Streamline Process of Decarbonization with Revit, BIM 360, LCA/EC3, and Microsoft Power Bi

THESLA COLLIER: Streamlined process of decarbonization. Today we're going to have a presentation in which we're going to implement a strategy to perform a life cycle analysis that can be used in every project and can be scaled up to a global sized firm.

We are going to create and integrate a streamlined process, and workflows, and best practices for every project. And we're also going to extract, validate, and understand the data analytics of the dashboards using Power BI. We will be collaborating with Revit, life cycle analysis applications. And we're going to have a completion of a project.

Hi. I'm Thesla Collier, studio design technology leader at Gensler Los Angeles office. Bachelor in architecture. Graduated from the University of Honduras. And I have over 20 years of experience in the AEC industry.

I started my career in Honduras, Central America. And I moved to LA in the year 2000. Since then I've been exposed to a wide range of practice areas such as health care, aviation, civil, transit, and mixed use projects from both sides of the equation from the design and the construction side. I have a passion for training, mentoring, and spreading the knowledge. I love design technology. And I apply it as an integrated process in the architectural profession.

Two years ago, I was called to help a team with a pilot project in embodied carbon. It was a joint venture between the San Diego office and the LA office. The pilot project finally got presented in Green Building 2020. Shortly after, we got a project in which the client reached out to do a carbon study.

In that project, we partnered with our sustainability experts and in a joint venture between San Francisco and the LA office. The project was a success. And we started grassroots the growth of our sustainability champions and the interest in testing the workflows in their projects, having in mind to apply it into their next project, and pass the learning curves to others.

Some of the projects were far along in CA phase and sometimes they were already done. It allowed us to get a carbon footprint, and analyze the process at a significant milestone, and some cases at the end of the project. But moving forward, we're trying to spread the word and the workflow to as many projects as we can.

Let me talk a little bit about the challenges and the lessons learned. And in the screen, we can see a couple words that come to my mind of the things that we experience. So part of the challenges were the budget, the client, the schedule, the numbers of users and projects that we were working, the inconsistency between some of the projects, the use of technology, the tools that we had. Sometimes we didn't have some of the tools that I'm going to show in this presentation. And the knowledge was a big one and then support to make it happen.

To give you a picture of the scale, in the LA office, we have 11 DT leaders and 17 resilience leaders. We have 15 design studios that serve 451 people with over 900 projects. This can give you a sample picture of the size of our company. This is basically a sample office.

And these are the top five in my list to tackle to get into reducing embodied carbon in our projects. So GC3. What is GC3? GC3 is Gensler's Cities Climate Challenge. And it is our internal commitment to carbon neutrality by 2030. We are trying to focus in our own cities and industry to get to carbon neutral.

Gensler has internal commitments towards receiving the carbon neutral in our work within a decade. And we're also hopefully inspiring you to join us in designing a better world.

So path to carbon neutral. How do we get there? There are two main sources of carbon in the built environment that we as designers, architects, that we want to focus, first on operational carbon, which is the emissions associated with the day to day energy required to condition and power our buildings, and the embodied carbon, which is the emissions associated with the materials that physically construct the building. That is associated with the resources to extract the raw materials and all the way to the resources that take to demolish them and the buildings at the end of their useful life.

Right now we're concentrating in collecting energy data from the embodied carbon. And it is really important and critical to understand how to reduce it. First, embodied carbon is really important. We are getting real good in reducing the operational carbon, especially because codes and regulations are coming along. Second, most of the carbon is in the manufacturing stage. And more than half of the emissions are generated before the building is actually built. As a designer, we have a lot of control over the materials that get selected to make our buildings.

And what is the impact of making and using buildings? In this pie chart, we can see that 49% of the carbon emissions in the world are generating by making and using buildings. And we can see the impact of using buildings is 35%. And the embodied carbon 14%. And 14%, it is a big chunk of this pie. Understanding the impact, and how can we improve, and how can we make a difference is super important.

Carbon intensity of the building materials. And in this case, we're going to see it from the interiors versus the base building lengths. In the pie chart, we can see that at the very beginning of the life of the building once it's constructed, the base building generates 94% of the carbon emissions and interior 6%. As we move along through the timeline and the interiors get remodeled over time, we can see that, in the span of 60 years, interiors come to be almost half of the carbon emissions of the building and how equally important is to pay attention to the shell and core of the building as well as the interiors when we're studying embodied carbon. It's the whole life cycle of the building.

