The shared building model and the Internet offer the prospect of significant productivity and efficiency improvement in the building industry and provide a historic opportunity for the architectural profession. At present no one—owner, designer, or builder—is taking the enterprise-level view of the entire process.
Industries such as aerospace and auto manufacturing, shipbuilding, and process plant engineering have used enterprise-wide information technology to fundamentally change their processes. Product life cycle integration has enabled design, production, and operations to be informed by each other in a kind of feedback loop. Results have included:

– shorter product cycle time from concept to market
– less waste with lean processes
– more choice for the consumer with mass customization
– higher quality at lower cost

At the same time, Internet-based communication technology has enabled decentralization of organizations by making information accessible to geographically distributed work teams, suppliers and partners. Companies such as Nike demonstrate how large enterprises can successfully outsource all production while concentrating on design, marketing, and coordination. The trend toward decentralization and outsourcing suggests that there may be new ways of organizing work that would improve efficiency in the building industry without changing its traditional reliance on small firms. By making external communication cheap and secure, the Internet is changing the equation, offering the possibility of connecting the various players in a building project with a networked organization.

Enovia - Product Lifecycle Management based on a shared 3D model

A network of small, independent, but tightly integrated firms each contributing to a cooperative process and supported by enhanced communication, may be a better fit to the AEC industry than either the compartmentalized design-bid-build system or the vertically integrated industrial model used by design-build companies. Such a flexible alliance of specialized firms, which come together for projects, disband, and then re-form, can be most effective if supported by an ability to capture, store, use, and reuse crucial project information. Quality and innovation are enhanced because each member of the networked organization contributes its specialized expertise, which adds to an ever-expanding knowledge base to the benefit of all.

Who will be in charge of this more rational design and building processClearly, the one who controls the project information will be at the center of the building team. The project information architect may combine characteristics now associated with architect, quantity surveyor, process engineer, and construction manager. The duties of this new kind of architect would encompass a comprehensive overview of a project throughout a process that extends from site selection and programming through facilities management.

The project information architect is the:

• Designer, not just of buildings but of the building process
• Keeper of the knowledge base —the one who selects, filters, classifies and maintains information within the project team and from project to project
• Maintainer of standards and quality assurance
• Coordinator of specialists
• Builder of a community of interest around each project

The project information architect would be at the center of a flexible, networked organization, a temporary grouping of physically dispersed, independent companies. Such a virtual organization would be founded on trust—a willingness of participants to share goals, risks, and information while retaining their own individual ownership.

Highly successful models of networked organizations have existed in other industries for some time. Movie production in Hollywood is one example. Until shortly after World War II, movies were made under a studio system in which a few vertically integrated large companies controlled every aspect of production, distribution and display of films. When this system collapsed under antitrust pressure in the 1950s, movie production shifted to teams assembled on a project-by-project basis and that is still the norm today. The studios continued to control the financing, marketing and distribution of films, but film production became a project-based virtual enterprise. The transformation from industrial-style to networked organization took place in just a few years.
Movie production is an agile, flexible industry in which projects go from idea to production in weeks. When the project gets a green light, hundreds of small firms and individuals quickly get up to speed. Most participants get a “piece of the action” in addition to salaries and are contracted with simple letters of agreement. There is high reliance on trust and standards. Powerful talent agencies became the equivalent of project information managers, brokering deals by assembling specialist teams—actors, directors, writers, and technicians—and packaging them for investors and financiers.

The Italian textile industry clustered around Prato in Tuscany is another example of a decentralized, networked organization. In the early 1970s, the large and failing Mannechetti textile firm broke itself up into eight small, autonomous units each specializing in one of the steps in the design and production process. Other large mills did the same thing. By 1990, Prato was home to thousands of small design and manufacturing shops, nearly half of which employ fewer than 10 people. The firms pooled their research and development efforts, and with the support of the Italian government, made large investments in CAD/CAM and networking technology, and flourished as quality and innovation soared. In a few years, Prato became the most important cluster of fabric design and manufacturing in Europe, tripling its profits during a time when the overall European textile industry was in decline. In the same way that Hollywood talent agencies assumed the role of broker and deal-maker, a new kind of “infomediary” appeared in Prato—the impannatore. These independent agents provide the crucial coordination services for design and production of fabrics, putting together temporary teams of small firms to fulfill the particular requirements of each customer.

The culture of networked organizations is based on cooperation and trust rather than hierarchical command-and-control. Entrepreneurial small businesses are free to innovate, and these innovations are diffused throughout the enterprise. In this environment, standards—accepted ways of doing things—become ever more important, enabling specialists who have never worked together to quickly become productive with each other, in the same way that makeshift surgical teams of doctors and nurses are able to work effectively in emergencies, using well-defined protocols and procedures.