National Academies Press: OpenBook

Linking the Construction Industry: Electronic Operation and Maintenance Manuals: Workshop Summary (2000)

Chapter: 5 Emerging Technologies and a Vision for the Future

« Previous: 4 Prototype Practice for the Building Industry: Operation and Maintenance Support Information
Suggested Citation:"5 Emerging Technologies and a Vision for the Future." National Research Council. 2000. Linking the Construction Industry: Electronic Operation and Maintenance Manuals: Workshop Summary. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9904.
×

5

Emerging Technologies and a Vision for the Future

Dr. Joel Orr

Orr Associates International

Bentley Engineering Laureate

There is a lot of brainpower concentrated here, an incredible source of powerful ideas. What is more, the precipitating granule around which we are collected here is some actual work that is being done.

For some of us, the relative improvement of printing on a shiny silver disk instead of on paper seems to be an enormous step. But, in point of fact, it is one very small step for mankind. We need to think beyond this. The leading business speakers say that we can no longer afford to go on fixing the mistakes of the past. We instead have to embrace the innovations of the future. Jeff Besos did not set out to create a somewhat better bookstore with Amazon.com. He made something completely different. I do not even know how you fit eBay into that metaphor. We are doing new things now. I like physical and electronic metaphors, but there is an absence of friction in the commerce world that is brought about by the World Wide Web specifically —the Internet alone was not sufficient. We needed the additional overlay, the World Wide Web, to make the Internet accessible to the world at large.

The taking away of friction has created new things that we could not think about before. Dell Computer, when I last checked, was selling $30 million worth of computers every day on its Web site. That is 365 days a year. That makes it an $11 billion company as of September 1999. The big deal was that they violated a fundamental tenet of business, which is that, if you want to grow beyond a certain size, beyond a certain rate, you must seek outside investment. Michael Dell does not do that. All he asks for is your credit card. When you order your computer, he gets the money from the credit card within minutes of your putting the number in. He does not even have the parts for your computer yet. Then he gets those parts, and he gets them on a 30-day basis. He has your money for 30 days. If he wants to grow more, all he needs is more sales.

Now, unless you are used to thinking in business terms, you do not realize what a revolution this is. This is very, very different from a manufacturer who has to find some money, build a plant, and then maybe start taking orders. So, we are experiencing the commercial world as it affects how we do business and government.

Alfred North Whitehead, a mathematician and a philosopher, said that “civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them.” The

Suggested Citation:"5 Emerging Technologies and a Vision for the Future." National Research Council. 2000. Linking the Construction Industry: Electronic Operation and Maintenance Manuals: Workshop Summary. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9904.
×

fact is, George Miller said it in a famous paper in 1955, “We can only juggle a few things in our mind at one time.” Civilization advances by allowing us to get rid of these things or to put them where we do not care how they work. We just move forward.

Marshall McLuhan put it very nicely. He said that “any medium has the power to restructure our minds in a unique way by imposing its own mode of thought.”

We have evidence of this from a woman named Jane Healey, who was a kindergarten teacher for 20 years. She was upset because every year the kids coming into class seemed to be less and less able to handle the standard kindergarten curriculum, which she had taught identically for 20 years. She took a sabbatical and wrote a book, Endangered Minds. She studied issues regarding brain plasticity: what happens in a child's mind at different ages. The fact is that the more stimulation the child gets at a very young age, the more real estate in the brain gets devoted to input as opposed to output. In her book, she showed a parallel between her experiences with kindergarten-age children and that of other people and the length of an average tape on television. In the television of the 1950s, the TV camera would stay on a scene for 15, 20, or 30 seconds at a time. Today on Sesame Street 2 seconds is a long time. Absorbing this continuous stream of stimulus takes up more real estate, and children's brains, being malleable, being literally plastic, devoted more and more space to input, leaving less for expression, less for output.

Thus, the medium has the power to restructure our minds.

