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Once Congress and the new administration have ironed out all the details of the next economic stimulus package, architects and construction firms will face the giant logistical challenge of executing stimulus projects on budget and on time. During today's OnPoint, Barbara Heller, president and CEO of Design + Construction Strategies, a consulting firm specializing in using new technology to boost productivity, gives her take on President-elect Barack Obama's plan and how the new administration can avoid unnecessary spending. She explains why she believes current building efficiency measures are aspirational and what can be done to improve accountability.
Monica Trauzzi: Welcome to the show. I'm Monica Trauzzi. With us today is Barbara Heller, president and CEO of the DC Strategies. Barbara is an architect and leading expert on improving construction industry performance through technology and best practices. Barbara, thanks for coming on the show.
Barbara Heller: Thank you, Monica.
Monica Trauzzi: Barbara, with all eyes on the upcoming stimulus everyone is seemingly trying to get a piece of the pie. Your primary focus is really on the logistics of how projects come together and really doing it in a way that's efficient and stays on budget. President-elect Obama has chosen a chief performance officer to manage this logistical puzzle. What are the benefits of having someone in that position? What do you see as some of the key things that that person is going to have to bring to the table early on?
Barbara Heller: Well, I think that the chief performance officer is just a wonderful opportunity, both symbolically and practically for the Obama administration to start to analyze some of the inefficiencies in the construction industry and to transform the practice and to create a new paradigm for what it means to be an effective building owner. I think that the way that construction is done in this country has echoes of how things were done during the medieval era in the medieval guilds. And, unfortunately, it sometimes devolves into chaos and inefficiency. So at DC Strategies what we do is work with large organizations and government agencies who are responsible for complex capital programs and help them analyze their work process and apply technology solutions to facilitate communication and make the whole project more efficient and I think that's a real opportunity for the CPO. And I think that there's a precedent for doing that at OMB too, because they've already established some practices with management of IT programs. They have a high risk list where they provide special oversight for those projects and it would be wonderful if they could translate some of those practices to the construction sector.
Monica Trauzzi: So, this is a really good management move on Obama's part?
Barbara Heller: Absolutely, yes, it is.
Monica Trauzzi: Is Obama's plan too far-reaching? We've heard lots of numbers thrown around at this point, not too many specifics on exactly how the projects are going to be structured, but are we trying to do too much with this type of project? And might we see future generations ending up with a lot of debt if these projects aren't handled properly?
Barbara Heller: Well, I'm not an economist and so I really can't give you an opinion about the economic validity of this program. But I can say that in many ways focusing on infrastructure is a return to historic priorities that this country has had. A lot of people think that Obama's goals and his policies are derived from the Franklin Roosevelt era and his WPA program, but actually it was the Eisenhower administration that really build the infrastructure of this country and the highways and the airports and the transportation and communication structures that allowed us to experience the economic prosperity that we have today. So, I think that this is, in a sense, a return to historic priorities and if you believe the projections that say we're going to get 100 million more citizens over the next 30 or 40 years, we need to not just repair the infrastructure and maintain the infrastructure we have, we need to improve and expand it. Otherwise we're not going to be able to move goods and people around the way that we're accustomed to.
Monica Trauzzi: And Obama has pledged an unprecedented effort to eliminate unwise and unnecessary spending. Earlier you mentioned that technology could be used to help us get to that point. What kind of technologies are we talking about?
Barbara Heller: Well, there's a whole variety of technologies that can come into play for different aspects of this program. But what's really wonderful is that we are at a particular inflection point now where engineering applications, design applications, geospatial applications, and communication technology are converging to make things easier to understand, easier to manage, and with better results. So, in the construction industry, one of the biggest reasons that contracts frequently go over budget and over schedule is that people have difficulty rendering decisions. And part of the reason they have difficulty rendering decisions is that most people have trouble reading plans and elevations. They don't really understand what's drawn. And through the use of 3-D visualization technology, like building information modeling, it creates a whole new level of understanding for people who aren't necessarily trained in reading architectural drawings. And they're able to understand what they're getting. They are able to understand how to render decisions and they're able to move the projects along faster.
Monica Trauzzi: Considering all the proposed projects that we've heard about so far, smart grid improving Internet transmission, revamping our transportation infrastructure, which do you think could pose the greatest challenges and which do you see as the most concerning in terms of the time that's going to be required and the amount of money that's going to be required?
Barbara Heller: Well, I don't think you can pick one category and say it's going to create more problems than others. And as an architect, I am really a big advocate of the creative imagination and all of the wonderful solutions that we can generate through creative thinking. The problem is that translating those things into physical reality is sometimes problematic and I think that it would be wise for the Obama administration to apply some rules before they distribute the money in terms of a chain of command or authorization or procurement process that needs to be in place before they authorized the money. You know, there's a lot of talk about trouble ready projects and I understand the value in having the first wave of stimulus money be directed at those projects. But the reality is there are a lot of projects that have been shelved because they haven't been funded or for other reasons and the physical infrastructure, the real estate around those projects hasn't stood still while they've been sitting on the shelves. So, for some projects, resurveying all the utilities and the subsequent development that's happened since the project was shelved makes it not exactly shovel ready. So I think there needs to be a triage of what can really go quickly and what is really going to take a little bit more time in the planning and approval process.
Monica Trauzzi: You were involved in the Pentagon restoration project, in addition to the restoration of Reagan National Airport, some pretty major projects. What are some of the key lessons that you learned while you were involved there that could be applied to such a massive undertaking like the stimulus?
Barbara Heller: Well, the Pentagon renovation project in particular is an example of excellence in federal leadership. And so the federal team that led that project used some extremely creative procurement strategies and incentives and bonus award fees to create a scenario where they not only got their project done under schedule and under budget, but they were able to incorporate a lot of sustainable design attributes into the construction. And it's really been a win-win for everybody.
Monica Trauzzi: I want to get your thoughts on all this talk that we're hearing about improving building efficiency. Why do you think that these goals are aspirational in a sense?
Barbara Heller: Well, I think they're wonderful goals and I think that there are many ways that simple things can achieve great benefits. But I think that verifying the fact that those benefits have been achieved is a little bit problematic. So the reality is if you change the insulation level of a wall for example, but eliminate a certain portion of the wall or forget to insulate it or leave a joint open, you've effectively undermined the insulating value of the entire wall. Well, it's hard to validate that in the field and there are a lot of high-tech, but also low-tech ways that I think people can verify that some of their energy efficient expenses are actually being recovered. And I think that's going to be a little bit of a challenge for the administration.
Monica Trauzzi: So, a program like LEED is verifying on the front end, am I understanding that correctly?
Barbara Heller: That's right, it's an evaluation of design aspirations and it's a certification that those aspirations are conforming to that program. But it isn't really going back and metering the building to understand how well those goals have been achieved.
Monica Trauzzi: OK.
Barbara Heller: That's a little bit of an overstatement, but that's pretty much how it works.
Monica Trauzzi: All right, we'll end it right there. Thanks for coming on the show, very interesting.
Barbara Heller: Thank you.
Monica Trauzzi: And thanks for watching. We'll see you back here tomorrow.
[End of Audio]
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