January 28, 2008

AGC national CEO visits Seattle

Steve Sandherr, CEO of the AGC of America, was expected to speak at the local chapter's annual meeting Friday in Seattle. He was visiting the AGC of Washington to tell members about emerging trends in the construction industry, including BIM, green construction, contract documents, and legislative and regulatory issues.

Sandherr said he visits about 30 of the association's 96 chapters each year, but it's been about five years since he has been in Seattle.

“It's one of our better chapters,” Sandherr said about the AGC of Washington in a telephone interview. He said the local chapter has one of the best government relations programs in the country and past leaders had the foresight to invest in the real estate where the AGC Building sits on Lake Union.

BIM

Sandherr said the use of building information modeling (BIM) has gained popularity over the past few years among the larger general contractors, but is still used in less than 10 percent of all construction projects.

BIM blends 3-D modeling with electronic document transfer to improve the way building designs are created, communicated and constructed. It allows construction options to be designed in an interactive way.

“It's called CADD design on steroids,” Sandherr said, and owners and designers are driving the use of it because they are on the front end of the projects.

Sandherr said BIM allows for better collaboration between owners, general contractors, subcontractors and the design team. That leads to fewer errors and corrections in the field, he said. “It's also a great marketing tool for contractors to go to owners to visualize what's going to be built.”

Sandherr said BIM does have high costs associated with setting up the technology and hiring staff to run it. He said contractors doing more than $50 million in yearly revenue are most likely to use BIM. “Below that there is a fear that the investment wouldn't pay off,” he said.

Sandherr said smaller contractors might find BIM attractive as technology gets cheaper in the future.

The AGC has been promoting BIM in a number of ways, including seminars for local chapters and creating the BIM Forum, which allows a network of users to share best practices and ideas over the Internet.

“It has become part of the curriculum of construction management programs (in universities),” Sandherr added.

Green construction

About two years ago, the AGC commissioned Michigan State University to study what contractors can do to bring more LEED points to a project. Sandherr said the association is using the results of that study to create an educational and certification program called “Building to LEED-New Construction.” He said the program would be unveiled at the March AGC of America annual meeting in Las Vegas.

“We've previewed this education program and we have eight chapters signed,” Sandherr said. The local chapter is not on board yet.

Sandherr said the LEED program provides contractors a new way of marketing themselves. “We have seen more and more contractors get their personnel certified in LEED,” he said.

The AGC is also working with the EPA. One of the results is a contractors' compliance area on the AGC of America's Web site.

“We have been, for a while, partnering with the Environmental Protection Agency on a lot of green initiatives,” Sandherr said, offering an example of recycling on jobsites as one.

Contract documents

The AGC is spearheading an effort to use consensus standard form contracts in the construction industry. It has partnered with 20 other organizations to create ConsensusDOCS, where “DOCS” stands for designers, owners, contractors and sureties.

Sandherr said many groups have developed standard form construction contracts, but they all suffer from the perception they were written in the best interests of the drafter. He said ConsensusDOCS is more representative of the collaboration on the jobsite and the forms are growing in acceptance after about a year in the marketplace.

Legislation and regulation

The federal government has a $150 billion spending program and Sandherr said the construction industry should get a piece of that. He said there are many federal construction projects that have been shelved due to a lack of funding, escalating construction prices or other factors.

“If you want to stimulate the economy, that would be a good place to look,” he said.

Another major issue on the AGC radar is the long-term prospects for transportation, especially transit and highway projects. Sandherr said the country needs to invest in highway, as well as freight and passenger rail.

A hearing on those subjects was held earlier this month in the U.S. House. Sandherr said they still need to find support for it.

 

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Benjamin Minnick can be reached by email or by phone at (206) 622-8272.

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