Now, the medium we have been working with in the world of construction is the medieval medium. Any construction manager from 1652 could pop up today and recognize the elements in a construction site without too much difficulty. Structurally, not a great deal has changed. Yes, we have different materials as well as telephone, fax, and computers. That is about it. The medium is changing. The medium that is changing is the electronic medium at large, the ability to communicate quickly. Why? Because it is eliminating float. Information float is the source of power in any organization.

You know what financial float is. You know your Aunt Tilly sends you a birthday check from out of state, and you deposit it in your bank, and the teller says, “I'm sorry, sir, you are going to have to wait 5 to 10 days before you can draw on these funds in your account. ” Of course, the Federal Reserve delivers those funds that night to the bank, and the bank gets to use them for a few days. That is float on their end. Meanwhile, you write a check you know is not covered to someone, but you also know that your paycheck is going to be deposited in 2 days, and the other fellow uses a different bank. It will take a couple of days to get there. You are using float to your benefit.

The same thing happens with information. The drawings, the models, and the information come to you, and you are supposed to process it before you pass it on. The longer you hold it, the longer your queue, the more important you are to the organization, the higher your prestige rises. Now, someone comes along and says, “Let's implement work flow.” This dynamic flow chart will show everybody exactly how the information moves through the organization. Are you going to like that? No. Everybody is going to know not only what time you came to work but how many things are in your queue and how long you took to process them. Do you want people to know that? If you are in middle management, probably not, because of your perception of your control. So, a lot of the resistance to all of this comes from that quarter.

I can take that further. Let me go back, since I started on the Federal Reserve, to Alan Greenspan, who said that information technology has “begun to alter fundamentally the manner in which we do business and create economic value.”

In order to improve productivity, we have to think over the continuum of the entire life cycle as well as the continuum of the entire enterprise. The enterprise here encompasses the owner, the product deliverer, the product manufacturer, the architect, the engineers, and so on, everyone who is involved, as well as those who are involved in maintaining this building.

Suggested Citation:"5 Emerging Technologies and a Vision for the Future." National Research Council. 2000. Linking the Construction Industry: Electronic Operation and Maintenance Manuals: Workshop Summary. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9904.
×

EEM stands for enterprise engineering modeling. Whenever we create a model, it becomes a place where we can gain experience in an environment of attenuated consequences—in a place where you can crash and burn and rise up to crash and burn again. Models give us that opportunity, but models exist within the context not just of design but within the context of engineering at large. In other words, this making, designing, and maintaining of things fits within the context of the overall enterprise.

We need to think of these things as a unit. It is not about having fewer mouse clicks or drawing lines and circles faster or even producing more drawings or fewer drawings, but rather of having an environment, because engineering is a nondeterministic activity. In other words, we do not have formulas into which we plug the givens of the situation and out pops an optimum design and optimum building.

Everything is trial and error. In fact, we do not even have convergent trial and error processes. We have no guarantee that, given more time, we will come up with a better design. What we want is a place in which we can make our choices and see their effects inexpensively.

All of this is happening within the context of a large number of trends, as follows:

  • Centralized to decentralized

  • Expensive to cheap

  • Dedicated to casual

  • Closed to open

  • Isolated to integrated

  • Dumb to smart

  • Drawings to models to knowledge

  • Procedures to objects to components

  • Mediated to immediate

  • Local to global

  • Seller's market to buyer's market

All of this smart sizing, right sizing, RIF-ing, whatever you want to call it, means a reduction in the number of people to do things, which means each of us wears more hats than we used to.

Therefore, we need systems that support us in that environment, where we do not have to take a 6-week course and then take another course if we leave the system alone for a month. We have to have systems that we can learn to use quickly. Nobody holds a monopoly on any of the system formats. Therefore, we need formats that are open.

One of the big benefits of the Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML) is that it is machine readable. It is also human readable. We need something machine readable to enable us to exchange information among heterogeneous systems and do the kinds of commercial transactions that have to be made. So, openness is important.

In the programming world, we are talking about a transition from procedures to objects to components. Objects are not of interest to architects, components are. We are moving from systems that are mediated to those that are immediate.

