Phil Bernstein's AutoDesk project: collaboration and financial incentives

¶ … Autodesk Case Study

The project team for the AutoDesk build was headed by Phil Bernstein and had a very specific vision in mind. Essentially, the primary vision of this team was to "highlight ways in which its own technology could support building information modeling, design-to-fabrication, sustainability, building performance analysis, and integrated project delivery" (Cohen, 2010, p 10). The vision statement also includes the need for collaboration across industry boundaries, where all stake holders share responsibility in the project, which allows for greater strength in the design and overall build. As such a possible vision statement would be as follows: harnessing technology through collaboration to build performance efficiency.

Question 2

Phil Bernstein was very ambitious in the middle of the project by asking for adaptations to the initial design to incorporate more satisfactory elements. The research states that "he wanted to create a dramatic gesture by cutting a three-story atrium through the space" (Cohen, 2010, p 14). In order to execute this addition to the project without interfering with the already tight schedule, decisions were set in motion extremely fast. The team was ready to present possible designs just a week after Bernstein had initiated the need for the atrium. When goals were not met in time or in budget, penalties were seen in the form of subtractions from the ICL (Benewald & Franta, 2010)

Yet, there were some clear flaws to the way that Phil Bernstein had initially designed in order to foster higher levels of performance. Unfortunately, "when incentive prioritize on-time delivery over other factors, builders sometimes take construction shortcuts, such as substituting on-hand but less efficient equipment. Time pressures often lead designers and owners to accept such shortcuts" (Bendewald & Franta, 2010, p 1). Bernstein wished that within the scope of the project, "everyone works at cost until a deep understanding of the project and a level of comfort around the program and budget is achieved by all parties" (Cohen, 2010, p 15).

Question 4

Personally, I would have taken a different approach to managing the team that would have focused more on operational efficiency, rather than meeting time sensitive goals. Rather, financial incentives should have been based on a system which valued operational efficiency, but also should have been combined with a system that split the risk to all members of the team as another way to increase productivity. According to the research, "both shared risk and a financial reward for achieving jointly developed goals align the interests of all project stakeholders" (Bendewald & Franta, 2010, p 2). As such, incentives should focus primarily on generating the highest rate of efficiency rather than meeting time standards alone. This can be done through appropriately defining shared goals that multiple team members are responsible for and thus facilitates greater collaboration between team members. This would thus mean design would be based on nonlinear principles, with multiple team members working together on various levels of the project (Radescu & Heales, 2012). Thus, financial incentives should be more geared towards operational efficiency rather than meeting goals on time but by doing so slacking on some of the needed elements of the project in question.