approachin the early stages, it would have been a muchmore conventional building, We got involved inthe process and it paid off for the project.

Olympia & York, the developer of the WorldFinancial Center at Battery Park City in NewYork, tried to apply what they do in Canada toNew York. They deserve a lot of credit — theygot halfway. What they did is interesting. Theyincorporated the material-handling systems thatare needed during the construction into the ba-sic design of the building. The elevator shaftsare sized so that all materials go up and downinside the building, not on an exterior materialshoist.

For a conventional project, we never know inadvance who the contractor will be. As a result,we don’t bother to try to accommodate the de-sign to facilitate materials handling to be facili-tated. Do you know what the cost of a lift onthe outside of a building is? With post-modern-ist design solutions, with setbacks when you getup to the sixtieth floor and you’ve got to getover 60 feet to reach the exterior wall (how doyou get it from here to there?) it’s a big prob-

lem!So the recent tendency to have buildings

with setback tops could swing us more to cen-tral materials-handling systems. It is obviousthat construction managers and general contrac-tors as well as designers have to be more in-volved in that total process. This will save timeand money.

In summary, I think in the immediate futurefurther impacts will be in the area of computerusage; integration of various building systems;the exterior walls and the structure; gradual ac-ceptance of new materials; and a whole changein the delivery process. Big changes are going toresult from these impacts.

The other obstacle is the impediments, whicheverybody has talked about; unions, special in-terest groups, codes, jurisdictions and, from adesigner’s side, fear of litigation. It’s gotten tothe point where most, if not all, of the UnitedStates’ design industry is not innovating anymore because of fear of litigation. It reallydoesn’t pay to innovate any more, because thechance of getting nailed, in our litigious society,is almost predictable. There may not be toomany attorneys in Japan, but there are toomany attorneys and too much litigation, toomany frivolous lawsuits against the practice ofarchitects, engineers, medical doctors, etc., inthe U.S. today. This aspect of our industry ishurting the advancement of, and innovationwith, the American design and construction in-dustry.

Dr. Charles H. Thornton is President of Lev Zetlin As-sociates, Inc.

10 Over the HorizonRaymond P. Whitten

Raymond P. Whitten

I’ll begin with a review of what NASA is doing in Technology Utilization; and then discusssome of the complications of technology trans-fer. The infusion of technology into our societyis very difficult, and I will give some examplesof the impediments. Nothing happens throughserendipity. The process is “people intensive.”

Even though NASA technologies may beuseful to the building industries, it’s going totake work to couple that technology with indus-try needs. Our program works with industry andthe user community. We do not unilaterally de-velop prototypes and certainly do not do com-mercialization or marketing.

NASA can learn a lot from the progressivebuilding industry’s thinking in terrestrial appli-cations. This will be evolving as we move intoSpace Station and Lunar Exploration. NASAhas a system in place that is both a paperworkand a ‘hands-on’ people-to-people process. Wehave developed ways to disseminate technologyas it is documented through a Scientific andTechnical Information Center and have pro-vialed for a Computer Operated Software Man-agement Information Center (COSMIC). Thissystemcan be tapped by industry, U.S. citizens,state and local governments and universities atany time. Both information and computer pro-grams coming out of NASA and other federallaboratory programs are available through thesystem.

The Applications Engineering Program ispeople intensive. It’s in this program that weidentify and define user needs. Once the prob-lem is fully understood, our scientists and engi-neers try to match NASA-developed technologyto the problem. If there is a match, a workingpartnership is developed between the user andNASA. If a successful match is found, indus-trial or business development leads to market-ing and commercialization of the technology.

Our network is located around the variousNASA Centers. It consists of the IndustrialApplications Centers (IAC’s), COSMIC and aTechnology Applications Team. The system

serves industry and the public by providing in-formation, retroactive technology searches, and‘hands-on’ assistance in problem solving. Thereare some small fees involved for IAC and COS-MIC services and a required commitment offunding in application engineering. The Indus-trial Applications Centers are kept current onevolving NASA technologies through the vari-ous NASA Centers and/or laboratories. Evolv-ing technologies are summarized or documentedin various NASA publications. Some of thesepublications are called NASA Tech Briefs, An-nual Technology Utilization Reports, NASAPatent Abstracts, Research and Technology Op-erating Plans, Special Publications and Tech-nical Memoranda, Scientific and EngineeringJournal Articles, etc.

Transfer of technology from these programsto the building industry or anywhere else doesnot happen without a lot of elbow grease, tech-nology ‘know-how,’ motivation and support fromupper management. All NASA technology thateventually ends up being used for nonaerospaceapplications must go through some form ofadaptive engineering in order to satisfy theneeds of the new problem. I have yet to see aone-to-one transfer, i.e., a situation where theaeronautics or space technology can simplyplug into the new application without someform of modification.

Examples:Several new technologies can be applied to

fire protection. For instance, we have usedNASA turbo-pump technology to develop anew water-pumping system with a flow of 3-5thousand gallons per minute at 150 psi. Accep-tance of this technology has been slow eventhough it is badly needed. Conversion to thistype of equipment requires new thinking in thefire-fighting community. It requires trainingand an expensive marketing effort. The fire-fighting module, as we call it, can be lifted byhelicopter and placed almost anywhere — cit-ies, rural areas, forests, aboard ship. In additionto its use in fighting fires, it can provide drink-ing water to ports serving countries facing se-

vere drought, or even used to salvage oil inareas where spills have taken place at sea.