The word “immediate” has two wonderful connotations in English. It means here and now, spatial and temporal connotations. That is what we are moving to, here and now, and of course, local to global, and happily from a seller's market to a buyer's market. In fact, in the design world, we are seeing some major transitions. We are moving from the concrete, which is the thing itself, to a physical model that is less concrete, more abstract, to paper, which does not have to be paper—electronic paper, which seems like but is not a big transition. That is like the transition from paper to CD. That is not a big transition. That is not from horse-drawn cart to automobile. That is from horse-drawn cart to horseless carriage,

Suggested Citation:"5 Emerging Technologies and a Vision for the Future." National Research Council. 2000. Linking the Construction Industry: Electronic Operation and Maintenance Manuals: Workshop Summary. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9904.
×

something that is characterized by the absence of one of its former features, not by the new features that it offers. Information technology is a necessary step in the evolution.

Meanwhile, we are moving along another scale from the real to the virtual. It is from the real to the almost real. Physical models have physical attributes. Virtual models have only those attributes that you consciously give them. You might say that virtual reality is, in a sense, responsible reality. It only has the things you put in. If you want gravity, you put it there. If you want gravity to be 9.8 meters per second or 32 feet, however you want to define it, that is your business.

A recent study shows that the major concerns of people in construction are electronic construction documents and the firm Web site (see Figure 4, emerging trends): in other words, the advertising brochure on the Web. Construction management, design-build projects, smart growth, value engineering, virtual reality tours. Project Web sites are important to only 20 percent of the population and sustainable building green design is even lower than that. Facilities management is lowest on the list of real concerns of the construction companies.

Paul Strassman made himself forever the enemy of other chief information officers (CIO) when he was CIO of Xerox. He wrote a book, The Squandered Computer, in which he said there is no correlation between computer spending and profitability or productivity. There is a shocker for you and not something the CIO wants to hear when walking into that budget meeting. In fact, Strassman says there are not even any best practices. However, most CIOs miss the good news in the message, which is that only alignment of business and technology goals can help.

Figure 4 Emerging Trends

Suggested Citation:"5 Emerging Technologies and a Vision for the Future." National Research Council. 2000. Linking the Construction Industry: Electronic Operation and Maintenance Manuals: Workshop Summary. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9904.
×

In other words, in the past, the CIO charted a course for technology. It had nothing to do with where the business was going. Strassman is saying that the successful businesses are those that are characterized by an alignment of business and technology goals. This certainly goes for government as well as for business.

I want to share with you 10 points by which to measure the value of what your organization is putting into technology.

First, whatever it is, make sure that it preserves the value of your current data.

Second, the system must speak your language. In other words, you cannot bring in a system that totally replaces what you do and expect it to just keep up operations as usual.

Third, it has to reduce and streamline data management. I cannot tell you the number of times that I have seen situations in which it was simple on paper but with computers it takes six more people and is five times slower.

Fourth, you have to empower as many employees as possible. You cannot succeed by creating additional bottlenecks.

Fifth, you have to allow for training. One commercial enterprise gentleman said to me, “I am afraid if I train my people in additional skills, they will leave.” I said, “So, let me get this right. You want to not train them and have them stay?”

Sixth, find permanence through incremental improvement. If you stop the bicycle, it falls over. If you keep rolling, the gyroscopic effect will keep you stable. That is the only stability you are going to find in dealing with technology.

Seven, recognize that the technology is a bridge, not a ferry.

Eight, all of this is going to happen in a world of two-way mobile access (i.e., wireless technology).

Nine is plug and play.

Finally, establish relationships with vendors, not mere transactions. This is not something you can go out and buy. This is something where you want somebody else to worry about the technical details.

In short, you have to demand permanent value from your assets. It will not happen automatically. Frankly, technology problems are easily solved, and organizational problems are often hidden. The biggest obstacle is fear of change. Somebody said, “Change is inevitable; progress is not.” Somebody else said, “Change is inevitable except from a vending machine. ” So, whatever view you take, you can make progress, but only if you confront the people and organizational issues squarely.

