Alabama Council AIA 2005 Annual Convention

Earlier this month, I was at the Alabama Council AIA 2005 Annual Convention, held in Orange Beach, Alabama, where I was invited to deliver a keynote address on the topic, "From CAD to BIM: Revolutionizing Technology in the Building Industry." The theme of the conference was "Focus on Change," so it was hardly a surprise that BIM (building information modeling) made it on the agenda, and that too as the topic of a keynote address. After being the subject of one of the three theme presentations at the AIA National Convention and Expo earlier this summer (see AECbytes Newsletter #22), BIM technology has been pushed right to the forefront of professional attention, and it was only a matter of time before it started to emerge as a critical issue for discussion at the state level conventions as well.

While I have been consistently attending and writing about the national AIA conventions, the Alabama conference was my first visit to a state-level AIA convention. What was also unique about my visit was that I was able to witness first-hand one of the most critical design issues facing Alabama and neighboring coastal states—hurricanes and the building damage that they cause. While Hurricane Emily had abated well before the state of the conference so that it was able to proceed as scheduled, the enormous devastation caused by Hurricane Ivan last year was still very much in evidence along the coast of Alabama as I drove by it. Needless to say, a few sessions at the conference were related to hurricanes, disaster assessment, reviewing building damage, and so on. Other more general sessions reflecting the "Focus on Change" theme of the conference were related to sustainable design, designing for change in Asia, the social transformation of architecture, and the ancient science of feng shui. The conference was accompanied by a Product Show, where local vendors and technology resellers demonstrated a variety of building and technology products. The highlights of this state-level AIA Convention are captured in this AECbytes article. While mine was the only technology-focused presentation, it is interesting to see how all the other issues that were discussed—sustainable design, hurricane-resistant design, and even feng shui—can all be facilitated with technology.

Overview of the Conference

Compared to the national-level AIA convention where attendance is in the thousands, attendance at the state-level conventions is typically in the hundreds. The convention at Alabama—whose state-wise ranking is 30 by size and 23 by population—was attended by a little over a 100 people. The atmosphere was very casual compared to the national convention (with many of the attendees in shorts). The Exhibit Hall had about 45 booths showcasing local vendors and service providers, and it was open only for a very limited duration of time. All in all, it was a totally different experience in contrast to the highly charged atmosphere and frenzied pace of the national convention. Considering such a scaled-down convention level, the variety of sessions that were presented was amazing. As I mentioned earlier, some of the sessions were devoted to the issue of hurricanes, which the coastal area of Alabama is frequently battered with. Since 1900, thirty-four major hurricanes have crossed the Gulf coast, from Texas to the Florida Panhandle. Of these, the ones that caused the most destruction in Alabama were a hurricane in 1926 (this was unnamed, as the practice of naming hurricanes began only in the 1950s), Hurricane Frederic in 1979, and Hurricane Ivan in 2004. Hurricane Ivan had sustained winds of near 120 m.p.h. and it's 10 to 15-foot storm surge caused extensive damage in Orange Beach in Alabama. The overall U.S. damage caused by Ivan was estimated to be near $14.2 billion, the third largest total on record. (A detailed history of hurricanes in the U.S. can be found on this web page of the National Hurricane Center.) One of the presentations at the conference by William Wilson of LBYD Engineers highlighted the storm intensity and building damage along Alabama and Florida's Gulf Coast due to Hurricane Ivan, the local Structural Engineers Association emergency response effort, and the guidelines for safety evaluation of buildings after wind-storms and floods. Another presentation by Stan Peterson of AIA Kansas was focused on developing a disaster assessment program, the objective of which is to inspect and placard structures for safety and habitability, augment local building codes and inspection department resources, expedite building permits, as well as help a state's emergency management department to assess disaster-related structural damage and provide planning assistance to communities before they rebuild.

