How Your MEP Design Team Can Impact Quality Throughout a Building’s Life Cycle

Building owners recognize that selecting the right team to deliver a project is key for ensuring a quality result. Yet it may come as some surprise that making the right MEP design choice can have a major impact on the quality of your project across its entire life cycle.

AEC teams are increasingly recognizing that technology can add a level of quality control to their processes that simply isn’t achievable with human talent alone. By selecting an MEP design team supported by software that makes use of artificial intelligence (AI), project teams can ensure quality at every stage, from early design through the complete building life cycle.

Design Quality: Limiting errors and conflicts

Merriam-Webster defines quality as something’s “degree of excellence,” so it’s safe to say that a blueprint riddled with design mistakes and conflicts is not leading toward a quality project. Yet, too many project teams have come to accept a significant level of error as an industry norm. One study found that the average project saw 800 RFIs, leading to major added costs and time delays during construction.

Ensuring accurate designs upfront will limit many of the problems and conflicts that occur in the field. AI-enhanced MEP design software helps improve the accuracy of design for these complex systems. The software will never size wires, pipes, or ductwork incorrectly, eliminating the possibility of design mistakes that would typically occur with human engineering. Engineers will soon be able to use advanced AI technology to automate and integrate the process of clash detection across a wide range of systems, ensuring MEP systems are laid out to avoid every potential obstacle thereby smoothing the way for improved construction speed and quality.

Construction Quality: Reducing labor and material waste

The EPA estimates that U.S. construction and demolition debris amounted to 600 million tons of waste in 2018. Add to that the inefficiencies in design that result in unnecessary amounts of material used to construct the project and that figure could easily double. We’d argue that high-quality projects are those that are designed efficiently upfront, using the least amount of material and labor possible, thereby reducing both materials used and construction waste. The result is better for the environment, and certainly better for the overall project cost.

This is yet another area where advanced MEP design solutions can make a difference. While MEP designers using conventional engineering technology are limited in their ability to work through all possibilities to determine the optimal solution to a project’s unique design challenges, AI tools change this entirely. AI-enhanced MEP design software is able to sort through virtually all possible system designs to ensure that the installed system is the optimal solution. That means the shortest possible runs and most accurate sizing, which use less raw material and installation manpower to accomplish the project’s goals.

Operational Quality: Lowering energy usage

There’s another major benefit to having shorter, more efficient MEP runs. When wiring, piping and ductwork is shorter and laid out more directly, they require less energy to operate. More efficient MEP distribution systems will radiate less energy and result in lower electrical voltage drop, saving energy and requiring less air-conditioning to offset that heat.

It’s an often overlooked fact in conventional engineering processes, however more efficient layouts will lead to significant energy savings over the entire life of the building. Improvements in MEP distribution system design can lead to between 10% and 30% less energy consumption to operate those distribution systems.

Environmental Quality: Smaller carbon footprint

More efficient building system design is perhaps the least expensive and most effective strategy for reducing both embodied carbon and operational carbon in buildings. Studies have found that energy efficiency measures can produce nearly half of the greenhouse gas emissions reductions needed to achieve 2050 climate change goals. So, improving design efficiency not only impacts future energy bills but is also contributing to lowering a building’s total carbon footprint.

Of course, because more efficient MEP design uses less material than conventionally designed work, AI-driven MEP designs dramatically reduce embodied carbon. Embodied carbon is the total of the carbon emissions generated from the mining of raw materials used for construction through material fabrication, assembly, transportation and construction. Architecture 2030 reports that embodied carbon will be responsible for nearly half of the total new construction emissions between now and 2050, unless more efficient design solutions can lower a building’s embodied carbon footprint.  Using AI optimized design solutions, this trend can be reversed.

Overall Quality: Projects that better meet all goals

There’s one more area where advanced MEP design tools can improve quality: The quality of the relationship between the AEC partners and the project owner.

Because AI-supported design software automates the process of laying out and sizing MEP systems, MEP engineers can spend more time focusing on ensuring the final result meets the owner’s and architect’s vision. This means focusing more time on aesthetic and functional considerations. By spending more time getting to understand the building owner’s goals or the facility manager’s needs, the MEP engineer can add the appropriate constraints upon the automated design process. The result is MEP layouts that are more efficient, use less space, provide easier access for maintenance, and do so at the lowest possible cost.

By alleviating a significant source of project frustration, and identifying cost savings through better design as a goal, advanced MEP design can strengthen the quality of the critical relationships between all project partners.

Bridging the final gaps in quality

Quality may mean different things to different project partners, but we dare say that overall quality projects meet all the owner’s vision and operational needs. While the AEC industry has made tremendous strides in improving building quality through the use of 3D design tools, there is still much room for improvement. AI-enhanced MEP design tools can take building design to a higher level and bridge many of the remaining gaps between vision and reality. By beginning with a more reliable design, quality can be infused throughout a building’s entire lifecycle.

If you’re ready to learn how AI-driven MEP design can impact the quality of your projects, contact Schnackel Engineers today.