So what is the strategy for implementation? In order to make this happen, we need to have visibility and data. And what we need to make sure is that everyone is empowered in our projects to reduce embodied carbon in their projects. We also need to get there and figure out how can we incorporate the information in our day to day workflows and in the ways that we approach design options.

And here is where we know that is super important to take the advantage of the qualities, the incredible value of BIM. And we want to make sure that we're using the best way to leverage the I in BIM to get the good data and provide feedback loops to the project itself. And its efforts to create-- and all these efforts are there to create a very solid foundation so we can extract, observe, and also analyze the data.

So in this strategy for implementation, we have to take a lens from a multi-pronged approach. We have to look at the tools and workflows and providing templates and training. We have to pair with our design resilience leaders to have strategic reduction of carbon strategies. And these two need to work together. We have to watch our workflow in the embodied carbon to be able to benchmark and track. And we need to increase it to all the projects.

We also need to incorporate aspects, and use performance-driven specs, and inform the contractors what are the guidelines moving forward in our specs. This is going to help us set global warming potential limits in the materials that are put together in-- that put together our buildings. And it will help us reduce the embodied carbon by building the buildings.

So then we have to also take a look at the engagement at the project level, how to drive implementation. First, we need to observe the climate conditions and how do they relate to the unique conditions for the project. Also, with the design features, we need to learn how to validate and optimize our design options.

And with strategy, we need to strategize for success. We have to learn and implement the best strategies in our projects. And how does data can inform our design?

Also, we need to leverage our teams by empowering them and make them accountable. Right now we are operating in a sense that we have specialists in the projects and multiple people that have not just get engaged. We need to get them together by project training so then, eventually, we can have a holistic and synergetic approach between design technology, sustainability, and the design deliverable.

And we also need to validate and find the right balance to ensure adoption and growth. Our training should be focused in a one-on-one in a webinar style. And we have to attack from both sides, from a macro side and a boots on ground. And we also need to find a balance and get the data collection in our projects to be able to visualize it and observe the trends.

So what is the solution? How do we streamline a workflow to measure carbon footprint? Should we do it with a dynamo script or a seed file? What are the pros and cons?

I find this image super interesting. 84% of our digital transformation in building fails because they are not ready to change their behavior. And this is super important to understand. Sometimes the workflows that we create are a little bit too complicated for our users to implement.

So how can we have a simple workflow with a current toolbox? Currently, we have a hub that provides simulation lenses towards reducing carbon emissions in which we analyze the climate, decarbonization, human comfort, energy use, daylight, radiation, and wind flow. I personally concentrate in decarbonization. And in this lens, we do have a series of tools that we're using for these efforts. And in the operational carbon, there's another team working very intensively in our projects simultaneously for the operational carbon.

So what is the process for data extraction? Think comparison and selecting materials. Here we have a diagram of two tools that we're currently using. We're using Tally and EC3 for our workflows. And we're using them at all the stages of the projects from schematic design through construction. And the documents are a very easy transition between the procurement phase with an integration to the EC3 from building transparency.

So let's observe in this slide a typical project timeline. And let's concentrate in one of the most important phases of the project, which is at the very beginning when you define the project, when you pursue that RFP. It's really important to set up your goals, a plan, and a strategy at this point.

Once you cross the line and you go into your SD phase, it's really important to have a resilience onboarding in which you're going to bring your DT leader and your resilience leader. And most important to use the right seed file. This will ensure consistency in your projects and also it will make sure that keep you in track, because once you start the process, it's just a rinse and return.

And you can have major milestones in your project during the delivery process and then hand it over to contractors over the procurement phase and then in the construction. With these tools, we can compare options and analyze the impact. For example, in this slide, you can see a project that we did in LA. It was an adaptive reuse project and a renovation.

And basically, in this one, the client reached out to us because they usually do ground up construction and they really wanted to understand what is the benefit in terms of carbon of how much carbon they save just by using the main structure of the building. So this image is really great because we were able to have a comparison between what if this building was built up from scratch and what is the material quantities versus a renovation.

And this sparked up the curiosity. How can we streamline the process? So we landed into creating a template file for the baseline materials that will establish consistency and efficiency. You see user access. And it will enhance the QAQC process. The goal is to use and reduce time, options to run the studies in all the projects with an additional setup.

