The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, otherwise known as the LDS Church (headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah USA), is a large, international organization that meets this challenge successfully every day. The LDS Church builds and maintains buildings in many countries, ranging from worship facilities to welfare centers, education facilities, visitors centers, museums, and libraries. The LDS Church is not only the design firm, it's also the project manager, general contractor, facilities manager, and client.The LDS Church's Architectural & Engineering (A&E) Services division has the resources of a full-service architecture/engineering/interior design firm with a staff of 78, including architects, engineers, interior designers and specifiers. When designing a building, (be it in Boston or Brazil), A&E Services must balance aesthetic, cultural and climactic concerns with the need for program consistency, while keeping control of design and maintenance costs. A key factor in helping the LDS Church efficiently meet these challenges is their unique deployment of CADD technology to solve virtually every tangible design problem, from the conceptual design phase through a building's lifecycle. With one program, A&E Services can contain design, construction and maintenance costs, build a database to last the life of a building, and standardize plans for a full network of diverse buildings. That program is DataCAD from DATACAD LLC, Avon, Connecticut, USA.
This 'CADD efficiency' is exemplified in a new 21,000-seat auditorium that the LDS Church is building at its corporate headquarters. The new auditorium, which will be the largest in the world, will be host to the world General Conferences of the LDS Church. The new auditorium is the largest construction project built by the Church to date and will become a central landmark for the city and the Church.
"The auditorium project demonstrates the efficiency and improved communication that the use of one CADD system can accomplish," explains Kerry Nielsen, the project architect for the auditorium and a design architect for A&E Services. "This project required a lot of initial study, coordination, and communication between Church leadership, building users, the A&E Services team, and consultants. DataCAD was our 'work horse' and visual communication tool on this project. We used it for everything from feasibility studies to schematic design and rendered building-concept presentations for leadership, users and zoning boards. Off-site development studies, parking, access, circulation, tunnel development and coordination to Temple Square infrastructure have been designed with DataCAD. We've even modeled the city blocks all around the auditorium site."One of the goals of using one CADD system is that all of this information can be leveraged for facilities management and building maintenance, and to reduce work and costs on future buildings," says Nielsen. "We use DataCAD to examine different building options and costs. For example, there is the cost of construction, the cost of putting the building on-line, and operational cost. The total project cost includes the costs of land acquisition, architecture, engineering, and site development."
The information contained in the DataCAD files can be extensive. Every system and component required to build and maintain a structure throughout its lifecycle, including vendor information for every single replacement part down to the screws, can be included. This information is used by the facilities management teams in the field as a graphical database of the buildings they maintain and operate. Nielsen says that maintenance of a building over the course of its lifetime can exceed the cost of construction, and keeping these costs contained through standardization is imperative.
Project managers, audio engineers, and facilities maintenance staff also use the system. "We make broad use of this tool," Nielsen said. "Beyond the traditional architecture/engineering/construction design-document side of our work, DataCAD is used to design proprietary equipment, and the machine shop and the carpenter shop use DataCAD drawings to produce in-house parts and furniture."
Efficiency in Global Project Management
One of the most important uses for CADD in A&E Services is to establish consistency and uniform quality in all of the LDS Church's facilities worldwide. Different climates call for different building designs that still convey a consistent quality and reverence in the details. Some of these buildings are in developing countries, where use of technology isn't as widespread. Complicating the process further is the fact that work must be conducted in many languages, and that the plans are used by a variety of contractors, managers, and even lay church members in the field.
The A&E Services division is solving these problems by developing an extensive library of standard CAD drawings which utilize architectural standards, symbols, and components as well as some concepts that are a common thread throughout the buildings. There is a standard design for each type of building. "We start with the standard drawing, and then customize the drawing with appropriate architectural details, flexibly working in whatever combination of measurement and languages is needed," explains Nielsen. "One of the reasons we chose DataCAD was the fact that it offered the robust CAD tools we needed, and at the same time was easy to use and adaptable to a variety of languages. The program's ability to quickly transform symbols and standards within a document to account for local needs has been instrumental in A&E Service's ability to meet its mandate.
"This standardization has been particularly important for designing the LDS Church's most important projectstemples," continues Nielsen. "These facilities require a subtle architecture that establishes a sense of increasing reverence as a person moves from one station of the building to another. The DataCAD files of standard plans help the Church maintain a sense of consistency with this type of application, from one temple to another."
Nielsen says, "DataCAD is a very capable yet easy-to-learn tool. From an architectural standpoint, it allows you to study and evaluate options very quickly, without having to spend a lot of time and money to do it. It's a great tool for architecture."