Building SIMPLE: Building An Information Model

Building SIMPLE uses a series of three-dimensional construction models to show the step-by-step construction of a commercial office building. The construction begins with a surveyed layout and continues through excavation, foundations, concrete and steel frames, and exterior curtain walls to visually detail the challenges and skills necessary to put a building together.

This includes the building's layout, a zero-lot line excavation, reinforced concrete foundations, raised slab, rigid concrete frame, and pre-cast hollow core decking. While this is going on masons build concrete block walls and ironworkers erect a steel moment frame with composite steel decking, bar-joist, and light-weight steel framing. The book closes with the installation of the roof and curtain walls that leave the building weather tight and ready for the installation of mechanical and electrical systems.

Building SIMPLE should be of particular interest to design and construction professionals that are not directly involved in the day to day activities found on a large scale construction jobsite. This includes real estate developers, investors, property managers, bankers, accountants, attorneys, and building owners.

This book is a must read for anyone interested in the means and methods of real world construction and how building information models can be used to clearly communicate construction as a process. Readers can walk through the jobsite, stand on steel beams, and zoom in on structural details as they click through the phases of the building's construction. They can also deconstruct, modify, and evaluate every piece of the virtual construction.

< p> All our books are written as graphic narratives in a comic style. Every book mixes layers of visual information with construction models, short video tours, and tutorials on how the models were built and organized. Each chapter includes a glossary of the buzzwords used during the construction in that chapter with an estimate of the time and dollar value of each phase of the construction.

Dennis Fukai is a licensed architect and construction manager with more than thirty years experience as a professional construction administrator, researcher, and university professor. <b/> <b/>He is a Fulbright Scholar and earned his PhD in architecture from the University of California, Berkeley. Dennis has been recognized internationally for his work in advanced construction modeling and graphic communications.