Resident halls are unique environments which rely on both individual resident rooms and shared community spaces. (Honors Residence Hall, University of Akron)

The whole is greater than the sum of the parts, according to Aristotle.  Nowhere is this truer than residence halls, which rely on both individual resident rooms and shared community spaces to create a true community.

What are those shared community spaces?

Two kinds of primary community spaces are study lounges and social lounges.  Study lounges are generally enclosed for sound control, and flexibly furnished so that both individuals or small groups can use them.  They often have white boards, or even projection capabilities, so that students can engage in communal learning.  Ideally the enclosure is transparent so that students still feel connected to the rest of the residence hall, while providing acoustic control and a sense of privacy.

A transparent study lounge where students can feel connected to the rest of the residence hall. (Falcon Heights, Bowling Green State University)

Social lounges, by comparison, can be enclosed or not.  Furnishings are generally soft seating for social gatherings, and AV connections are for watching DVDs, video, and gaming.  They are meant to feel connected to the rest of the building, and be both inviting and inclusive by nature.

A social lounge with soft seating for social gatherings. (Spicer Hall, University of Akron)

Another important community space that makes a residence hall a great place to live and learn are ‘residual spaces’.  These are the left over spaces in a building, such as a small nook or the end of a corner, where only a seat or two are placed.  Despite their name, these are often the most popular spaces in a building.  These are the places where students make a phone call, read, or meet a friend.

Residual spaces take advantage of small nooks where students can make phone calls, read, or meet a friend. (Honors Residence Hall, University of Akron)

In a successful residential hall design, even utility spaces can become active and popular community spaces.  Laundry rooms and community kitchens, properly located, can become open, inviting spaces to meet and gather.  Elevator lobbies are natural meeting spaces, particularly once you add mailboxes, a bulletin board, or a few chairs.

Thought through utility spaces can become active and popular community spaces for meeting and gathering (Centennial Hall, Bowling Green State University)

Residence halls are a home away from home for students.  Like a home, they need a mix of private space for each student, as well as spaces which make them part of a larger community.  A good mix of community spaces, designed to serve different needs and properly distributed throughout the building, ensures that a residence hall is not a dorm but a community.

To see how we’ve implemented these spaces in our student housing projects, please visit our student housing portfolio.

The Art of Visualization in the BIM Environment - Image credit: DESIGNrealized

The May program from DESIGN [realized] titled “The Art of Visualization in the BIM Environment” is coming up on May 17^th at DesignGroup’s office from 3:00-5:00 pm ET.

Visualizing an architectural project as if it were built has many benefits such as providing the client with a glimpse into the future, a method for reviewing design objectives and concepts, and as a communication tool for the contractor and consultants. Making a visualization really come to life is a true art form.

To learn more about the session and the speaker click here.

To register to attend at DesignGroup’s office and participate in the discussion click here.

Exterior Rendering of the Alum Crest/Clearbrook 6-12 School

DesignGroup is very pleased to announce that the Alum Crest/Clearbrook School was featured in April’s School Construction News!

The article gives a wonderful overview of the Alum Crest/Clearbrook project; providing information on Emotionally Disturbed Students, how we designed the building especially for them, and touching upon the many green elements to the site and building design.

DesignGroup is very pleased to share this article with our:

• Client:  Columbus City Schools
• Consultants on the project team:  MSI | KKG, Shelley Metz Baumann Hawk, EMH&T, Dynamix Engineering, and Joby Smith & Associates
• and the Construction Manager with the District:  Smoot Elford Resource

We hope that you enjoy learning more about this exciting school project!

Learn more about the Alum Crest/Clearbrook project by reading our other articles below:

Orlando, FL isn’t just the land of Mickey Mouse!
It’s Always Sunny in . . .
Innovative Stormwater Design – Infiltration Test Pits + Alum Crest/Clearbrook Site
Public Interest Increases for the Alum Crest Clearbrook 6-12 School Project

This post was originally posted on April 16, 2012 by Caron Beesley on the [acronym] online website.

