Google Wave is the company’s latest offering in their trek towards complete world domination. If you haven’t already heard of it, the pitch is “What would email look like if it were invented today?” Email was invented over 40 years ago to emulate snail mail. Google Wave aims to be a series of collaborative ‘living’ documents that multiple users can update simultaneously. Here are some introductory links and my thoughts for how design and construction teams might use this tool. If you have your own ideas for how you’ll implement Wave, share it in the comments. I have Wave invites to offer with the first 10 commenters. The email field in the comments is not published on the site, I’ll send your invite to this address.
Links for Getting Started
The Complete Guide to Google Wave
LifeHacker: How to Manage a Group Project in Google Wave
How Architects Might Use Wave
- Meeting minutes: Instead of one person publishing minutes, all parties could contribute their notes to ensure no detail is dropped. This could happen live with attendees on laptops or smartphones adding their responsibilities to the document. One party might still be chiefly responsible for moderating the minutes, but an increased participation in record keeping could help ensure all parties are clear on the next actions to take.
- Collaborative notes: Aside from architecture, there is discussion on how students can use Wave to crowdsource their notes on a class. If a student dazed during a certain portion of a lecture, they might find it in the class Wave. The professional equivalent of this might be notes on:
- office-specific drawing and software procedures
- shared notes from a presentation
- notes from professional conferences
- Problem Solving: Some design issues require long email trails to find resolution. Such circumstances might be aided by a Wave that allows each party to contribute their ideas to the collaborative document.
- Job record: If a construction project recorded major decisions and intentions in Waves, the result would be entirely searchable and ‘rewind-able’. This could benefit a complex project in the later phases of design or construction.
- Research: If architects increase their participation in Wave, ‘public waves’ could enable architects to find new expert voices to help solve technical problems.
- International Projects: The real-time translating feature of Wave aims to break language barriers.
- Fun Stuff: Organizing lunch, drinks and parties without long trails of emails.
Filed under: Professional Practice, Revit | Tags: BIM, Integrated Project Delivery, IPD
Integrated Project Delivery methods hope to be deliver valuable change to the construction industry. For something as fundamental the project delivery process, it’s important to understand the goals of this approach. The recent post on Broken Buildings discusses some of the inherent difficulties faced by the construction industry. Designers and contractors have developed misaligned responsibilities and interests that hinder efficient and affordable construction. By developing new agreements that share risk and reward, these two knowledgeable parties can provide an integrated service utilizing intense coordination and planning to avoid costly changes. As time is critical, the difficulty lies in assembling all parties early in the process to make such an agreement.
‘Allow information to flow freely’ is a phrase several writings on IPD mention, but what exactly does this mean? Currently, architects are creating BIM models for the purposes of clearly coordinating construction documents internally. Such models might also assist the construction team in cost estimation and logistics modeling, but current contracts ensure the architect is not responsible for these construction services. Inefficiencies and misunderstandings can occur when the material quantities are then manually quantified from 2D drawings. In an integrated environment, the architect and contractor develop agreements not only for when drawing sets are delivered, but also when certain components of the building information model may be shared to assist in cost analysis, logistics planning and possibly digital fabrication.
For more information on IPD, check out these links. Share in the comments if you find other links on the topic.
AIA: Integrated Practice | Integrated Project Delivery
Architect Magazine: Small Steps Toward IPD
Metropolis Magazine: The New Tools
Building Design + Construction: BIM + IPD Three Success Stories (via All Things BIM)
