- Group 1 -
GSB Faculty Office Building HVAC Design Options
Karthik Jayachandran, Min Jae Suh, Kawika Nakoa
Current State Narrative Summary
A. Narrative: See Current State Narrative link on course wiki under “Group 1 Final”
B. Description:
Our narrative diagrams the way in which the numerous parties interacted during the design of the HVAC system for the GSB Faculty Office Building.
The information on the narrative flows from left-to-right. During the period between markers [A] & [B] a brainstorming period of a few stakeholders and designers occurs concurrently in an unorganized fashion. Right around the period [B] marker, however, much of this information gets compiled by ARUP (the HVAC designer for the project) in the form of initial design options. Also during this time period, our group understands that there was talk of a formalized decision making process (like MACDADI) which would have helped to organize the data, but since it was never integrated and implemented in the project we have simply left it unconnected at the top of the diagram.
At period [C] these initial design options get compiled into ARUP’s system matrix which evaluates each option independently. From period [C] to [D] these independent design options get grouped together to compose initial HVAC design groupings for the Faculty Office Building. The best of these groupings are selected by the designers and presented to Stanford for approval. The period from [D] to [E] denotes the present iteration of the design phase, where ARUP has currently taken the critiques made by Stanford and looks to improve its design.
C. Methods:
The basic framework of our current state came from the Kate Hayes’ current state narrative on the CIFE wiki. Taking this basic model, we looked to make improvements based on our meeting Tom Bauer and numerous emails and conversations with Reid Senescu. In addition, we used the documentation provided to us as clues for missing pieces in the chain of information. A final critique was done by John Haymaker prior to this final submission.
D. Insights:
Two issues were brought to our attention through the synthesis of this narrative:
The first was that there was no formal goal-valuation process in deciding upon the preliminary design options for the project. This is not to say that there was no thought put into the preliminary design, but the thought process generating the initial design could have been better organized and more comprehensive when considering stakeholders’ goals, preferences and design option groupings.
Secondly, much of the initial design decision was made without a formal conversation with Stanford’s CP&M Department – who play the role of owner in the decision making process. As you can see in the narrative, their opinion is first sought in period [D] after the preliminary round of designing has occurred.
Future State Narrative Summary
Goal: A Future State Narrative critiques the Current State Narrative by proposing an improved process by which to make the decision. We expect each of these Future State Narratives will include a MACDADI enabled process. Please include:
A. Narrative: See Future State Narrative link on course wiki, under “Group 1 Final”
B. Description:
The Future State Narrative (also read from left-to-right) makes improvements based on the insights we made from the Current State Narrative. [NOTE: all major changes have been visualized in “red” because they are technically Not Integrated.] The first major change moves Stanford CP&M involvement to the beginning of the decision making process. Previously located in time period [F] that entire branch of decisions has been relocated to period [A]. The advantages of this change are that the designers can incorporate Stanford’s interests prior to their first round of design decisions.
A second change was made in this model by incorporating a formalized decision making process, or in this case MACDADI. The researching of stakeholder goals, preferences, and design ratings has been integrated into the decision making process, whereas before in the Current State these pieces were left unintegrated. This change occurs in periods [A] though [E].
The last change in the future to the current state occurs in period [D] & [E]. In the Current State, ARUP would evaluate each design option independently and then compile them into groups. This method leaves out the obvious advantages of evaluating the actual design groups as composites. In the Future State Narrative these two decisions have switched in order – now the design options are compiled into groups prior to being evaluated for value.
C. Methods:
This future state model was created primarily around the idea of the formalized MACDADI decision making process. Prior to making an evaluation in MACDADI one must first know the stakeholders’ goals and preferences. This is the mentality with which we made our changes in the Future State Narrative. Pieces of the decision making puzzle were moved around to accommodate this MACDADI ordering of ideas.
D. Insights:
A feature of our Future State Model which is highly visible is the “clutter” concentrated at the beginning phases of the decision making process. Although the decisions are organized into a MACDADI informational ordering system (as described in the Methods section above) it is clear that the majority of the information exchange occurs near the beginning in the Future State Narrative as compared to the Current State, which spreads the information exchange out further into the design process.
MACDADI Model
Team >
Visual Representation
Description
As we decided the team hierarchy for HVAC system, we have a meeting with Reid at GSB building. First of all, we divided by three parts of titles, and divided again by more specific subtitles which were based on the materials about new GSB building with Excel sheet. Next, we were focused on the stakeholder because it was an important role in a whole project. Therefore, we colored for distinguishing each part easily.
Discovery or Insight
When we decide the designers, stakeholders, and decision makers, we have several times editing and organizing the components. During the correcting our decision, we figure out the relationship between the components for HVAC system. For example, we may consider that the structural and the mechanical have a relationship during the process, and lots of different type designers also have to think about the HVAC system. Moreover, some particular people might belong to two or all the titles such as alumni, dean, and donors who are in the stakeholders and decision makers.
Goal
Visual Representation
Description
In the goal hierarchy, we consider what the team members want and desire. We present many kinds of the goals because every different member has each different expectation. Each person is focused on the sustainability, the cost, and the convenience in accordance with the position and the duty of the team members. And these components are almost same as the consideration of a building operation.