The power-factor controller, which I’m sureall of you have heard something about, was de-veloped conceptually within NASA. It is nowfound in industry and large buildings. It is evenused in energy management of escalators. Thissystem is based on electronic technology avail-able today throughout the industry. It took thecreative efforts of an aerospace engineer to con-ceive and develop the concept.

Several years ago NASA and HUD workedtogether with some aspects of the building in-dustry to develop the NASA Tech House atthe Langley Research Center. NASA is prettygood at systems engineering. In the case of theTech House we demonstrated how one couldsystematically develop an energy-efficient houseusing state-of-the-art and innovative technology.To evaluate the concept, the Tech House wasliterally wired for sound, similar to the way wewould technically monitor the performance of anew experimental vehicle. In fact, we are stillmonitoring, collecting and evaluating data. Thedata that NASA collected pertained to opera-tion of solar collectors, solar panels, electronicsystems and water management; it was ana-lyzed for efficiency, reliability and maintain-ability.

The Flat Conductor Cable is an example ofhow difficult it is to bring new technology to thebuilding industry. It has been about twelveyears since the concept of transferring aircraftand space vehicle flat conductor cable to thebuilding industry was tried. NASA developedthe technology to save weight, space and en-ergy. It is just now becoming available, for non-aerospace use, as a marketable product. Forretrofitting or remodeling homes, offices or fac-tories, it offers a fairly simple solution. For newhouse design, it could be integrated with com-posite materials to develop new concepts formodular and mobile wall structures. Improve-ments could be seen in outlet placement andenergy management.

As you know, NASA is confronted with wa-ter and waste management problems in aircraft

and spacecraft. Reuse of water will be espe-cially critical in future manned space missions.Future concepts and resulting technologies arebecoming available and could be applied to thebuilding industry. Why build on our best andmost fertile land when water and waste manage-ment systems provide alternative solutions. Theextreme is to take waste or gray water andmake it safe and potable drinking water. Graywater can be recycled many times for wash wa-ter. Energy and land management conservationmethods can be employed if one is willing to ap-ply the technology and change traditional waysof doing things. Some of these concepts havebeen demonstrated in the NASA/HUD TechHouse; however, the concepts are not being rap-idly adopted or put into practice.

There are several technologies that are on thehorizon and will be seen in the near future. TheREDOX energy storage system, which is anoxidation reduction system, is representative ofsuch a technology. The NASA Lewis ResearchCenter and the Department of Energy havebeen working on this technology for manyyears. The idea was derived from the fuel-celltechnology developed for U.S. spacecraft. Es-sentially, this is a type of battery storage systemthat is going to become available and market-able in the near future. In order to transfer thetechnology, NASA is working with SOHIO.SOHIO is investing in a demonstration programthat will eventually lead to small community,industry and, perhaps, individual home use ofthe REDOX technology. Imagine a communitythat is using the REDOX system; it stores itsenergy in a cost-effective manner and offloadsit or sells it back to the power company asopportunities develop. The key to the system isa reduction/oxidation system with soluble liquidelectrodes which make energy requirements in-dependent of power demand.

Another evolving concept is the MagneticHeat Pump. This technology is based on thefact that certain magnetic materials dischargeand absorb large amounts of heat when strongmagnetic fields are alternately applied and re-moved. In theory, the ideal magnetic cycle is

142 Over the Horizon

more efficient than the ideal evaporation cyclethat utilizes freon for refrigeration and heatpumping. Heat transfer considerations suggest asuperior efficiency for magnetic pumping andanalytic studies predict lower capital cost formachines above 50-100 kW cooling or heatingpower. The higher predicted efficiency of mag-netic cycles would have a favorable economicimpact through lower operating power require-ments, and considerable fuel savings, in a widerange of applications that includes heating andair conditioning, industrial process refrigeration,air separation (for steel plants), and heat pumping for process heating.

Heat pipe technology, one of the first real ex-amples of practical applications of this technol-ogy outside of the Space Program, is seen inthe Alaskan pipeline where it controlled the per-mafrost in the ground. All spacecraft tend touse the heat pipe technology to control, balanceand maintain desired spacecraft internal tem-peratures. This management of solar energy andheat pipe technology is now finding its way intodomestic use. Today, the Kennedy Space Cen-ter is working with several companies in hopesof using this technology for home, office and/orlarge building air conditioning systems. It isspeculated by some that future homes may ef-fectively use heat and electricity that is derivedfrom solar energy, ground heat, heat and elec-trical storage systems and heat pipes. The heatpipes will allow heat to be moved from place toplace while sophisticated battery systems willaccommodate electrical energy storage.

The future holds a promise for new tech-niques in structural analysis, nondestructive andnon-invasive testing of materials. At the Lang-ley Research Center a major effort is underwayin ultrasound technology. Here, instead of look-ing at the torque stress in bolts, the torque onthe bolt is viewed as friction. NASA scientistsare looking at the elongation of the bolt and theresulting stress. The Langley scientists havebeen so successful in demonstrating this conceptthat the Space Shuttle, U.S. mines, aircraft andother systems requiring bolts as fasteners areapplying ultrasound as a noninvasive stresstester. There could be many applications of thistechnology in the building industry.