By Joe Porostosky, Senior Manager of Facilities Information and Technology Services at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center and Brian Skripac, Assoc. AIA, LEED AP BD+C, Director of Building Information Modeling (BIM) with DesignGroup, Columbus, Ohio.

As our BIM Implementation Project progressed both Joe and I found this process to be mutually beneficial in many different ways. While there were both extremely positive and some unexpected outcomes, this effort allowed us to capture knowledge and insight that we weren’t initially expecting. In addition, we’ve both been excited to see the industry’s response to the project.

Emergency Department entryway design study

DesignGroup Benefits – New Perspectives and “On-the-Ground” Insights (Brian Skripac, Director of BIM, DesignGroup)

From a technology perspective, working with Joe on this project allowed me to share the more than six years of experience I’ve had with the Revit Architecture and BIM related processes in general. Sharing these experiences did not always match up with the way the Medical Center needed to work which provided a challenge in taking these past experiences and defining the best practices that would most benefit this project and the desired outcomes. Being able to take a step back from how you work and accomplish daily tasks proved to be a unique opportunity for me to think critically and strategically about how to optimize new design and documentation processes. While this effort was focused on the needs of Joe and his team it has enabled me to take those new perspectives and effectively apply them to unique challenges that come up regularly on projects.

Another extremely beneficial outcome of this project was being able to gain a unique insight to how our clients are actually using the design documentation that we as architects provide the building owner, once construction is complete. The ability to see what information is most critical for their daily activities and how they apply those items during the operations and maintenance, and lifecycle planning of their facilities proved to be extremely informative. This not only enabled us to think about how we can expand the usefulness of our project deliverables to a long standing client like The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, but how we can work to educate all of our clients on the opportunities they have to leverage these building information models to their advantage.

Medical Center Benefits – BIM-Powered Decision Making (Joe Porostosky, Senior Manager of Facilities Information and Technology Services at The Ohio State University)

As discussed in the previous posts, the Medical Center found great value in partnering with DesignGroup for this transition to BIM.  The expertise they brought to the team would not have been able to be gained easily in any other way.  Beyond that, the Medical Center has found a number of beneficial outcomes from our transition to BIM, which all revolve around the idea of helping our staff, and faculty, and to a lesser extent, patients and visitors, make better decisions faster.  We call it BIM-Powered Decision Making.

Renovation Decision Making

One of the first benefits we’ve seen is the ability to visualize several different renovation options for a given space.  Previous to BIM, customers would be provided several 2-D floor plans of a space and asked to decide which one they liked best.  While those of us who work in this industry every day might be able to visualize a space from a 2-D floor plan (Image 1), most of our customers cannot.  They would make their best guess, but would frequently not be completely satisfied once they saw the completed space.  During our BIM Implementation, in the summer of 2011, we had a new senior leader join the Medical Center.  Before arriving, she was sent several 3-D renderings of potential office layouts.  With these images available she was able to easily understand the space and formulate a decision on which option best met her needs.

2-D Floor Plan

3-D rendering of potential office layouts

Funding Decision Making

losely related to the above example, BIM is allowing the Medical Center to mock up spaces in great detail to inform the decision making process for future project funding.  Recently, the Medical Center was working to determine if we should invest in renovating the Emergency Department with all new finishes.  Since we already had a model of this building, we were able to quickly add the actual finishes to the space producing a visualization that was as close to accurate as possible.  Instead of using a traditional finish board and asking the decision makers to interpret what the space might look like, they were able to see renderings and a video walkthrough of how the space will appear, complete with accurate finishes and furniture.

Rendering and video walkthrough of Emergency Department

Donor Recognition Decisions

Visualizations of space is providing the ability to enhance our development process by providing prospective donors the ability to see how a space might look and how they will be recognized for their contribution.  During the summer, the Medical Center wanted to improve the exterior recognition for a major donor.  Utilizing our new developed models, it took little time to develop several signage options that the University Architect and the Department of Development could consider.  This allowed them to quickly make a decision about which signage looked best and provided the best visibility to visitors.  The installed product matches almost identically to the rendering, further reinforcing the value of BIM in decision making.

