AIA 2016: AIA and Autodesk announce new feature to automate 2030 Commitment reporting data

Autodesk and the American Institute of Architects (AIA) announced last week at AIA National 2016 in Philadelphia, a new and collaboratively developed tool that will automate the AIA 2030 Commitment data reporting to the Design Data Exchange (DDx).

Will Help More Than 350 AIA 2030 Committed Firms

More than 350 architecture firms have committed to the 2030 Challenge, a landmark agreement to accelerate concerns for the environment, and the new DDx  system will allow firms to report their project and portfolio performance directly from Autodesk Insight 360, a technology addition included in Autodesk Revit and Autodesk FormIt 360 Pro subscriptions.

Using the DDx system technology architects will no longer need to manually enter 2030 Commitment data. The elimination of duplications of effort will encourage performance analysis and more frequent reporting throughout the design process instead of annually.

An Open Source System—Other Software Vendors

The DDx system is open source and can be utilized and connected to by other energy modeling software providers. Additional vendors are welcomed to link to the new DDx system. This will help further accelerate and facilitate energy reporting and enable more firms to more easily commit to the 2030 challenge.

Impacts and Looking Ahead

Eliminating the overhead of manual reporting not only saves time but it also enables more regular updates so firms can get up-to-the-minute progress on their projects and portfolio. In terms of actually meeting the targets themselves one of the key findings of the 2014 progress report was the critical role that energy modeling plays, and how projects that applied energy modeling were generally higher performing.

01 – An image of Autodesk Insight 360 in action. This data then gets passed into the AIA 2030 Design Data Exchange. Image: Autodesk, Inc.

For example, of the projects submitted in the 2014 reporting period, nearly 50 percent of the projects where an energy model was created met or came close to achieving the AIA 2030 Commitment goals, whereas 80 percent of non-model projects fell below the 40 percent target. This offering helps to lower the barriers to energy modeling, making it possible to conduct energy modeling on virtually every project, especially from the early stages, but in doing so automatic reporting to DDx is essentially free.

How it All Works

Autodesk believes the new DDx tool will drive up industry support of 2030 targeting and help the industry of architecture succeed in hitting its milestones. Levering Autodesk Insight 360, architects can tap into the power of one of the world’s most powerful analysis engines. Insight 360 provides bi-directional BIM integration, direct access to analysis tools, and guidance and recommendations from industry benchmarks.

To learn more visit Autodesk here and here. A snapshot driven blog write-up is here.

Architosh Analysis

Bravo for whoever decided to dovetail the Architecture 2030 Initiative and leading energy modeling software tools. Architects today often complain of two things about sustainable design: one is that their clients are not particularly aware or interested (and therefore will not pay for additional services) and two is that socially conscience goals like 2030 are too much extra work. The Design Data Exchange (DDx) introduced at AIA 2016 will go a long way on that latter compliant. Architects shouldn’t need their clients to be sustainable design oriented, nor should they need be financially punished for taking on design tasks and responsibilities. Today’s BIM tools and early stage conceptual design tools need to embed the energy analysis technology into the design workflow in a seamless way so architects are designing around energy concerns from day one. FormIt 360 Pro is one of those award-winning tools that does just that.