Earlier we discussed robotics and automa-

tion. NASA is not the leader in new robot orautomation technology, and it doesn’t plan tobe in the future. NASA can help U.S. industrymove ahead in automation and robotics by ex-ploiting its specially developed sensing, com-puter, image enhancing and displaytechnologies. At the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, NASA and industry are working to-gether to transfer some spacecraft sensingtechnology to develop ‘smart robots.’ These ro-bets are being developed to have enough visualimage information to see edges and corners andadjust accordingly. The technology stems fromhighly specialized integrated circuitry, chips,proximity sensors, microprocessors, etc. Thetechnology transfer here is not the robot — it isthe special components that the machine needsin order to respond to the environmental chal-lenge.

There is also pultrusion technology, andCAD/CAM systems that can be applied to thebuilding industry. The concept is similar to thatdescribed as evolving in Japan. The idea is thatyou program what you want and, based uponyour computer design, the automated machin-ery provides you with studs, wall panels, doors,shingles, ‘I’ beams, etc., all to the precise stressand other measurements you call for in yourbuilding design. Plasma-coating material has po-tential for future applications of glass materialsand ceramics. The plasma coatings that weredeveloped for the astronauts visors to preventscratching and fogging are now being applied towindows and sun glasses.

The crystal and other types of materials thatare going to be developed in space may have anapplication that allows for greater automationand computer power. Future energy systemsmay become a magnitude more effective thanthey are now, which will allow for smaller,smarter, and more powerful tools that requireless energy, less time and maintenance, andhelp mankind work with greater precision andsafety.

The Programmable Implantable MedicationSystem or PIMS might also apply to the build-ing industry. The outer case for the PIMS ismade out of titanium, developed for the aero-nautics industry. The internal working parts ofthe PIMS are electronic microprocessors. The

Raymond F. Whitton

microprocessor in this device is approximatelyequivalent to the IBM-105O. It can operate overfifty color TV sets. It can program microlitersof medication into the body as prescribed bythe physician. The physician can reprogram thePIMS anywhere in this country, or in the worldfor that matter, as long as he has a phonemodem between the patient and himself. Theconcept is based on our satellite and telecom-munications capability. The electronics technol-ogy is derived from our spacecraft and satellitetechnology while the fluid management systemcomes from the Viking lander that landed onMars and tested the Martian soil for life forms.Imagine a device the size of a hockey puck im-planted in the body providing biological func-tions through microminiaturization of manycomponent parts that would have taken thespace of a ten foot by eight foot by two footthick wall only fifteen years ago.

Now, what I’m saying here is that none ofthe technology that has gone into this systemcould have been applied without taking thetime to understand the problem and applying

imagination and technical ‘know-how’. There isa lot of space technology that is unused; manyapplications could undoubtedly be made for thebuilding industry. For example, the concept ofinfusion pumps has been studied and developedfor medical use during the last several decadesby the National Institutes of Health. Workingwith the Johns Hopkins University, the Na-tional Institutes of Health, and industry, thePIMS represents several years of time compres-sion since the total development took less thanthree years. The cost to NASA was $1,6 millionover three-and-a-half years, while the industryinvestment will exceed $30 million (estimated)to place the device in the market. In this case,the government was the catalyst as it stimulateda business opportunity by using unrelated tech-nology to address and solve a complicated prob-lem.

Raymond P. Whitten is Chief of the Terrestrial Appli-cations Technology Utilization Office at the NationalAeronautics and Space Administration

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Eberhard

Reflections on thePresentationsJohn P. EberhardJames Gross

Our purpose here is to anticipate how techno-logical change will affect the building industryeither from the supply side or from the demandside and to determine whether any of thesechanges could create problems that Congressought to be aware of and, potentially do some-thing about.

A. The Six Construction IndustriesHere in Washington we often choose to talkabout the ‘building industry,’ and discuss issueslike changes in the levels of employment,changes in quality and safety, changes in pro-ductivity, changes in opportunities and risksfrom foreign competition, as if it were a singleindustry. I don’t think this makes much sense.

In many ways the building industry is nomore monolithic than the transportation indus-try. The transportation industry includes theairlines industry, the railroad industry, thetrucking industry, and the shipping industry.There is little crossover between the organiza-tions, the institutions, the skilled manpower, thetechnologies, and the R&D base that are uti-lized by those sectors of the transportation in-dustry.

Practically no Federal policy can affect eachof the separate industries within transportation.But since you don’t want too many units thatreport to the President, you can create a De-partment of Transportation and lump all ofthose things that have to do with movement un-der it. It also is useful to talk about a transpor-tation industry for economists who want tomake measures of the national economic sec-tors. It avoids having that many more pages ofstatistics if you can somehow or other have anumber that represents the contribution of thetransportation industry to the gross nationalproduct.

The building industry, or the building indus-tries, as I prefer to call them, are combined formuch the same reason. It makes sense to lookat the several building industries if what onewants to identify is expected changes in the in-dustry.

