From 1800h to 100h for an architectural competition

When I was a young architect, we calculated 500 hours per competition. Lately, I hear 1800 hours. That's a 260% increase or one full work year of one employee!

Already in my time, we had to deliver "unnecessary" paper, but now it increased even more with more digital deliverables. The advent of BIM did not increase efficiency but increased waste!?

Client's like to justify it with the idea that you save time in later stages once you have a BIM model. But this is an illusion. I talked to several architects, and they all told me that after a competition, they built up the whole project from scratch – no data reuse.

I invite you to a thought experiment and answer the question:

What would we have to do to reduce the effort to 100 hours and get the same level of quality??

A good starting point is the question: "What does the client need to decide and find the best project?"?

Improve the client's requirements

Clearly define what "quality" for this project means – clear goals and requirements. The problem starts here; clients often do not think and communicate their needs properly. It's like window shopping; when we go window shopping without knowing what we require, typically, we spend more money on stuff we don't need - this means we need to improve at evaluating and communicating user requirements to have a solid foundation for decision-making. Two good tools for this are a zone/room program with automated checks and user stories/epics as the software industry uses.?

Reduce complexity of deliverables

The next part is the deliverables to judge if the requirements are met. In a digital age, we could ask for the following deliverables:

• We could ask for a digital volume model to judge the urban design. This model could be shown in Virtual reality (VR), with Augmented Reality, and on a screen with all the models next to each other. If it wanted to, we could even print physical models on a scale of 1:500, all in the same color and style.?
• To find the best functional fit with 2D-plans scale 1:200. Yes, 2d plans either on multiple screens or printed out. I believe in the power of 2D for floor plan evaluation because of the high level of abstraction, the synchronicity (we can look at multiple plans simultaneously and get the big picture), and the ease of creating them. Please read my other posts on this, but the idea is that in the early design stages, you should not draw/model the walls but the space directly. Walls are just the emptiness between the rooms. When placing a grey/black shape behind the spaces and looking from the top, we see the walls... We can quickly create "speaking" plans by adding doors, windows, and furniture symbols.?
• To compare and calculate area-based benchmarks, ask for the volume model of the net spaces with a space name that correlates to the zone/room program from the program. It's easy to automate benchmarking. When using the abstractBIM, you can automatically generate the walls and slabs for further analysis.?
• To evaluate the future performance of a building, use simulations. Please don't ask the teams to simulate their designs, they can do it to optimize their design, but for comparison, you need to standardize the simulations. To do so, ask the teams to fill in a standardized form describing the main construction elements. You can easily simulate cost, life-cycle costs, thermal, energy performance, air circulation, and solar potential.
• To judge the specialty of the project, ask for one more delivery. e.g., If the facade is significant, ask for elevation/detailed section. If public space is essential, ask for a sketch/picture transporting the overall idea. If the schedule is crucial, ask for a concept of delivering the project on time.

Consider evaluating the team's performance

The most challenging part is to evaluate the team's performance. This is something usually neglected in architectural competitions. Therefore, I do it as well in this article, but it's worth considering it because the team will decide about the successful delivery!

Conclusion

The trend in all these suggestions is to move work from the potential 100+ architects, handing in a competition to the client's side that wants to find the best project. So instead of 100 architectural offices working 1800h, equaling 180'000 h. One hundred offices work 100 hours = 10'000, and client support spends another 1800 (probably even less) doing the needed simulations.?

What do you think we need to change the trend and reduce the effort for the competition from 1800h/entry to 100h/entry – a 1700% decrease?