Impacts of Design/Information Technology on Building and Industrial Projects.
Impacts of Design/Information Technology on Building and
Industrial Projects.
(492 K)
Thomas, S. R.; Macken, C. L.; Lee, S. H.
NIST GCR 01-828; 46 p. October 2001.
Sponsor:
National Institute of Standards and Technology,
Gaithersburg, MD
Available from:
National Technical Information Service
(NTIS), Technology Administration, U.S. Department of
Commerce, Springfield, VA 22161.
Telephone:
1-800-553-6847 or 703-605-6000;
Fax: 703-605-6900; Rush
Service (Telephone Orders Only) 800-553-6847;
Website:
http://www.ntis.gov
Order number: PB2002-100133
Keywords:
information technology; design/information technologies;
practice use; cost benefits schedule compression;
economic value; project outcomes; technology
implementation; bar coding; 3D CAD; integrated database
Abstract:
This study, sponsored by the National Institute of
Standards and Technology (NIST), represents a
collaborative effort by industry, government, and
academia to evaluate the use of design/information
technology (D/IT) and to relate the degree of D/IT use
to project performance. The study consisted of two
tasks. The first was a detailed statistical analysis of
566 projects in the Construction Industry Institute
(CII) benchmarking database. This analysis produced
baseline measures of performance and D/IT use, and then
established the correlation between these measures to
assess the economic value of using the technologies.
This report, which summarizes the findings of the
statistical analyses, was the product of the second
study task. The analytic data set included all U.S.
domestic and international projects submitted by owners
and contractors between 1997 and 1999 using versions
2.0, 3.0, or 4.0 of the CII Benchmarking database. In
order to analyze project data that were comparable in
scope for owners and contractors, only those projects
for which contractors performed both design and
construction tasks were included. The resulting data set
was again refined to include two industry groups,
industrial and buildings. The results were presented in
tables under one of four groupings: Owners, Buildings;
Owners, Industrial; Contractors, Buildings; Contractors,
Industrial. The results of this study establish that
projects benefit from D/IT use. Both owners and
contractors can expect overall project cost savings of
approximately 2.1 and 1.8 percent, respectively. For
owners, there was evidence of construction cost savings
of nearly 4% by increasing the use of D/IT, as well. For
both, there was evidence of construction schedule
compression.
Building and Fire Research Laboratory
National Institute of Standards and Technology
Gaithersburg, MD 20899