For our purposes, it seems to me there are sixindustries which react quite differently to thosekinds of issues:

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The first is the housing industry — the col-lection of organizations, technologies, skillsand financial mechanisms whose purpose is toconvert raw land, usually purchased on aspeculative basis, into dwelling units that canbe sold or rented to individuals and families.The major distinction for the purpose of anal-ysis is that this process is begun before thereis a buyer in mind. The builder of thesehouses builds a house against a potential mar-ket, not against clients who come to them andsay, “These are our needs, and we want ahouse of this kind.” Very few houses in thecountry are done that way, and I put those inthe fourth category.The second is what I call the manufacturedbuilding industry. I call this a separate indus-try because it is a collection of organizations,technology, labor and financial mechanismswhose purpose is not to convert land intobuildings, but rather to manufacture off-siteunits that are anywhere from the whole unitto subassemblies, which can be transported tothe site. A few companies like the RylandCorporation own house manufacturing ca-pabilities, as well as build conventionally, andI’m sure we can find all kinds of exceptionsat the margin for each of these.The third industry I call the commercial de-velopers. I mean by this people who buy rawland and convert it into buildings other thanhousing — people who develop industrialparks, people who develop shopping centers,or people who develop office buildings.Again, the character of this industry is thatthere is no client in advance, There’s a pro-spective market out there, and there’s land,and there’s an investment to be made inbuilding something on this land which willeventually be leased or sold to a set of userswhich will emerge.The fourth industry, is the one that most of us

think about when we talk about ‘the buildingindustry,' It is the conventional collection oforganizations, design and engineering firms,banking institutions, general contractors andsubcontractors, regulatory bodies, etc. thatbuild buildings for specific clients: an agencyof the Government, a private client, or some-times a wealthy family. The client sets the re-quirements, decides on where they’re going tolocate, usually purchase their own land, andthen enter into a process in which a design iscreated for them that’s eventually put out tocompetitive bids. The ‘building industry’listed here is the only industry in which com-petitive bidding occurs. It is practically theonly industry of building where there will be amajor change if there is a technologicalbreakthrough. It’s the one building industrywhere bidding can reflect market conditionsas a result of changes in prices.

None of the industries listed above reallyhave much competitive bidding. Sometimesmarket competition works in the housing in-dustry, but only over a long period of time.The major impact of the housing industry, aswe’ve mentioned already this morning, is whatit cost to buy the land, and what is the mort-gage rate that they have to pay? We used tospeculate we could practically build a housefor nothing, and it wouldn’t change the pricewhich people would pay for housing, becausethe market price for housing was determinedby a whole lot of factors other than the tech-nology of building.

● The fifth industry, the remodeling industry, isone we sometimes forget. Of the $250 billionthat represents our 10 percent of the gross na-tional product, is included almost $50 billionin this remodeling industry. This probablydoes not include rehabilitation of existingbuildings in the sense that an architect andcontractor might do it, nor does it include re-habilitation of the kind that homebuilders do.It means the remodeling industry that sellsthings from aluminum storm sash, to screendoors, to new store fronts for small businesses;that is financed by short-term financing rather

than increases in mortgages. It is not regu-lated by building codes, by and large. For along time, it could be characterized by theblue suede shoe type of salesman,

• The sixth industry, and the one that OTAchose not to cover in this workshop, is what Icall the heavy construction industries. Theseindustries build highways, dams and facilities.Their clients are primarily public agenciesand utilities.

I can make a couple of statements aboutthese six industries that are useful even thoughthere are exceptions to everything I’m about tosay. First, the fourth industry in my list, ‘thebuilding industry,’ is the only place in whichtechnological change has a dramatic and imme-diate impact.

Secondly, if one tries to make a definition ofan industry which is a collection of people whorepresent a common interest because they sup-ply a common concern, these definitions hold uppretty well. One of the ways that is very visibleif you work in Washington, is by seeing who isit that lobbies. And the people who lobby foreach of these groups don’t really concern them-selves by and large with the other groups, Peo-ple who are lobbyists for the housing industryare not, by and large, concerned about the com-mercial developers or the remodeling industryor the heavy construction industry, and viceversa.

Also, another way to look at it is who sup-ports the R&D and where is the R&D done. Afew universities do research that crosses overthese industries, but if you look at the individ-ual in the university who is doing research,their research is oriented towards one of theseindustries, as contrasted to the industry acrossthe board. I also think that there are very sel-dom movements of companies, of skilled labor,or even of financial mechanisms across these in-dustries.

The prospect, therefore, is that when we talkabout the impact of technological change, asOTA will be doing, and what that means to the

146 Reflections on the Presentations

building industries — and we provide advice topolicy makers like Congress about what can bedone about looking at the impact of technologyon the building industries, that if we are beingas clear as we can be about it, that we meanthere are these six industries and not one indus-try.

B. Evolution vs. RevolutionWe must also be clear about the nature of thechanges now underway in the building industry.We’re in an industry in which the character ofchange has been evolutionary and not revolu-tionary, and that’s likely going to continue to bethe case. A lot of my fellow executive directorshere in the National Academy of Sciences areresponsible for areas that have only been aroundfor ten years or fifteen years. Some, like chem-istry or physics, have been around for over onehundred years. But we’ve been building build-ings for over five thousand years. Over that fivethousand years inventions and innovations havebeen introduced, primarily by trial and error.

When we have an industry like the electron-ics industry, the mean time between surprises iszero. One expects a new surprise to come out ofthat technology practically every day, but it wasborn in a period of time when the kind of racethat it’s running is equivalent to the 100-yarddash. The pace of change in the building indus-try is more appropriate for running in a 26-milemarathon. You don’t use the same techniques inthe 26-mile marathon that you use in the 100-yard dash. The construction industry haslearned what works, what doesn’t work, andhow to bring about change very slowly.