Other presentations at the conference were devoted to varied topics. Greg Robinson of LBYD Engineers discussed the history of special inspections, which are required for most buildings and structures per the International Building Code, and why and how special inspections evolved. The rapid pace of development in China and other regions of Asia that create a challenge to conventional notions of urbanism, building technology, and architectural form was the subject of a keynote address by Brian Lee of SOM. He presented ideas for new mixed-use developments and buildings that can respond to the growth and demands of Asia's quickly changing cities, and discussed relevant advances in building technology and architecture. We learnt more sustainable design from Mary Ann Lazarus of HOK, who talked about how it was the core of HOK's business strategy, a cohesive, integrating philosophy across all its 23 offices worldwide, and shared some examples of green buildings designed by HOK, including the Winrock International Headquarters in Little Rock, Arkansas and the Whitehead Research Building at Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia. She also provided guidelines on how to start with sustainable design and how to implement LEED, the U.S. Green Building Council's Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design program. Another critical topic of discussion was accessible design, presented by Walter Leveille and Kaylan Dunlap of Evan Terry and Associates, who described the new ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) Accessibility Guidelines that represent the first full-scale update since their first publication in 1991. The presentation reviewed the changes with practical examples in real life applications of the law.

The remaining two presentations were in a somewhat more abstract realm. Claudio Vekstein of the College of Architecture and Environmental Design, Arizona State University, explored the immutable change in architecture, going from "social invisibility," where it is marginalized and homogenized, into "public revelation," where it becomes a social celebration and exaltation. Along the same vein was a presentation by Claire Rumore, a certified Feng Shui practitioner, who provided some insights on the ancient design philosophy of feng shui that seeks to create harmonized spaces which allow people to live and work efficiently, comfortably, and successfully by following the patterns of nature. She also provided some information on permaculture, a more modern concept that is a practical set of ecological design principles and methods for human settlements, which can be applied to urban, suburban, and watershed scale. In the Exhibit Hall of the conference, most of the exhibitors were local suppliers of building products. I found only two technology exhibitors, both of whom were Autodesk resellers. There was no representation of Bentley or Graphisoft products, and of the conference attendees I spoke to, only one was an ArchiCAD user, and even he was planning to switch to Revit. It seems as though the state of Alabama has been completely overlooked by Bentley and Graphisoft in their marketing efforts, leaving it to be dominated by Autodesk products. The two Autodesk resellers disclosed that most of their clients were still using AutoCAD, while a few had been slowly transitioning to ADT over the past few years. Revit was still relatively unknown, and there was little awareness of BIM in general. There were, however, a few exceptions and one of them was particularly striking—a 17 person firm in Tallahassee, Florida (very close to Orange Beach, Alabama), which made the switch to Revit over the course of a single weekend by going cold turkey and simply uninstalling all its copies of AutoCAD. I haven't come across such a drastic yet effective strategy of transitioning to BIM before!

How BIM Comes In

While mine was the only presentation at the conference that talked about BIM and computing technology, it was interesting to see how all the other issues that were discussed, which are critical to the architectural profession, can be facilitated by technology. Most firms implementing BIM today are motivated by its immediate benefits such as its ability to produce a better coordinated and more accurate drawing set more speedily and efficiently. However, its ability to support analysis and evaluation of buildings is going to yield much more significant and far-reaching benefits in the long term. Once intelligent, semantically-rich representations of buildings becomes the norm, we will see the concomitant development of tools that can capture the rules for different aspects of design such as hurricane-resistance, sustainability, ADA accessibility, code compliance, even feng-shui—just to name a few that were discussed at this conference. We can then run our BIM models through them for receiving feedback on how well the design meets the selected criteria as well as suggestions for improvement. BIM technology will make it a lot easier to design in compliance with specified requirements dealing with any aspect of architecture, and will institute much higher standards of quality control than those in place today. We already have some analysis tools along these lines for energy performance (see AECbytes Viewpoint #12); we will continue to see a lot more in the years ahead. Essentially, we are just seeing the tip of the iceberg at this point when it comes to BIM technology and its benefits; it is going to get a whole lot bigger and deeper.

About the Author

Lachmi Khemlani is founder and editor of AECbytes. She has a Ph.D. in Architecture from UC Berkeley, specializing in intelligent building modeling, and consults and writes on AEC technology. She can be reached at lachmi@aecbytes.com.

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