As a speaker from the Smithsonian Institution earlier this year was presenting the specifics of a plan to build a museum in Washington, architect Kimon Onuma was taking notes at the back of the conference room.

By the time it was his turn to address the conference, Onuma already had transformed those notes into a design for the 500,000-square-foot museum on his Web-based architectural software tool.

He had planned a demonstration to show how Onuma Planning Systems can expedite the design process but ended up presenting a project. Starting from zero, in 45 minutes he found the Smithsonian’s four proposed locations for the museum on Google Earth, then produced a computer simulation of the museum at each site based on the elements described by the speaker.

“It was the perfect illustration of what our software can do,” Onuma said. His high-tech architecture practice, Onuma Inc., is at the forefront of an industry-wide movement to digitize information-sharing among architects, builders and developers to create design processes that are far more efficient.

The technology will allow architects to shorten turnaround time from weeks to days, or even hours in some cases.

And last month, the Pasadena-based nine-member firm got a four-year $2.8 million contract from the Smithsonian to help design an updated master plan for the institution’s museums. Onuma’s firm will use its software to help in-house architects and engineers plan future renovation and expansion of the organization’s nine million square feet of museum and research space.

Supercharged spreadsheet

Onuma’s Web-based tool can be described as a supercharged spreadsheet programmed with all the data about a project, from the square footage to the cost estimates and environmental impacts.

The project’s architects, developers and project managers each get a user name and password and varying levels of access to the information.

The typical design process of large-scale buildings can take months, sometimes years, to complete because of its complexity and elements of interdependency. If the square-footage of a room is altered, for example, then new numbers have to be sent to a price estimator to make a revised construction cost estimate.

On the Onuma Planning System, an architect can add furniture or shave off floors of a planned building, and the Web-based software calculates in real-time how much those changes will affect the cost. The software also handles environmental impacts, such as traffic flow, and infrastructure concerns, including water, sewer and electricity systems.

That’s not to say the Onuma’s system will sweep the industry. The technology faces resistance from those who say that the system requires a new level of information sharing during the early stages of design, which can result in a blame game in court if later construction fails or the finished product has defects or there are cost overruns.

Since the architects, developers, contractors and builders all contributed to the design process and in essence, corporately own the building information model, it could become unclear who is responsible for a problem.

Steven Ryder, an L.A.-based senior associate at architecture firm NBBJ, said that despite these concerns, there’s no question that real-time design and high-tech information sharing are the future of the industry.

“But the issue of liability will need to get worked out on the national level and the American Institute of Architects is kind of a dinosaur and has yet to significantly address this issue,” Ryder said.

RK Stewart, president of the American Institute of Architects said Onuma’s Web-based tool is at the “cutting edge of where the industry is already headed.”

The organization is advocating what’s called “integrated practice,” where every party involved in the building process, from architects to contractors, share information earlier in the design process.

Coast Guard contract

Onuma recently completed a contract for the U.S. Coast Guard, integrating its software to manage 34 million square feet of structures, runways and office buildings spread out across the nation’s shoreline.

As a part of the contract, Onuma used its technology to design 35 command centers in six months. The Coast Guard had budgeted 10 months to design one command center, said David Hammond, senior program manager for the Coast Guard’s office of civil engineering.

“We estimated that’s how long it would take based on how we used to do business, unaided by technology and a process where a response to change is, ‘Let me get back to you in three weeks,'” Hammond said.

The design specifications for the command centers from security infrastructure, equipment and square footage to architecture were fed into the online software, and then customized for each geographical location.

Onuma’s firm is also in talks with the Department of Homeland Security in designing its Washington headquarters.

Onuma began using his Web-based software in 1994, as Internet tools were first coming into wider use. He said the rest of the industry is finally catching up with him.

An architect with a keen interest in software design, he developed the tool while working with his father’s practice in Tokyo soon after he graduated from the USC School of Architecture.

Onuma opened his own practice in 1988 and began traveling frequently between Los Angeles and Tokyo for government-related contracts. During this time, he developed the software with a team of engineers to create a more efficient way for architects to collaborate when some were in Japan and others were here.

Last December, Onuma’s firm won an award from the AIA after successfully completing a simulation at the Port of Newark. Twenty different organizations collaborated in a simulated response to a hypothetical bombing of the port. Onuma’s Web-enabled software helped design a field hospital near a flight path in 90 minutes in Manhattan. The exercise, put on by the Open Geospatial Consortium Inc., was led by the General Services Administration, NASA, the Port Authority of New York, Oracle and Harvard University, among others.