Engineering for Resilience
My engineering design and project management philosophy has always integrated well into Design-Build (D-B), Design-Assist (D-A), Progressive Design-Build (pD-B) and Integrated Project Delivery (IPD) models since before they became ‘commonplace’ project delivery models with a universal recognition of their value over traditional Design-Bid-Build. I believe this is because I have always been COLLABORATIVE by nature and have always recognized RESILIENCE as the fundamental guiding principal to MEP/Infrastructure systems best-practices.
Collaboration vs. Coordination
Many design professionals and contractors talk about collaboration but are still ultimately practicing within coordination silos. It’s a very natural approach considering how disciplines and trades are still functionally operated as separate businesses, profit centers with businesses, and parties to contracts. We need these divisions to clearly assign scope, manage risks, and provide accountability for project success. IPD embraces collaboration over coordination by breaking through silos – perhaps even breaking them down in some exceptional cases. The proven benefits of collaboration over coordination are driving evolution in D-B, D-A, and pD-B while maintaining more traditional (and comfortable) contracting models for clearer risk management.
I came up through the A/E/C industry as a facilitator of coordination – as an internal coordinator between disciplines with my engineering firm and externally with our architectural clients; as a coordinator between the engineering design team and the owner’s facility management team; and as a coordinator between the design team and MEP trade subcontractors. I always put more emphasis on the FACILITATOR aspects of my roles as Mechanical Lead Engineer, Project Manager, and Department Leader and I naturally transitioned from coordinator to COLLABORATOR and Design Manager, Design Principal type leadership roles that keep me engaged technically with clients and teams.
Resilience
Not too long ago, ‘resilience’ was a simple concept, interchangeable with ‘redundant’ to many in the A/E/C community. We’ve come a long way. Over 35 years my own perspective on Resilience has evolved considerably but I believe it continues to be more comprehensive and structured than the current general descriptions in the AEC industry.
The National Academy of Sciences offers this definition of Resilience in the built environment: “The ability to prepare and plan for, absorb, recover from, and more successfully adapt to adverse events or threats.” The National Research Council’s definition is nearly identical and is adopted as the Building Industry Statement on Resilience, signed by AIA, NIBS, ASHRAE, USGBC, ASCE, BOMA, and others.
The most recent AEC industry progression now includes performance metrics tied specifically to climate risk, operational continuity, durability, and environmental integration.
Responsibility
Flexibility
Adaptable
Scalable
Expandable
Sustainbility
Energy Efficient
Serviceable
Affordable
Reliability
Redundant
Durable
Simple
Community
Environment
Equity
These metrics now start to fill-out a current industry perspective that is much closer to the Resilience Tetrahedron (Pyramid) Model I have been working from for the past several years, anchored at its four corners by Reliability, Flexibility, Sustainability, and Responsibility – the “resilience-abilities”. Each of these “Abilities” are intuitively described with three simple words each:
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Reliability encompasses Redundancy, Durability, and Simplicity
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Flexibility is demonstrated in Adaptable, Expandable, and Scalable systems.
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Sustainability reflects systems that are Serviceable, Affordable, and Energy-efficient
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Responsibility is addressed through social Equity, Environmental impact, and Community needs
Sustainability is INTEGRAL to Resilience
“Sustainable” is not the same as eco- or environmentally friendly. In a very pragmatic sense, it is the ability of our generation to realistically live in harmony with the natural world while still fulfilling our economical, social and ecological needs while minimizing burdens on future generations. In fact, our response to Sustainability and Responsibility today should intentionally set up future generations to live more ecologically while diminishing the economic and social impacts of doing so!
Behaviors and practices that are not enthusiastically embraced by the people are not sustainable. An environmental realist approach that sets high but achievable aspirations - that are sensitive to economic and pragmatic circumstances as they change over time and do not require excessive regulation - is the most likely to be successful and transformative.
We must apply this philosophy to the current life-cycle of buildings and building MEP systems so our successors can evolve more easily than us.
Approach
This fundamental engineering approach can be applied to projects or to isolated issues/problems, because the process used to identify, study, optimize and evaluate the best solutions is cyclical.
The approach always begins with listening. Listening facilitates an intimate knowledge and understanding of the client’s needs, values, and priorities for the project (or for a specific aspect of the project when we apply the cycle to resolving specific project challenges). It is through active listening that the client’s goals are understood completely, ensuring a clear statement of the Owner’s Project Requirements including Resilience and Sustainability.
Collaboration with all team members that are stakeholders who impact, or are impacted by, the problem is critical. Solutions can be optimized to the best interest of achieving project goals, not necessarily the interests or convenience of any individual stakeholder.
All potential solutions must be carefully analyzed by the collaborative team to determine the advantages and disadvantages of each option. The optimum solution is identified based on the project criteria established by the owner.
The proposed solution must be vetted through a rigorous process to check the criteria that factored into the analysis and to verify that it is cost effective and will not cause waste in any other aspect of the project.
The solution and its supporting analysis must then be documented in the project record and incorporated into the project design. The solution must be delivered to the owner in the form of a constructed system that meets the performance criteria of the design and has been field verified to function as intended.
The Project Triple Aim
The project triple aim strives to optimize quality project outcomes through thoughtful and active monitoring and control of Scope, Schedule and Costs. I prefer to use Quality as the target rather than Cost for high-performance mission-critical type projects, with quality being a “holistic life-cycle” criteria rather than strictly first cost. First cost is indeed a critical factor in achieving success on any project, but by making overall quality the focus, the project (and individual problems) can be evaluated on other criteria that may in fact be more important to the Owner than first cost. With disciplined thinking, innovation and creativity are not stifled by first cost constraints even when the project triple aim has cost at its center with quality as the third triple constraint instead.