AEC 2000-2025: Visions, Opportunities and Issues

The AEC industry will change fundamentally in the next generation, say 25 years. The computer has started to have profound but predictable effects on AEC professional practice. This paper argues that AEC Design and Construction will move toward Desktop Engineering, in which small numbers of computer-based professionals have major responsibility for design and management of entire facility development projects. Most individual practitioners will beconme experts or generalists. Business practice will become more integrated than is now the routine case. Information Technology enables Desktop Engineering, providing educational and professional development requirements and research opportunities. Simultaneously with these dramatic developments, competition will increases for the attention, time and budgets of clients, partners, students, and sponsors. Positive outreach will be needed to develop good clients and vendors, attract good students, and support research. These changes suggest a set of practical and research needs for the AEC academic and professional communities, including modeling tools, methods and examples; significantly improved visualization. In addition, there is need for effective outreach to current and prospective clients, students and sponsors. Research issues relate to the needs: modeling, visualization and validation. At a high-level, this paper introduces effective methods to assess research status. Vision of future design and construction The AEC industry will change fundamentally in the next generation, say 25 years. The product – built facilities— will become increasingly complicated and integrated into the local, regional and global communities. The design-construction time will shrink markedly from current practice. The work of practitioners will change dramatically as computer methods impact the routine practice of design and construction management. The industry and practice may change in other ways. Increased outreach may involve more stakeholders in design-construction review. The stature of the Civil Engineering professional may rise in western society, but it may fall. For similar reasons, the quality and number of Civil Engineering students and the Civil Engineering research support may also rise, but they may fall. AEC Design and Construction will move toward Desktop engineering Desktop publishing has revolutionized the way that authors prepare papers. In the "old days" before the mid-1980's, an author would write a paper, probably longhand, and give it to a secretary for typing. Over a period of days or weeks, text and illustration drafts would be received, modified, updated, and finally integrated. A paper typically had a small number of drafts. In the contemporary era of ubiquitous desktop publishing, authors prepare all facets of a document, including text, formatting, graphs, tables, and all but the most complex illustrations. Aided by desktop publishing tools, authors do copyediting, spell checking, grammar checking, figure preparation, tables of content and indices. Authors share scores or hundreds of drafts with each other electronically. Desktop engineering tools have started to enter AEC practice. Desktop engineering will have similarities with the current practice of desktop publishing. Using integrated desktop engineering tools, a single specialist or small team will develop a design concept. The small development team will consider the suggestions from multiple computer-based critiquing systems in developing an initial concept. The designer will send design versions electronically to human engineering consultants for their review and suggestions. Powerful and inexpensive computers enable the movement to desktop engineering. Effective and well-integrated suites of CAx applications also support this movement. There are now functioning examples of a number of theoretical and technical developments that contribute to the emergence of desktop engineering, including formalization of engineering process theories, integration of diverse engineering practices, and the rapidly emerging effectiveness of symbolic models of artifacts and systems to represent designs and processes. Desktop publishing and engineering systems share a number of properties. Small number of users Desktop engineering centralizes authority and decision-making responsibility on one or a handful of users. Decision-makers can obtain automated suggestions from multiple perspectives and can send a set of recommendations to other human analysts. The total number of design and construction management professionals may decrease, or increased volume and complexity may increase the numbers of practitioners. Individual practitioners are experts or generalists The Desktop engineering users necessarily are generalists: they setup the computer to analyze a number of engineering perspectives, and they balance the competing demands of different perspectives. The generalist will need specialist consultants to help understand and resolve difficult engineering issues. The semiconductor fabrication industry has developed large numbers of highly specialized engineering disciplines, for example design, fabrication and installation of small bore piping made of exotic materials. Current academic training and the business models of many design and construction firms lie firmly in the middle of this generalist-specialist spectrum, and staying there incurs the risk of becoming marginalized. Business practice will become more integrated The benefit of desktop engineering comes from implementing a systems approach to design and construction. The cost, risk and reward need to be distributed across all business participants. An integrated business model must emerge to incent designers to develop “improved” facility models and to incent contractors to help designers develop improved design practices. Integrated design-build companies are one current step in this direction. Information Technology enables Desktop Engineering Desktop Engineering requires extensive design and process models to be implemented in the computer. Additional emerging technologies have started to enable interoperability of applications and ability of stakeholders to share desktop applications. New interface technologies enable new displays and allow non-AEC stakeholders to analyze and comment on design and construction models. Competition increases for attention of clients, partners, students, and sponsors Stakeholders in the AEC process include clients, facility users, business partners, current and potential students, and research sponsors. All of them receive large numbers of solicitations of their interest, some of which appear compelling. Most academics want increased interest of students, partners and sponsors. With the internet, consumerism and competing educational, career and research demands, it will be difficult for the AEC community to maintain its current position in the minds, hearts and budgets of current and especially new stakeholders.