3-D rendering allows for review of various signage options for building exterior.

Customer Decisions

While Columbus has a number of high quality health systems that compete with one another, our ability to develop renderings of renovation, new buildings, or new spaces is aiding our marketing efforts to the community as yet another way to advertise our services and differentiate our care.

Improved Accuracy

The effort to develop models for Medical Center buildings has also improved the accuracy of our building floor plans which was due to research into the original building documentation and field verifications.  In addition, our building models include data that our traditional 2-D AutoCAD plans do not, such as exteriors, roofs, window placement, ceilings, and heights contributing to the improved the accuracy and value of the models.

Extending the Educational Mission

As an academic medical center, education is one of our three primary pillars for existing.  The ability to hire a group of students and to partner with their education was a benefit to the Medical Center and to the students.  They received real world experience that their formal education cannot provide.  In addition, the skills and contacts they have received working on this project will differentiate them from others once they graduate from Ohio State.

In the next post, Joe will discuss the future expected benefits of the Building Information Models and how the project will be expanded going forward.

Joe Porostosky is the Senior Manager of Facilities Information and Technology Services at The Ohio State University.  His background in technology management has provided a foundation for utilizing BIM to improve the speed and quality of decision making at OSU. Joe and the team at OSUMC were awarded first prize in the [acronym] Magazine Public Sector CAD Awardsin 2011.

Residence Halls are opportunities for 'easy green.' (North Hall and Downhour Hall, Hocking College)

Here at DesignGroup, we see university residence halls as an opportunity for ‘easy green’.  By their very nature, they lend themselves to simple and cost-effective sustainable solutions.  Why is that?  Read on and find out.

The planning of residence halls generally involves multiple small rooms and double-loaded corridors, an ideal situation to incorporate sustainable strategies.  The typical student room is similar in size and proportion to a generously-sized bedroom in an average house, which means many of the same solutions that work for a house work for a residence hall.

A generously-sized window, with proper planning, can provide natural daylight in the room for the majority of the day, reducing the need for artificial illumination.  In educational settings studies have shown that exposure to natural daylight also improves students’ learning retention and test taking.

A generously-sized window, with proper planning, can provide natural daylight in the room for the majority of the day. (Centennial Hall, Bowling Green State University)

It also helps if you can open the window.  Studies have also shown that when people have the ability to control the temperature in a room by opening windows, they feel comfortable even when the temperature is a few degrees warmer.  Which means that if they can open a window, they’re less likely to turn on the air conditioner.

Residence halls, unlike other kinds of buildings, generally use individual thermostats and light switches in each room, just like a house.  This means each individual occupant is responsible for controlling temperature and lighting.  This seems like common sense, but most office buildings do not give individual occupants this level of control; it’s not uncommon to go into an air conditioned office building and see people running space heaters in the summer because they’re too cold.  Of course, you need to make sure students turn down the thermostat and turn off the lights when they leave their room.

Studies show that if people can open a window, they're less likely to turn on the air conditioner. (Exchange Street Residence Hall, University of Akron)

Perhaps the most important reason a residence hall is ‘easy green’ is that most college students are environmentally aware.  A recent study by the Princeton Review showed that 69% of surveyed students said that having information about a college’s commitment to the environment would impact their decision to apply or attend a school.  Anything, no matter how well designed, will not work effectively if used improperly (or not used at all), so it’s important that a building’s occupants are committed to sustainability.  People have to commit to taking the stairs instead of the elevator, to take shorter showers, and to turn off the lights and turn down the thermostat.  Some residence halls use interactive real-time energy monitors to display energy usage, and organize competitions among residence halls to see who can reduce their energy use the most.  Positive motivation to turn off the lights never hurts.

Positive motivations can help to reduce residence halls' energy use. (Downhour Hall, Hocking College)

This post was originally posted on April 03, 2012 by Caron Beesley on the [acronym] online website.

