Hi my name's Kevin Labrecque, Senior Vice President of Operational Excellence for Limbach Facility Services, a design build mechanical firm in the US. Today I'm teaching for Columbia University project management program on the topic of technology trends In construction cost estimating and control. A little bit of background on myself before we get going. 22 years in the industry, 13 of those with a large global construction management firm and the last seven with Limbach. Over the course of that career, Ive held positions in project management scheduling, lean continuous improvement and BIM/VDC. And over the course of those years as well have implemented multiple different project management and cost estimating softwares. Come to you today from Limbach itself, which isn't a national design bill mechanical firm just to kind of help put it into context and perspective. Some of the stories I will tell are going to be at that granular level of cost estimating control given the topic of a specific trade, and then we can build up from there. We are a design build, so the context of us trying to pull a thread through the software that we use and the data that enables us to both design, estimate, plan, fabricate, and install in the field. And then ultimately services part of our overall approach to the topic. I stand on the shoulders of many, it is not myself alone. And certainly throughout the course of my career have benefited from and bring to you the knowledge of multiple individuals across large organizations that are constantly innovating, constantly looking for new ways to apply the efforts of cost estimating and control and project planning within the industry. The learning objectives for today's video and instruction are a few. To cover five the estimating systems, Bim based estimating. We'll take a look at that in action, see what the actual software is doing in the background so people can get familiar with how that's working. Look at the workflows and implications for the overall products and softwares that we use, and the ways to interconnect with the different things we do from an overall project delivery perspective. I know that some of you will be coming to the course potentially new to the industry and some with the industry for awhile and focusing specifically on the implementation of some of the things I'm talking about. And we'll cover some of the lessons learned and aspects there and then look forward to next steps, some future implications. Even today where we stand in the industry can move quickly from a technology perspective over the course of months, years, etc. So what I speak about today will certainly be old news shortly. Before we get started, I just want to cover a couple of basic tenets, a map maxims that apply to estimating in cost control as well as the application of software to achieve these things. First I'd like to start with a quote. Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted. Just because we can use technology and software to aid us in the tasks that we need to perform, from a construction manager's perspective, it does not mean it suffices and covers all of the things that need to be considered. So while it is very unique and interesting to estimate within the model itself. We must always understand that not everything that we can represent in a model will actually be important to the overall cost for a project. Therefore I like to call cost estimate and control both an art and a science. It is as much a direct task of estimating what shows up in a model or on paper. As it is what doesn't show up in a model or on paper, and they'll connect in the dots in putting the pieces together, ultimately to make a whole and complete estimate. Also, depending on what stage you are in the design development, all the way through construction and closeout, the tools that you use at any given point in time will evolve of course with the evolving design and application throughout the course of the project. So while a hammer maybe appropriate at one phase, screw driver at another, and perhaps some statisticated welding is occurring at another point in the construction process. Part of the overall effort here is to utilize the right tools at the right time. Later on in the presentation we'll talk about workflow and how that applies to these specific concerns overall. And then finally a little bit about value versus waste. Much like in the manufacturing industry where we would focus overall on the throughput of a factory and not necessarily on one major piece of equipment or robotics that might have been a heavy investment. And therefore we try to focus on keeping it busy and build up inventory ahead or behind and don't consider the whole workflow. When we invest a technology tool like Bim, it does not necessarily mean that the entire workflow is represented in the stream of what we're doing with respect to construction management and project delivery. So we need to be focused on that throughput. Use the right tool at the right time and use it to the best of what's available for that given stage in the project. So let's start with a little bit of a description of 5D estimating systems. There are many different products and technologies out on the market. I'm the tell you some stories that are associated, the details at least are associated, with our implementation in-house as a mechanical firm. Certainly there are similar piece of software across the breadth of the trades that are performed throughout the construction industry as well as at the overall level from cost estimating perspective. For ourselves though, we lean heavily on an autodesk basis for the platform. Autodesk Fabrication Suite, which in it's uniqueness provides a database that is common to the engineering, detailing, fabrication and estimating portions of what we do within the program. So it's a single database that is shared amongst all the parts of the program so that whether you're designing for engineering or you're fabricating in the shop, it's all using the same pieces and parts. They all connect the