Well, what is a revolution? And if we were totry to describe to Congress whether there arerevolutionary changes possible, conceivable, orlikely to happen in this industry, what would wemean by ‘revolution’ as contrasted to ‘evolu-tion?’ There’s a simple definition of ‘revolution’for this purpose. By ‘revolution’ one wouldmean the rapid displacement of an existing setof ideas or skills or institutions. That is, some-body would be out of business who’s now inbusiness, or some idea would be out of voguethat’s now in vogue, and a new idea, a new setof skills or new set of institutions that were con-

siderably different, not just slightly changed,would have come into existence. Technologyhas created many ‘revolutions.’ Consider thefield of medicine. Practically no child has mea-sles today. Diphtheria has been eliminated inthe world, not just in the United States. Liter-ally in the world there are zero cases of diphthe-ria at this point. Technology is transforming theoffice. 1 learned to type when I was in the ser-vice. But the word processor is so much moreconvenient than the typewriter that the type-writer is practically useless to me today. Iwouldn’t want to use a typewriter, as such, eventhough there are new typewriters still comingout on the market.

Tower cranes are one of the technologicalchanges that were introduced into the buildingindustry that displaced old concepts, and Igather the tower crane may, in turn, be dis-placed in the near future.

Well, what kinds of things have we talkedabout in this workshop that have the quality ofrevolutions? I thought I would concentrate onthose since evolution in this business, after fivethousand, is relatively easy to deal with. Maybesome of us believe there needs to be someameliorating consequences on the part of Con-gress, but by and large, I’m impressed aftertwenty-five years in Washington that in our so-ciety, we do adapt to evolutionary changes.We’re less good at, less clear about how to dealwith revolutions.

So what kind of revolutions might be comingout of what we’ve talked about, ‘revolutions’meaning the displacement of an idea that’s inpresent currency, the displacement of a set ofskills or the displacement of a set of institu-tions?

The clearest, most easily understood, exam-ple is what I would sum up in the word‘telematics’ the combination of electronics thatcombines communications, computers, elec-tronic controls, et cetera.

In Harry’s report on the first day, and AltonBradford’s as well, most of us are made awareof the fact that telematics is dramatically goingto change the building process. This is conceiv-ably revolutionary in the sense that there willbe displacement of skills in professional firms asa result of this telematic change.

John P. Eberhard 147

We also heard from the team of Reisman,Clevenger and Patri an example of telematicsbeing incorporated in the products which wedesign and make, namely the ‘intelligent’ build-ing, It’s not quite as clear whether that’s goingto be revolutionary, except that there does ap-pear in the case of the ‘smart’ building a goodpossibility that there will be a displacement ofthe concept of office buildings that are not‘smart’ buildings, and that therefore, our inven-tory of office buildings, particularly the onesthat are in the open market, will represent anew opportunity for upgrading performance ifthey’re going to stay competitive.

It’s interesting that telematics introduced intobuildings, is the first revolutionary change inthe fabric of our cities in almost one hundredyears. One hundred years ago we had a verydramatic set of changes which included:

1 ) The invention of the steel process (the Bes-semer process) and therefore the ability to sepa-rate the structural part of buildings from thewalls. This made it possible for the first time inhistory to build buildings that were taller thanfour or five stories. The steel skeleton began toemerge as a technological possibility a littleover one hundred years ago.

2) Associated with that was the necessary in-vention of the elevator, because while peoplewill walk up five or six stories, the possibility ofthem walking up more than that is not verylikely.

3) Another invention was the invention of awhole set of things that made indoor plumbingpossible. You just have to imagine a sixty-storyoffice building in downtown Manhattan thathad all outdoor privies to imagine the landproblems that that would impose if we didn’thave indoor plumbing.

4) And then a discovery really, the discoveryof electricity, and the application of electricityto indoor illumination so that spaces inside ofbuildings could be used without daylight.

5) Then a set of inventions that made com-munications possible, primarily the telephone.The ten thousand people who work in the Em-pire State Building could not continue to func-tion in our society if they had to deliverphysical messages between each other on pieces

of paper and were not able to talk on the tele-phone.

6) Then the invention of the internal combus-tion engine and its incorporation in the automo-bile. This dramatically changed the urbansetting.

7) The invention of the set of devices calledfurnaces that changed the nature of how weheat space from essentially what was a woodburning or coal burning fireplace, with enor-mous logistics problems, to the centralization ofthat heat producing device in something calleda basement.

Now, that set of inventions has two interest-ing characteristics to it. Every one of them werereduced to patentable positions in the UnitedStates between 1880 and 1892, and since 1892,there has not been another single invention thatdramatically changed the performance charac-teristics of buildings.

However, we may be, with the ‘smart’ build-ing, and with telematics, in the middle of thefirst dramatic change in the performancecharacteristics of buildings since 1892.

Next, in this workshop, we discussed thequestion of whether or not there are any sur-prises coming in the manufactured housingbusiness. That is, is the process of making build-ings off the site likely to produce some dra-matic changes over the next few years? I thinkwhat Don Carlson and Eric said clearly indi-cates that if it’s not going to come out of theUnited States. But the subject which we havenot talked about is that it might come from for-eign competition. Japanese or the Swedes orsome place else might develop a truly capital-in-tensive process.