The baseline is ready to extract the data. With this it already has typical materials and project elements like walls, floors, ceilings, and doors. And these minimize the data input at the project level and sets a benchmark, a consistent benchmark in our project. So that is our starting point. And with that, I will switch to a live demo to show what we're talking about.

In the screen, we can see a project that was created from the template that we were talking about a minute ago. And we have a sample of our typical walls. And we have samples of typical ceilings. And we have samples of typical floors.

And with this, I'm just going to mimic the typical experience of a designer and doing the projects. They will basically start drawing their building. And I am not going to design this like to get award but I will just have a quick layout. And from there, I will just be able to start the process and explain how this will work. OK.

And I'm going to start with a generic wall for this one. Six inches. And we're going to just make this one maybe eight feet here to mimic a corridor. So our typical-- let's imagine this is one of your buildings. And a typical designer will have a design. And they will start allocating walls.

By having a sample, we are able to use the match properties and be able to assign wall types. And as you can see, the original wall was created with eight foot height. And once we match properties, this wall, it goes from the floor level to the upper level, which ensures a proper calculation of the wall height, which is really important when you calculate in volumes.

In this case, let's say this is an exterior wall and these are interior partitions. And I am going to use a partition that it is three and 5/8. And it only goes to 10 foot 6", assuming that the ceilings are going to be sitting at 10 feet. So I am just going to do the same. I'm just going to use the match properties and allocate the walls.

And I'm assuming this is a corridor so I'm just going to assign the proper wall type. Usually, our designers are not really paying attention to how tall is the wall. But when we're taking quantification, this is super important.

They're just looking at a floor plan in plan view. And then when they go to documentation, they're really interested that they have the right tag in the wall. And sometimes they do forget that the wall needs to be modeled at the right height. In order to get a good footprint, the walls need to be, in location and elevation, they need to be at the right location.

And we can see that the walls were created at full height and then the other ones in the middle, they were created at 10 foot 6". And then this is our corridor wall with the rating. So this helps the users speed up the process. The colors and the filters-- we're using filters in this template to assign colors for the different wall types.

This can help with the QAQC process as they can have a view that it is for internal coordination. And now we also have samples for floors. And we also have samples for ceilings. So the other thing that it's really nice about this is that we can create our floors. And we can do it in a manual way.

Just going to do it in a manual way which is a little bit-- the one that takes a little longer. And I'm going to finish this up. And I just assigned carpet flooring in here. I can switch it for a resilient flooring. And having the samples with the proper patterns can also increment QAQC. And by modeling the floor, now we can tabulate the embodied carbon.

There are other ways of doing this in a more streamlined way. So if we create the rooms in this one, we can take the perimeter of that room that is defined by the walls. And we can actually assign-- we have created some tools internally in Gensler to create floors from the room boundaries.

So I am just going to select these three rooms. Take a look on the right side. There's no floors. And I'm going to execute the command. I'm going to apply a generic floor finish and then the floors were created.

And then we can just use our match properties. And I'm just going to isolate this one. Isolate the category. And I can assign stone flooring for maybe these are the bathrooms. And maybe in here we're going to have a wood flooring in the other room.

We also have dynamo scripts. And that needs a little more preparation because we have to create all the materials. The way we have those set up is we have graphs in which we first create the rooms. We allocate all the parameters in the room for floor finish and ceiling finish. And we are able to create all the floors and being able to map them to pre-made finished floors that match those things.

So now that we have all the elements created, we're going to run our report. And we're using an LCA app called Tally. It is within Revit. And it can tabulate all these categories, these system categories, in Revit.

You can parse it by work sets. And you can even parse it by faces. For now, I'm just going to select everything. And I'm not going to count the work set that says Tally don't count because those are the sample walls and I don't want to count the sample walls for this project. I want to be able to count only the walls that pertain to this project so I'm just going to hit Apply.

And it's going to give me a short list of everything that has been actually modeled in this presentation. I have the resilient flooring. And I can actually select the elements, as you can see right here in the screen or in the 3D. And it also gives you quantities.

And it already is giving you embodied carbon information over here based on the parameters that were prefilled up. Same for the stone flooring. It's telling me I have two of those. And I can also select them from the screen. And also for the wood flooring. I can actually select them and double check that they were applied in the correct location.

Once we have this information in the Tally application, we are able to save our report. It's just going to ask us for a few information like the company. And for this, I am just going to put today's date and AU 2022. And I'm going to save the report with the same date.

