Creating the Conditions for Convergence

To successfully incorporate manufacturing processes into construction projects, Sinclair says, design teams must begin with a converged approach in mind. That includes designing to a level-of-detail that will allow suppliers and construction teams to begin sourcing manufactured components early on.

“The current level of detail is not typically as high as we would want,” Sinclair says. “One of the challenges for us is really going right down to the last screw of some of the components in a building. Take a door, for example: If a door is fitted into a partition, it has different challenges than if it’s fitted into the floor. So understanding how all of these construction challenges have been dealt with earlier allow us to solve them once, and then be confident that we won’t have to go back and revisit all these objects.”

“I think the key is really trying to give architects the knowledge that they need to try to work with these new manufacturing technologies,” Sinclair adds. “You really need to think about them quite early on, because otherwise you’re hard-baking traditional construction into a building.”

“The challenge for us is that we have the ideas, but we don’t have the manufacturers who can produce our ideas,” Sinclair says. He adds that AECOM is currently working on a major healthcare and research project in London and is planning to work with suppliers to find ways to manufacture elements such as ceilings off-site, rather than erecting them via traditional construction methods. “Really, we’re taking each element of the building and looking at opportunities to increase manufacturing. For some of the projects that we’re designing, no manufacturer exists, so the biggest challenge for us is how to create the supply chain for the products of the future.”

Detailed BIM models, Scammels says, are key to unlocking the innovation necessary to develop new processes. “It’s about being able to create options and variations that allow us to pull in multiple supplier information or approaches, and still give us choice,” he says. “There’s a lot more onus on managing a digital library.”

Rather than commoditizing architectural design, Sinclair expects the convergence of manufacturing and construction to make architects more efficient and effective. “Commercial clients want buildings that are different and distinct,” he says. “For us it's not about commoditization of design. It’s about, how do we design more effectively using digital libraries. It’s about using those libraries to create unique architecture.”

Sinclair also stresses the importance of adopting software tools that are capable of bringing together manufacturing and traditional building design processes. “In order to embrace this new way of working, where we’re adopting more manufacturing processes in design, we need access to tools like Revit and Inventor that support interoperable workflows,” he says.