It we examine how much capital equipmentis invested in a typical U.S. prefabrication plantper worker, I think it’s still probably not muchmore than $2,000. The average farmer in Penn-sylvania spends $75,000 on his equipment to dohis farming on an everyday kind of farm. Sowe’re very far from being a capital-intensive in-dustry at this point, even with our manufactur-ing processes.

I’ve not heard, but it would be interesting tohear, what Japan’s equipment investment is.

David Claridge and John Millhone talked to


us about energy conservation. The messagethere for Congress seems to be there’s no sur-prises coming unless, and that’s a very hardthing to predict, unless we have another worldcrisis of some kind, in which we have our supply of fossil fuels dramatically curtailed. Thenwe might have to do something more dramaticthan what we did in 1973.

An interesting example from the energy con-servation area seems to be a byproduct of tech-nological changes in energy uses. Even suchevolutionary changes, sometimes can be verydramatic. The dramatic change that’s comingout of energy conservation is the decline in thebusiness of the heavy building industry. Thepeople who build power plants are the ones whoare getting revolutionary changes introducedinto their activities as the result of energy con-servation, because electric utilities don’t needthe kinds of capacity they thought they weregoing to need fifteen years ago. Just yesterday,for example, TVA announced the cancellationof another set of nuclear power plants. Thosebig projects that big civil engineering companiesdid are disappearing, and the result is very in-teresting. Most of them are looking to otherparts of the world for business, and they tell methat there are really no giant projects that theysee in great abundance going to come out inany part of the world. So that means that theSwedes, the Koreans, the Japanese, the French,the Italians, all of the big companies in mostparts of the world are looking every place else inthe world for business that’s going to representa new opportunity for them. That may be themost revolutionary thing for the construction in-dustry to come out of energy conservation.

Dick Tucker talked this morning about whatseemed to me more of an emphasis on problemsthan opportunities. The interesting notion thathe represents is the constant concern than I’veheard for at least thirty years now in this indus-try about we need more support for R&D. Idon’t think there’s any shortage of capital forR&D anywhere, whether it’s Federal funds orprivate funds. What we’re short of is goodideas. When somebody like Dick and his col-leagues put together a good set of ideas, theycan get the money to support their work.

I have never heard of somebody who had a

good idea that didn’t get funded. I’ve heard lotsof people with half-baked ideas, and I’ve heardlots of people who have complained that if theyonly got some money they would have goodideas, but by and large, the money is availableif there are good ideas.

Wendel was the biggest surprise for me. Herepresents true revolution. He represents thatbreed of cats like those who are out therechanging the world in Silicon Valley in Califor-nia, They didn’t ask anybody if it’s all right tocome out with a new set of ideas. They wentahead and produced a new set of ideas. When Itaught architecture 1 had students who hadideas like his but he’s actually getting thembuilt. Wendel is not only revolutionary becausehe has some good ideas, but because he’s get-ting them built.

Al Dietz said that there are no revolutionscoming about for materials. However, the use ofwaste materials, the new applications of materi-als like composites and laminates may changesome of the processes. We can say to Congressapparently we don’t see any surprises comingout of the materials field, including out ofNASA.

Chuck Thornton talked about the actual costof the building as being only one-third of thecost to the owner. I have a hunch, that the fi-nancial community will soon be entering somerevolutionary changes. Banking and financialinstitutions are not going to go out of business.We need money to make money, but they’vegotten so greedy and so big in my lifetime thatthe central part of every city in the UnitedStates, and in most of the world, is dominatedby buildings built by financial institutions.When I was a boy we were building churches,schools, hospitals, suburban homes. Banks werelittle places, in which if you didn’t do well inhigh school you went to work. All of my chil-dren’s friends who did well in business adminis-tration or economics, or almost any othersubject in college, go to work for banks in NewYork City and make astronomical salaries. Thecredit card companies are tying to charge me19.8 percent on short-term credit when we’recomplaining about what, 14.5 percent mortgagerates in housing? Something is wrong some-where. Somebody is making too much money.

James G. Gross 149

Every time in history when somebody is gettingtoo much of the pie for themselves, some kindof revolutionary change occurs. New institu-tions come into the business, and those new in-stitutions create a different way of doing things.I think that one-third cost now of buildings thatdoes into money might, in fact, precipitate notonly a change in time, but a change in the waymoney enters into this system.

Then finally the lesson that comes fromNASA, that Stan talked about, is that the larg-est single invention in our lifetime has been theinvention of how to invent. For the first time inhistory we can purposefully go about inventingwhatever the mind of man can conceive. That’snever been true in history before.

How we go about invention is the key. Whatwe did not do when we decided to go to themoon was to hire an industrial designer, anaeronautical engineer, and interior decoratorand a couple of other professionals and say,

“Design us a spacecraft that we’re going to sendout for bids.” Why didn’t we? Because the bigsecret of invention of invention was how to useignorance as a resource. How to find out whatit is we don’t know. That’s what the space pro-gram has taught us; how to systematically goabout finding out what we don’t know. Work ona collection of things that you don’t know untilyou do know something, and you can release anew set of discoveries.

I think we’re in the building field withtelematics now at a stage where we may pro-duce a revolution of that kind, a new set ofcharacters who will say, let’s systematically goabout not just new product development, butnew concept development by using ignorance asa resource.

John P. Eberhard is Executive Director of the AdvisoryBoard on the Built Environment at the National Acad-emy of Sciences


James G. Gross

1 will address the needs and opportunities ofthe building community as I see them. I willbriefly address opportunities as they relate tocomputation and automation, education of pro-fessionals, productivity, and building research.Suggested will be a model for change thatmight be given some consideration.

