BIM-Agile Practices Experiments in Architectural Design

Abstract

The digital transition is changing the way architectural firms are making design. The BIM technology, which tends to become mandatory for legal and competitive reasons is both convincing because of its parametric and global modeling sides and frightening because of changes caused by the arrival of new digital tools. Indeed, our basic postulate is that the emergence of new digital tools must necessarily be followed by the emergence of new practices and new project management in design stage. This research focuses on innovative project management methods and collaborative practices allowing to facilitate the integration of new digital tools in order to create innovative practices and methods adapted to computer-assisted and collaborative architectural design. We take inspiration from agile methods and practices born in the software engineering world in the 1990s. Agile methods are innovative project management methods that focus mainly on a better reactivity. We have thus identified that a better reactivity is corroborated to a better collaboration around the understanding and repartition of design tasks. Thus, we focus in particular in this paper on elicitation of architectural intentions and refinement of design tasks in collaborative groups of students working on a BIM project. For this purpose, we have set up a collaborative matrix that students fill up by explaining together their architectural wills and intentions for this project exercise. Naturally follows a defining "tasks to be done" process, which we will detail in this paper. Keywords: BIM Á Agile methods Á Agile practices Á Collaboration Á Architectural design Á Project management Á Collaborative and digital uses Á Collaborative and digital practices

Towards a BIM-Agile Method in Architectural Design Assessment of a Pedagogical Experiment

“…Moreover, we found that collective activities concerning BIM tasks are difficult activities, and more particularly their definition, their "owners", their transmission to other actors (with their initial meaning), or their estimated duration. We call that elicitation, refinement and evaluation activities [8]. Thus, we have oriented our research towards practices to improve collaboration and consequently exchanges within a group in order to solve these problems: the agile methods.…”

“…Micro poker is an agile practice that we have adapted from planning poker [8,11]. It is a deck of cards, and each player has four cards.…”

Pratique BIM-agile d’élicitation et de raffinement des intentions architecturales : le Micro Poker

“…Par ailleurs, nous avons observé divers problèmes de communication et de cohésion de groupe dans un environnement de projet BIM lors d'entretiens avec des architectes et pendant nos cours de projet : les acteurs éprouvent des difficultés à partager les résultats de leur idéation, tandis que l'utilisation de nouveaux outils BIM crée de nouvelles tâches que les acteurs ont du mal à identifier, quantifier, et à projeter sur des outils numériques (Gless et al, 2017).…”

“…Les étudiants en architecture et les agences que nous rencontrons sont de plus en plus informés et sensibilisés au concept du BIM, cependant, la définition des tâches numériques reste une activité difficile à réaliser en conception ; ces tâches sont mal connues, complexes, dépendent souvent d'autres tâches à effectuer par d'autres acteurs, et créent des soucis dans leur répartition (Gless et al, 2017).…”

“…Cette expérimentation a montré que les estimations de temps données par les groupes étaient cohérentes avec le temps réel pour accomplir l'exercice. Néanmoins, les étudiants avaient du mal à s'approprier le jeu du fait de son grand nombre de cartes (Gless et al, 2017). Par ailleurs, les étudiants se posaient également des questions sur la priorité des tâches, ou avaient du mal à estimer une complexité avec des nombres.…”