Tuesday, January 11, 2011

Ramps that can not - not comply with building codes


Many in construction believe, that because all buildings are unique, one-off-creatures created through a high percentage of manual labour, there is little room for automating tasks and applying quality control based on discipline and efficiency. Standardising operating procedures into easily replicable processes is looked at as being not appropriate to construction and even less for the design process, something being the realm of manufacture only. Still, creating buildings is a lot about how consistency is achieved.
I find it amazing that an industry that churns out ‘products’ in billions of dollars annually is constrained by haphazard, unscientific processes that carry huge amounts of (often unnecessary) risks;
The construction industry is like others and standardisation and sound quality management practices can be applied. The trick is in knowing what and where.
How to separate the Mundane from what Matters?
Take for example yesterday’s ramps: The NZ Building code is pretty specific what parameters an accessible ramp should have. There are BIM tools that will allow objects to have built-in controls for these code specific parameters. When these objects are set up properly they control what a user can do with them. This on its own would not make the previously mentioned councillors suddenly see what the impact of a 70+m ramp will have on the GE Village but would do a lot of good. More tomorrow.


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