By Joe Porostosky, Senior Manager of Facilities Information and Technology Services at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center and Brian Skripac, Assoc. AIA, LEED AP BD+C, Director of Building Information Modeling (BIM) with DesignGroup, Columbus, Ohio.

Phase 1: Big Bang Implementation

Following the all important completion of Phase 0, we were ready to kick off the actual work of developing Revit-based building information models from our AutoCAD floor plans.  In June of 2011, the implementation process started with two undergraduate architecture students and two graduate architecture students from the Knowlton School of Architecture, along with one undergraduate civil engineering student, all from The Ohio State University.  While their first week included on-site orientation, team building and a project overview, the students quickly became acclimated with the technology they would become expert at during a focused three day training session on Revit Architecture.

Meet the Team – Undergraduate and graduate students from the Knowlton School of Architecture together with the Facilities Information and Technology Services team at the Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center charged with converting all of its buildings from 2D to 3D building information models.

This highly customized training, led by Brian Skripac from DesignGroup, was a product of the Standards and Process Development effort and focused on the execution of the newly defined process map and workflow integrations to translate information from 2D to 3D. The students were not only taught how to use Revit Architecture but it was presented in a way that would mimic their everyday use of the software as they began to model the existing facilities. Another benefit to this effort was that the project team was exposed to the wealth of newly created content and “kicked the tires” on how well our processes worked. This allowed us to improve and refine our process to the benefit of the project as a whole. As the training concluded, the students were immediately assigned a building and began the process of developing their first model.

Phase 1 included the development of a basic BIM intended to capture the following elements:

• Basic Exterior Wall Construction
• Interior Walls & Cubicles
• Doors & Windows
• Basic Roofs
• Basic Plumbing Fixtures
• Columns & Column Grids
• Basic Floors & Ceilings
• Basic Stairs
• Rooms & Areas

Following the completion of the first set of models, Brian Skripac conducted a careful audit of each building and documented their adherence to the BIM standard which was presented back to the team as a whole. This allowed the students and full time staff to learn how to create the most accurate and useable models as they continued their work. In addition, this effort provided Tracy, as the BIM Coordinator, a roadmap to audit the rest of the models moving forward. As issues arose during this process, they were identified and the students were provided an opportunity to make the recommended modification and resubmit their models to be shared as a final version.

Process map that was defined for the project

By the end of the summer, the students logged 2,750 hours, primarily engaged in the model development process.  Our calculated metrics indicated we should have been done with the bulk of modeling effort by this point, but we had only completed about 77% of our buildings, by space.

One of the several factors that increased the amount of time – to accomplish Phase 1, was the students desire to add more detail than we initially planned during Phase 1.  The result of this increased detail was more valuable models.  This affected several aspects of Phase 1:

• Instead of using basic windows, most of the BIMs included detailed window families.
• The exterior wall construction was accurately reflected, and almost all exterior facing wall details were visualized.
• A higher level of focus on accuracy than expected, meaning more time tracking down documentation and performing field verifications.

In addition, during the summer, several high impact projects were brought to our attention.  These projects required us to move students off their BIM development to focus on detailed modeling and renderings of both interior and exterior spaces.  While they slowed down our progress, they provided excellent opportunities for us to show the value and power of BIM to senior leadership, which will be described in future posts.

Lastly, we further developed the Revit files to make information more readily available to the masses who would not be using Revit every day. Additional prototypical and printable view, schedules and sheets were built in requiring more time to update all our models with these changes.  We also required the students to produce several renderings of their buildings to maintain on our online gallery of images, which can be found here.

Once the school year started, the conversion rate slowed down due to reduced hours from the students.  As of March 2012, all buildings have been started, and only two have work remaining (although they are our most challenging buildings.  Based on our current calculations, the development of the BIMs from our AutoCAD floor plans, to the level we developed them, took approximately 0.037 minutes/square foot.  If support staff (management of students, document collection, etc.) is taken into account, the development of the BIMs is closer to 0.055 minutes/square foot.