On the subject of automation and advancedcomputation, it’s amply evident to all of us thatthis technology is coming on like gang busters.The work that Wendel is doing in the designand manufacturing of space frames is ex-tremely advanced. But we must be impressedwith the fact that it’s still fragmented. Thehardware, the software, and the languages stilldon’t interface. Wendel showed that he had tobring the architect to his office in order to com-municate. The day will come when he, throughhis computers, will be able to communicate di-rectly with any of his clients, and his clientswith their clients and consultants. Expert sys-tems have not yet received much attention, butthe opportunities for expert systems will putnew demands on architects, engineers, and re-searchers.

We continue in a construction process thatregenerates the same information over and overagain in spite of the fact that we have this won-derful new capability in front of us. Basic in-formation about the building is generated at thepredesign or programming stage. It’s regener-ated at the design stage, not any by the archi-tect, but by each of the involved consultingengineers.

For example, an architect will develop thenecessary information to design a wall system.The mechanical engineer again will developsome of the same information to calculate heatgain and heat loss through the walls. The struc-tural engineer will need some of the same in-formation to determine the loads on thefoundations. Then the contractors bid the job.They take off much of the information from theplans and put it into their computers to preparebids. The building regulator, who has to checkthe plans for compliance with the buildingcodes, does it again; maybe not to the samedepth, but he needs to look at the plans that re-

late to safety characteristics such as fire resis-tance. Over and over again, the sameinformation is regenerated, each time increasingthe chance for errors and decreasing overall pro-ductivity.

The contractor, after receiving the award, hasto take the information off the plans and speci-fications in detail for ordering the materials andscheduling the work. The fabricator extracts thesame information to develop shop drawings.Yet, when the project has been completed, thepreviously developed information is not avail-able to the owner and occupants who need it tooperate and maintain the building. Nor is itavailable to those who want to rehabilitate ordemolish the building,

We need to develop the necessary interfacestandards which will allow the various propri-etary hardware and software systems to talk toeach other. We should develop these standards,using the voluntary standards organizations nowin place. This will permit all affected parties tohave an input and a part in the development ofthe standards.

Research needs to be conducted to obtainknowledge on the application of artificial intelli-gence to the development of expert systems forconstruction. In the area of education for pro-fessionals, we have been told — it was said overand over again during these past two days —that tomorrow we’re going to have to work dif-ferently, architects, engineers, and constructorswill need to work as a team. Nevertheless, to-day we still see much fragmentation at the uni-versity level. For example, mechanicalengineers usually don’t learn much about build-ing technology as part of their education. Theymay be in the same building, but they don’ttalk to the civil engineers, and the civil engi-neers don’t talk to the architects even thoughthey do most of the structural design. Electricalengineers usually don’t show much interest inbuildings, and the architects are off in their cor-ner, concerned primarily with drawing and theaesthetic aspects, not the technical issues ofbuildings. Many builders and contractors areeducated in schools where business manage-ment is the matter of primary concern.

If we look at the recent past, you will seethat architects have enjoyed relatively less of

James G. Gross

the design fees paid for building design andconstruction; and their proportion is decreasing.Engineers, on the other hand, because they areapplying more technology, have experienced anincrease in their part of the pie. The time hascome when many firms refer to themselves notas AE firms, but as EA firms, which was al-most unheard of ten years ago. This indicatesan increased emphasis on technology applied tobuilding design practice. I think it’s time thatwe look at the opportunities to educate thisteam as a whole. There are big potential payoffsby studying and improving the way we educateyoung professionals so they can better work to-gether as team members.

The next item I want to touch on is pro-ductivity. I was interested in what Dick Tuckersaid about increasing productivity at the jobsite, but I want to address the subject from adifferent angle. We were told yesterday that theenvironment in the ‘smart’ office building canincrease productivity 24.9 percent. That is avery impressive number. Michael Clevengermade a convincing argument that we can in-crease productivity by that amount. Let’s lookat the meaning of increasing the occupants’ pro-ductivity, not just the typing pool’s productionof typed pages; but let’s see what it reallymeans in dollars.

Several years ago we provided technical sup-port to the General Services Administration fortheir building systems program during whichwe looked at the life-cycle costs of a buildingfrom a productivity viewpoint. When we lookedat the life-cycle costs over an office buildinglife, the numbers came out something like this.The initial cost to build an office building is inthe order of two percent of the total cost tobuild, operate, and product in it over a life time.Approximately 6 percent of the total cost is foroperation and maintenance, and 92 percent is topay the people who work in the building.

So let’s extrapolate from these numbers andlook at what an increase in worker productivitycan mean in the total scheme of things. Even ifyou add an additional 25 percent to the initialcost of the building, in order to increase theproductivity of the people in the building byeven 10 percent (e.g., reduce labor costs by 10percent). You would get a return of 18 times

the investment. I know of no other investmentas financially attractive today; and if youachieve the suggested 25 percent increase inproductivity, you get a return 46 times its costin present worth dollars. Those kinds of invest-ment opportunities are unheard of. We ought tobe looking at the impact that a more productivebuilt environment could have on the construc-tion industry, the opportunities for architects,engineers, building materials and equipmentsuppliers, developers, and investors. We need tolook at this opportunity for all types of build-ings, from office buildings to the factory floor.What would increased productivity mean ineducational facilities, on one hand, and retail-ing, on the other hand?