And what this is going to generate is a report. It's going to give me an Excel file, which we're going to put in the right side of the screen. And it's going to generate a PDF format as well, which is going to come in in the left side of the screen. This report is being generated from the quantities of the Revit model that we just created. And it just takes a couple of minutes to get a full report. It is a full life cycle assessment.

Oh, here it is. We got the report. And I'm going to thumb through the report. It is a very detailed report. It comes in with dashboards, a very detailed information for each of the elements and what is the carbon impact of this. And this PDF is really amazing PDF that it's complete. And once you finish assigning all the definitions, it will be ready for submitting it for a LEED credit as your LCA.

And the full report, as you can see here, it's just a report of the life cycle analysis. It is the metadata extracted from your Revit model. It is classified by the different divisions-- Tally entries, material. And this is what we're really looking at, which is in all these tabs, is the global warming potential. That is where the embodied carbon really sits. So you can see that the same information parsed in different ways. And you can actually look at your information in a more granular way.

So these LCA reports can be generated at any point of the process. The PDF version, like I mentioned before, it is really detailed. It's a full description of the process. And it has all the elements included and broken down to the element material level. And once the data is finished, the report is ready to be included as your LEED paperwork.

In terms of the Excel file, you can also have it at any point. As you can see, it takes less than five minutes to generate a report. The data gets extracted directly from your Revit model. It lives in your Revit model. It doesn't go to a cloud service so there's that-- if you have confidentiality issues, it really lives in your Revit model. It enables team collaboration, which I think is the best way to approach.

We usually break our teams in different teams. And some of them work in the shell and core, others in the stairs. Well, that's probably the most organic way that you may want to break out the embodied carbon assignments because the team that's working at that certain point of the project will be the best one to answer the questions for the materials for those components that they're working on.

And we do have special cases. For example, in the screen we are looking at a curtain wall which was produced with a custom curtain panel. So we have noticed that when we have these custom panels, then have multiple materials within the same panel, the Tally application is giving us a little bit of a volume issues which can lead to a potential large overcount of glass, aluminum, and other materials that compose those custom panels.

So how do we deal with a custom panel and how do we calculate it to get the embodied carbon to do this type of analysis? So we came up with a solution. And the solution we came up is, how can we disassemble the curtain wall by material, query each volume of each of the material as modeled, and rebuild it using a wall to match the quantity volume of each of the different materials that we're observing and repeat this computationally over and over the whole project? The only thing we will include in that Tally report, because we have to do it separately, is the dummy analytical materials. And this is to get an accurate carbon footprint of the curtain wall.

For this workflow, we started with a Revit model. We used Grasshopper inside Revit, so the workflow from Rhino inside Revit. That brings in Grasshopper inside Revit. And our computational team developed a script using Grasshopper and then pushed the information to Tally from Revit directly once these elements were created.

One of the most important things about data is that we need to share it. And we need to share at any milestone. And the goal is that the metrics are the fingerprints of all users at real time. So what we're doing for this is the data that it gets extracted from Revit through Tally and get pushed to an Excel file and then visualized through Power BI, as you can see in the dashboard on the right. This information resides in a SharePoint site and is shared back to our users to our teams channel. This makes the data available, easy to access, and they are able to do comparisons and reductions of pounds of CO2 in their project.

How can they use this as a design tool, this workflow as a design tool, to analyze on their projects to get optimized solutions? Well, with the power of visualization of data, they're able to create comparisons. For example, the one you're looking in the screen is from one of our projects in which the project was an adaptive reuse. We made an assumption of how much embodied carbon will be produced if it was built from the ground up, which is the chart on the left.

Just because we took the design decision of doing an adaptive reuse, we were able to save 33% of carbon emissions in that project. However, when we did this analysis, it was done during once we issue for construction on the project. And a lot of the design decisions and materials were already taken so it is what it is at this point. Right.

So our sustainability team gathered together and started analyzing what could be choices to have the same building with best in class materials. And that's when the savings got dropped down to minus 57%. This is astonishing drop, which tells a story that to really make a difference, just making an embodied carbon study is not enough. It's really honing in at that very beginning of the process in which you have the opportunity to take decisions on which materials are going to be the ones used in your projects. That's when these types of iterative analysis can be informing our design decisions and how we design our buildings.

"Great things are done by a series of small things brought together." I really wanted to leave you with this thought from Vincent van Gogh. And thank you for sharing with me today.