End User Training

Transitioning to BIM is not primarily a technical challenge, it is culture change.  To aid in the adoption of BIM across the Medical Center, DesignGroup was also tasked with developing and conducting a series of training sessions customized to the specific needs of our varying end user groups.  These training sessions were held at the end of the summer of 2011, when a number of models were available to use.  The hands-on training was broken down as follows:

• Engineering and Operations: A three day session covering how to navigate/interact with a Revit model and how to extract information from the model.
• Interior Designers and Space Planners: A four day session covering everything from scheduling to views to moving walls and placing families, along with how to create renderings and walkthroughs.
• Construction Managers: A half-day session on navigating DWF versions of the Revit model in Autodesk Design Review.
• Energy Engineering: A two day session on how to translate the existing Revit models as gbXML files for their use in tools like Autodesk Green Building Studio and eQUEST.

In the next post, we will cover how the Med Center has used the BIMs along with the value that DesignGroup has found in working with the Medical Center on this project.

Visit part fiveof the series, “The Mutually Beneficial Outcomes of Implementing BIM at Ohio State’s Wexner Medical Center.”

About Joe Porostosky

Joe Porostosky is the Senior Manager of Facilities Information and Technology Services at The Ohio State University.  His background in technology management has provided a foundation for utilizing BIM to improve the speed and quality of decision making at OSU. Joe and the team at OSUMC were awarded first prize in the [acronym] Magazine Public Sector CAD Awardsin 2011.

This post was originally posted on March 27, 2012 by Caron Beesley on the [acronym] online website.

By Joe Porostosky, Senior Manager of Facilities Information and Technology Services at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center and Brian Skripac, Assoc. AIA, LEED AP BD+C, Director of Building Information Modeling (BIM) with DesignGroup, Columbus, Ohio.

Phase 0: Standards and Process Development

As discussed in the previous post (update link to DG’s blog), Ohio State’s Wexner Medical Center senior leadership signed off on the “Big Bang” approach to converting all 6 million square feet of Medical Center space from a 2D CAD based process to an intelligent BIM managed process in November of 2010.  Starting in February of 2011, we began Phase 0 of our implementation plan, which included four primary objectives:

• Creation of the BIM Implementation Team
• Development of BIM Standards and Revit Templates
• Development of a process and workflow for model development
• Preparing for Phase 1 (Big Bang Conversion) kick off

The first step was to determine who would be responsible for what during this project – this included everything from a project champion, technical staff, BIM experts, and more.  The team eventually included:

• Brian Skripac:  Project Consultant from DesignGroup
• Joe Porostosky: Project Champion
• Dave Pifher: Technical and Process Lead
• Tracy Palmer: BIM Coordinator
• Okey Tolley and Peter Pollock: Project Support

As the BIM Coordinator, it was determined that Tracy  would be responsible for the day to day supervision of the students, along with maintaining the on-going collaboration with Brian to provide management and development of the BIM standards.

Over the next couple of months, creating standards and templates was not just about rebuilding our AutoCAD content in Revit, but reinventing those systems and process to create a new and better way of doing things. This enabled Brian to guide the conversation and bring his past experiences and unique perspective to this part of the Medical Center’s BIM evolution and development of our BIM Standards.

Over the next couple of months, creating standards and templates was not just about rebuilding our AutoCAD content in Revit, but reinventing those systems and process to create a new and better way of doing things.

There were also extensive conversations about what the appropriate level of detail for the models would be (for both now and in the future) to accomplish the outcomes we had defined for this project. This dialogue not only provided a structure for the content/standard development in this phase of the project, but also set a foundation for the process map and workflow integration that would be defined as well.

Knowing there is no easy way to move from AutoCAD to Revit, our collaboration with Brian allowed the team to clearly understand how the conversion process would occur.  This would include using the AutoCAD floor plans as an underlay in Revit for the team model on top of.  While this provided the floor plan information there was a significant amount of data needed to build a full 3D model that did not exist in the AutoCAD files, such as floors, ceilings, roofs, exteriors, and window, door and wall heights.