right way and have the necessary costs and labor associated in which we'll see. We also use for model authoring, Autodesk Revit within the engineering work we do in AutoCAD. And then as far as coordinating with others Autodesk Navis Works and Bin 360 Globe. You'll hear me talk later about the importance of connectivity in data, and the ability to export, and utilize the data that is In your modeling software and estimating. But also connect directly to it and streamline with some of the things you do from an overall business and operations perspective. In this case we have some in house tools that are used from a variety of different pieces of software. Some as simple as Excel and some as complex as our back end cost and financial management systems. But it's also not just about the data. It's about physically getting the data into the hands of the individuals in the field, doing the work. So whether that's the representation simply of a model in the field so that people can visually see the work, and attest to and check what is going on in the field as well as geospatially locate that work. So you see Trimbo Robotics station there for capturing and placing points in the field. As well as a Lidar 3D scanner to really go out into a physical space and scan it. Whether to get initial input from a design and estimating perspective, or to confirm installation in the field. The software itself, though, starts with some fundamental building blocks. The items that actually make up the model itself and those items have some unique and important properties. If you look into the background of any software revit in its families, AutoCAD and its ITM files, you'll find a plethora of tens of thousands of different items that are actually what's going into the model and making it up. Each of those items in the case of a cost estimating system needs to be tied to material cost. And in this case, you'll see on the screen that this particular item is tied to an automatic online pricing service, Harrison Pricing Service. That's feeding the back end of the database, updated on a regular basis in house by making that connection and tracking with materials, pricing, and commodity escalation, etc. The second important piece of the puzzle was labor costs and that item, as well, is tied to tables that tell us. Ultimately, the amount of time for that individual piece and part to be installed in the field. So it takes the item itself, and places some intelligence upon it that allows us to estimate both cost and labor. Having individual items though isn't really much of an upgrade from a spreadsheet or a digitizer to count and add up the amount of items you have. Really, the Intelligence comes from the ability to connect those items together. So regardless of the software you're using. There is some methodology in place that'll combine like items for a system. So that's a little bit of coordinating and grouping items so you don't have to search all the way around for them, as well as putting intelligence into how those items connect together overall within the software as you're using it. What types of couplings should we use in which certain circumstances? Whether size breaks make a difference overall with that system that you're using about how it will be connected, how it will be hung, how it will be insulated, etc. All those specific details are built into the software. And that is, quite frankly, part of what gives the power to the estimator, and really creates efficiency in the estimating process. In addition to connecting the parts smartly to make up complete systems, you can go the next step and create typical assemblies, final connections for pieces of equipment. Or perhaps a similar room that will exist throughout the case of the design. Maybe it's a hospital operating room that will be replicated many times throughout a floor. We can create these assemblies, and even further create efficiencies for the work being done by an estimator to just take off those components and place them into a model itself. When we're dealing with 5D estimating software, we have multiple different avenues for input. It could be something as simple as a drawing on a sketch a napkin basically that can be scanned in to any flat bed scanner and brought into the software. The most common case is flat two d drawings that are brought in as a pdf that you might find anywhere in the overall design bid build continence of the process. We can also author directly in the software that you're using to estimate if it's model based estimating you can take whatever component of the building that you're drawing and drawing it right there with the software that you use. And that'll generate real time placing the right items in the model. Further advancements have made it possible to take a model authored else where, in this case in Revit, and bring it directly into the model based estimating software. And really replace the families that are in Revit with the appropriate items in systems that are in the software that you're using or in this case the conversation between Autodesk Fabrication software is a direct one for potentially using the items themselves to generate the model. When it comes to output, most of the 5D estimating software that you use will have some onboard report mechanisms, system. To generate really wholesale reports as far as what the overall costs are for the project. You can also, and I'll show you some examples of taking that data outside of the system. Toi utilize it in a format that's most comfortable with a broader audience within an organization, say, Excel, or some database that you share throughout the overall organization. Data extracts can be posited there, query made sense of and then adjusted and reported out for an overall estimate. And then finally, where you can make direct connections via API through pieces of software. And there are many that are capable of doing that. You can take the data directly out of the 5D estimating software and put it in the system of your choosing to utilize both operationally and cost-wise.