I support a thorough study, including behav-ioral research, to understand the impact ofacoustics, lighting, thermal comfort, air quality,space relationships and aesthetics in buildingsas those qualities affect productivity. Such re-search may be a major opportunity for the con-struction community. Also a hard look at theinfluence of the built environment on productiv-ity would be a great opportunity for the countryto improve productivity.

A number of papers here argue the need formore research. Research money will usually beavailable when the financial opportunity justi-fies the investment, and when the results of thatresearch accrue to the people who make the in-vestment, Yes, then there is money available.

But there is not money readily available toconduct research in which the benefits accrueto society as a whole. There is need for more re-search support as part of education for buildingprofessionals. Other countries are spending a lotmore money on building research in proportionto their populations. I don’t think they have bet-ter ideas than we. Foreign governments arespending money directly on generic researchwhich I mentioned before, and they are provid-ing incentives for proprietary interests to en-courage research.

The Japanese private entrepreneur has a lotmore incentive to do research than does U.S.Homes. We heard yesterday that US. Homesdoes no research. Individual Japanese construc-tion companies have building research capabili-ties comparable to what we have at the

151


National Bureau of Sandards. Some individualJapanese companies have two hundred profes-sionals doing research. When that knowledgehits our shores we’re going to feel it more thanwe do now. Canada is spending a lot more thanthe U. S., and they are doing a lot more to trans-fer research results into practice. Also, researchhas a tremendous influence on quality educa-tion. If we’re considering improving the educa-tion of our professionals, we need to considersupporting research in the same universities.

Mr. Kelly mentioned three large industries inhis introductory remarks. The three largest in-dustries in this country are health care, foodproduction, and construction; each approaching10 percent of the GNP The health care indus-try, through the National Institute of Health,has an annual appropriation from Congress over$4 billion; and yesterday we heard about thewonders that are taking place in that area.

Look at agriculture. That is the one industrywhere nobody in the world approaches the U.S.in productivity and efficiency. The US. popula-tion is fed efficiently and effectively with thebest quality and widest variety in the world. Weexport more agricultural products than anyother product area. The Department of Agricul-ture spends about $1 billion a year on research.

The construction industry is about the samesize as these other two sectors, and spends in di-rect appropriation at a national level of $8 to $9million. In addition, NSF supports some build-ing related research in universities; HUDspends a little money for building research; butthere are not sufficient monies spent on genericbuilding research in the United States.

Let’s look at these numbers. Health care issupported at a level of over $4 billion at NIH,and food production at approximately $1 billionat the Department of Agriculture. Constructionrepresents only one-half of one percent of whatis spent for research at NIH. I am not suggest-ing building research should be at the samelevel, but I am suggesting that there are excel-lent building research opportunities that needsupport.

There are other needs. There is the need toeffectively implement findings to improve build-ing practices. John Millhone talked to thatpoint yesterday when he said we know a lot

about energy conservation and its use, but weneed to transfer that knowledge to the locallevel so that it’s used in rehabilitation.

It would improve our competitive positionworldwide if we would develop more new con-struction technology and transfer it into prac-tice. Let’s examine our country’s successfulmodel, agriculture, which I mentioned just aminute ago. The Department of Agriculture hasa program of national research. There is sup-port for research at the land grant universitiesin every state. There are related educationalprograms, and there are technology transferspecialists, called county agents, around thecountry that move the results of that researchinto place.

I think we ought to look at the USDA modelto see if it might apply to research and educa-tion for construction that would offer enormousbenefits to the Nation.

I have a couple of additional points I’d liketo made. One is that we haven’t heard anythingabout indoor air quality. IAQ is somethingthat’s going to get a great deal of attention dur-ing the next few years. We don’t know whatquality of air is required for good health andproductivity. We don’t know how to accuratelymeasure the quality of air that we breath. Sothese are two tremendous problems; the first,being health related, I hope the medical profes-sion will tackle. The second is a measurementproblem which we in the construction industrycan tackle with sufficient support for research.

The other area I want to mention is diagnos-tics. Diagnostics is needed for two purposes:one, for acceptance and quality assurance ofthe products and systems we build, and the sec-ond is for analysis of our existing buildings, par-ticularly in preparation for rehabilitation. Wewill see a great deal of good work in the area ofdiagnostics during the next few years. There’smuch interest in the research now underway.

I agree with the observations made by othersthat rehabilitation has been a major growtharea and will continue. In order to effectivelyand efficiently rehabilitate our existing buildingstock, it’s essential that we understand the per-formance capabilities of that stock. As EricDluhosch suggested, it is inefficient and waste-ful to gut a building and rebuild the whole in-

James G. Gross 153

side, What we need to do is to have technologies. Quality control for new construc-nondestructive evaluation, diagnostics, so that tion and analysis for rehabilitation will requirewe can determine what the performance major growth in the development of diagnosticcharacteristics of that building are so we can capability.maximize the use of our existing resources as ——we rehabilitate them. There are many opportu- James G. Gross is Deputy Director of the Center for

Building Technology at the National Bureau of Stan-nities in the areas of thermography and ultra- dards.sonics, for example, as well as other NDE

technology and the future of the u.s. construction industry · 2018. 4. 29. · today’s...

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