With this in mind, the last step in Phase 0 was to collect as much existing building information as possible to ensure the students could hit the ground running when they started in June of 2011.  For each of the 53 buildings we planned to construct models for, we would need to:

• Conduct a field verification to determine accuracy of the existing AutoCAD floor plans
• Collect supporting drawings such as: as-built plans, wall sections, building sections, elevations, etc.
• Photo document the building exterior and any of its unique features

As part of this implementation project it was our intent to have each of the building information models accurate within a 1% deviation from the actual conditions.

As part of this implementation project it was our intent to have each of the building information models accurate within a 1% deviation from the actual conditions. Following our field verifications, only 7 buildings did not meet this standard as AutoCAD drawings, and would get additional attention during the next project phase.

Our estimates indicate that Phase 0 took approximately 1080 hours over about a 4 month period of time spread across five staff, with Tracy Palmer, as the BIM Coordinator, incurring the bulk of those hours.  Based on this, preparation time for the project was about 0.011 minutes per square foot.

The initial project preparation of Phase 0 proved to be critical to the success of the project, as significant and long lasting decisions were made that would have been difficult and painful to change once our implementation began. In addition, the Phase 0 work that was conducted significantly accelerated the students’ work in creating the building information models.

In the next post, I will cover the execution of the actual conversion process, along with our training program, and updated time metrics.

Visit part four of the series, “Executing the Big Bang BIM Implementation through Customized Processes, Training and a Unique Team Approach.”

About Joe Porostosky

Joe Porostosky is the Senior Manager of Facilities Information and Technology Services at The Ohio State University.  His background in technology management has provided a foundation for utilizing BIM to improve the speed and quality of decision making at OSU. Joe and the team at OSUMC were awarded first prize in the [acronym] Magazine Public Sector CAD Awardsin 2011.

Decoregg event poster

You’ve seen what happens when you give a bunch of DesignGroupers grapes and toothpicks to build bridges (if you haven’t, check out our ‘DesignGroup Launches Services in Fruititecture‘ post). So, what happened when they were presented with an egg shell, some sharpies and dye?  Imaginations ran wild! Here are some of the very non-traditional and cleverly decorated eggs:

Official decoregg egg - printed on my eggbot

Sherm working on his R2-D2 egg

Kim working on her snorkel guy egg

Scott is decoregg?

I personally cheated and brought in my eggbot!

The results:

R2-D2 Egg

Snorkel guy egg

Bird egg

Chick egg

Cow egg

Snake egg

Donald (Coneheads) egg

Flower egg

Neptune egg

Face egg

DG egg

Smiley egg

Eggbot egg

Decoreggs

DesignGroup's Brian Skripac will be presenting the topic of social media and the value it can bring to architects and their firms.

As we’ve seen the tremendous impact that social media is having on our everyday lives, many architects and building industry professionals have been left wondering what the value of social media is to them and their firm. Demystifying these new and evolving series of technologies will be the topic of discussion for my portion of the day long Connect with Technology Workshop that I will be participating in at the AIA National Convention.

For more information on my presentation and the entire Connect with Technology Workshop click here.

Michael Bongiorno, AIA (right) is now a Director of the firm and Chris Shrodes, NCARB (left) an Associate

DesignGroup is pleased to announce two promotions, reflective of the company’s commitment to build and maintain a strong and dynamic management team. Michael Bongiorno, AIA is now a Director of the firm and Chris Shrodes, NCARB an Associate.

“One of my top priorities is growing DesignGroup’s leadership capacity,” said Sherm Moreland, chief executive officer of DesignGroup. “Mike and Chris will play a critical role in leading DesignGroup into the future. These promotions are a result of the respect they’ve earned from their peers, clients and partners, their ability to think strategically, and their significant contributions to the company.”

DesignGroup congratulates Mike and Chris for their hard work and dedication. The promotion of these key individuals serves to further strengthen DesignGroup’s position in the markets it serves and ensures continued thought leadership and excellent customer service to the firm’s current and future clients.