Marv Patterson of Hewlett Packard put together a chart showing factors that encourage process change but do not necessarily create it. You have to have high-level endorsement. You must have the visibility of metrics. You have to have grassroots involvement, and you have to have the motivation of success stories. People are, in fact, the key.

Suggested Citation:"5 Emerging Technologies and a Vision for the Future." National Research Council. 2000. Linking the Construction Industry: Electronic Operation and Maintenance Manuals: Workshop Summary. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9904.
×
Page 20
Suggested Citation:"5 Emerging Technologies and a Vision for the Future." National Research Council. 2000. Linking the Construction Industry: Electronic Operation and Maintenance Manuals: Workshop Summary. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9904.
×
Page 21
Suggested Citation:"5 Emerging Technologies and a Vision for the Future." National Research Council. 2000. Linking the Construction Industry: Electronic Operation and Maintenance Manuals: Workshop Summary. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9904.
×
Page 22
Suggested Citation:"5 Emerging Technologies and a Vision for the Future." National Research Council. 2000. Linking the Construction Industry: Electronic Operation and Maintenance Manuals: Workshop Summary. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9904.
×
Page 23
Suggested Citation:"5 Emerging Technologies and a Vision for the Future." National Research Council. 2000. Linking the Construction Industry: Electronic Operation and Maintenance Manuals: Workshop Summary. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9904.
×
Page 24
Next: Appendix A Participants »
Linking the Construction Industry: Electronic Operation and Maintenance Manuals: Workshop Summary Get This Book
×
Buy Paperback | $29.00 Buy Ebook | $23.99
MyNAP members save 10% online.
Login or Register to save!
Download Free PDF

Public agencies, private corporations, nonprofit institutions, and other organizations regularly invest millions of dollars in acquiring buildings and other constructed facilities to support their lines of business. For this investment, the owner receives a complex structure composed of hundreds of separate but interrelated components, including roofs, walls, foundations, electrical, plumbing, heating, air conditioning, ventilation, fire, communication, safety, and architectural systems. These components and systems must all be maintained and repaired to optimize the facility's performance throughout its service life and to provide a safe, healthy, and productive environment for its users and occupants.

Linking the Construction Industry: Electronic Operation and Maintenance Manuals is a summary of a workshop that was held at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C., on October 13, 1999. The workshop, planned and organized by the Federal Facilities Council and the National Institute of Building Sciences, brought together an invited audience of building industry stakeholders, including owners and operators from federal agencies and other organizations, building component and system manufacturers, publishers of building product data and maintenance manuals, and CMMS software developers to revisit the issue of electronic operation and maintenance manuals.

  1. ×

    Welcome to OpenBook!

    You're looking at OpenBook, NAP.edu's online reading room since 1999. Based on feedback from you, our users, we've made some improvements that make it easier than ever to read thousands of publications on our website.

    Do you want to take a quick tour of the OpenBook's features?

    No Thanks Take a Tour »
  2. ×

    Show this book's table of contents, where you can jump to any chapter by name.

    « Back Next »
  3. ×

    ...or use these buttons to go back to the previous chapter or skip to the next one.

    « Back Next »
  4. ×

    Jump up to the previous page or down to the next one. Also, you can type in a page number and press Enter to go directly to that page in the book.

    « Back Next »
  5. ×

    Switch between the Original Pages, where you can read the report as it appeared in print, and Text Pages for the web version, where you can highlight and search the text.

    « Back Next »
  6. ×

    To search the entire text of this book, type in your search term here and press Enter.

    « Back Next »
  7. ×

    Share a link to this book page on your preferred social network or via email.

    « Back Next »
  8. ×

    View our suggested citation for this chapter.

    « Back Next »
  9. ×

    Ready to take your reading offline? Click here to buy this book in print or download it as a free PDF, if available.

    « Back Next »
Stay Connected!