Architect–BPS consultant collaborations: Harmony or hardship?

Abstract

Multi-disciplinary collaboration is considered necessary for solving complex designs, and belief in its merits is unequivocal in the Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC) literature. However, this paper argues that collaboration is a challenging endeavour that entails creating a unified platform for professionals to converge. Challenges are compounded when the collaboration is for building performance assessments, as architects’ and Building Performance Simulation (BPS) consultants’ worldviews are divergent. This paper presents part of a mixed-methods study investigating collaborative relationships between architects and BPS consultants. Questionnaires are designed to re-test non-technical barriers in collaboration, described during preceding interviews. Six salient factors representing barriers impeding fruitful collaborations are extracted, and inter-relationships are explored using inferential statistics. Barriers include perceptions about architects’ attitudes toward BPS, using BPS for compliance, trust and communication between architects and consultants. Finally, this research illustrates how recourse to methodologies from outside the traditional BPS realm may open new research avenues in this field.

Keywords:

• collaboration
• architects
• BPS consultants
• questionnaires
• inferential statistics

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank all research participants who dedicated their time to complete the questionnaires described in this paper. Without their valuable contributions, neither this publication nor the PhD from which it has been derived would have been made possible.

Notes

1 Approved Document Part L; Conservation of Fuel and Power addresses energy-efficiency standards that need to be met to comply with building regulations in the UK (Planning Portal 2016). This document is referred to as ‘Part L’ throughout the remainder of this manuscript.

2 The term ‘BPS consultant’ is used throughout this paper to describe building practitioners who use BPS software throughout their day-to-day working process and, in the case of this research, collaborate with architects to assist them in design decision-making. These professionals may originate from a variety of different professional backgrounds, e.g. mechanical engineering, building services engineering, building science.

3 A detailed discussion of non-technical barriers, based primarily on qualitatively derived insights, is presented and discussed in detail in Alsaadani and Bleil De Souza (2016).

4 The Likert scale is a psychometric itemized rating scale, commonly employed in questionnaires for the measurement of attitudes, personality traits or opinions (Himmelfarb 1993; Fink 1995; Albaum 1997). The Likert scale allows measurement of an individual’s support or opposition toward the statement being tested, as well as the strength of support or opposition.

5 In Table 2, the first five columns following the list of original variables show the factor loadings. The final column is entitled ‘communalities,’ which shows the amount of common variance of each variable (i.e. the amount of variance that is shared with other variables).

6 For an expanded description and discussion of software that is used to grant compliance with Part L of the UK building regulations, and DSM software, including software platforms that fall within each category, please read Raslan and Davies (2010).

7 Opportunistic behaviour is that which involves consciously taking advantage of circumstances for self-interest, with little or no regard for principles (Kadefors 2004).

8 Williamson (2010) investigated in the BPS context, but his investigation was more concerned with the trustworthiness of the models.