Discovery or Insight
The goal is decided by team members’ preference and position. All the goals are almost same components which we have to consider during the building construction. Although each component belongs to a different title, it will be a connecting to the every team member. Moreover, between two different components, they can bring a opposite situation to the process. For example, the two subtitles, reduces economic costs and provides comfortable user environment, make a different result because one tries to reduce the cost, but the other have to spend the money to be comfort.
Preferences
Visual Representation
Description
The preference is presented by using the numbers. Some of the parts get the numbers through a real survey to GSB people, and the other numbers obtain from the hand out materials and our concepts. And we fix that the total score is 100 with the sum of each categories. And we also calculate the total of subtitles for easy to distinguishing because there are so many categories that make it hard to transparent.
Discovery or Insight
Some of the preference obtains from a survey to GSB people, and some of the preference takes from the material with our concepts. The preference expresses with the numbers, but the numbers can be subjective because of the different survey result in accordance with the participants. In other words, sometimes, it will not be trust for using the data. And some team members show that they choose just one category because of their position and duty.
Options >
Visual Representation
Description
We were made aware of the different HVAC technologies being considered by the design team and Stanford project management. There were two specific design options being evaluated at the time of our project, which are depicted as design options 1 & 2. In order to ensure that we were being inclusive of all possible design options, we evaluated each technology based on it suitability for the FOB design. After a process of elimination, we came up with 6 different hybrid HVAC design options. We came to this conclusion based on our research of these technologies, as well as the advice from our mentors and Tom Bauer.
Discovery or Insight
Design options are not decided upon based on a strictly quantitative, calibrated manner. Many intangibles such as the politics with the system, user preferences, prejudices and perception play a major role. This makes evaluation of each design option tedious and confusing, thus leading to very few options considered in the design cycle. A tool like MACDADI that takes into account the social tensions that exist as well as the physical (easily quantifiable) constraints makes evaluation a lot easier.
Analyses
Visual Representation
Description
Each of the options was rated on a scale from -3 to +3 in each of the defined stakeholder goal categories. In general -3 & 3’s were given very sparingly as this would be the extreme worse or best case respectively. -1 or +1 was associated respectively with minor decline or improvement in the goals category. Accordingly -2 or +2 was given out as a significant decline or improvement. Of course, in the end the rating of each design option was given relative to the performance of each of the other options. So what matters was the relative performance between each option with respect to the goals.
Discovery or Insight
We discover from this graph that Design Option #1 looks to be the optimal design just because it ranks higher in the general categories than all of the other 5 options. An analysis, however, is still necessary to verify this since the individual breakdown of preference points vary within these categories and may have an impact on the overall value of the final design option.
Weights >
Did not evaluate with weights
Value >
Visual Representation
Description
The value is created by multiplying the stakeholder preferences by the rated score of each individual design option from the analysis. Above are graphs of the distribution of the value created for each of the stakeholders with respect to each of the individual options 1 through 6. The last graph is a summary of the total value created for each stakeholder from each option.
Discovery or Insight
The individual options evaluate quite differently from one another in creating stakeholder value. In this light, it could be entirely possible for one of the design options to create a lot of value in a category that is not the stakeholders’ maximum preference and yet still create the most value of all analyzed options. This would most likely mean that the chosen option is not the “best” option – meaning there is another design out there that would most likely evaluate better. However, in our case Option #1 (out most valued option) maximizes its value in the same category as the stakeholders’ highest preference – therefore it looks to be the optimal design option.
Option #1:
North – Chilled Beams (for heating & cooling), Natural Ventilation
South, East, & West – Chilled Beams (for heating & cooling) + Ceiling Fan,
Natural Ventilation
Innovation
Our group’s innovation looks to improve the understanding of “multiple goal/method concepts”, such as LEED for New Construction Certification, within the MACDADI framework. The difficulty of targeting a large goal such as LEED Certification during design is that it often incorporates many of the stakeholders’ individual goals simul-taneously. This works against the fundamental advantages of creating a MACDADI goals system by attacking the precision and transparency of the model.
For example, goal trees are designed to be collectively exhaustive and mutually exclusive, but when one of your stakeholders claims that they want to achieve LEED Platinum Certification (as they did on the GSB Faculty Office Building) what effect does this have on your goal tree? This preference is not mutually exclusive and therefore difficult to implement into the MACDADI model. Our innovation sets out to modulate this procedure to bring back the precision and transparency of the MACDADI process.
Step1: List all possible criteria needed or required to fulfill LEED Certification
Step2 (may not be necessary for some models): Refine the list to include only those criteria related to the decision you are interested in. For example, our group analyzed the HVAC system of the GSB Faculty Office Building, so we eliminated criteria that had nothing to do with HVAD design decisions.
Step3: With the list of LEED criteria, go through the MACDADI goals list and identify which goals are directly affected by the LEED criteria. This new subgroup of MACDADI goals are the ones which will become linked to this “multiple goal/method concept”.
Step4: For all stakeholders who desire LEED Certification, the operator now knows that this entire subgroup of goals must now be incremented in preference, rather than individually.
This innovation will hopefully be able to better illustrate the consequences of “multiple goal/method concepts” on design decisions to both users and policy makers. This innovation takes advantage of the existing precision and transparency within the MACDADI system to further understand goals, preferences, and value.