That's one of the questions we'll be exploring on this blog over the next umpty years (I hope), because I'm not totally convinced this concept (a good one) will come to complete fruition in the foreseeable future. BIM (Building Information Management) has a lot of potential. It just remains to be seen if the construction community has the patience to wait for it.
This blog is for the smaller design firms (both architectural and engineering) and construction firms. The Big Dogs (the ENR 100) don't need me. They have dedicated IT departments and people they can dedicate full time to exploring BIM.
Most of the BIM blogs I've seen out there are either tips-and-tricks blogs or are architect-centric. This blog is neither. I'm a mechanical engineer that has been doing construction design for over 30 years. I started out drawing by hand on mylar or vellum (real vellum!). I switched my firm over to CAD as soon as I thought it would be viable long-term to the smaller firms with AutoCAD Version 1.3 running on a behemoth of a NEC computer with a color display, a resolution of 640x480 (much better than the IBM clone resolution of 320x240) and two 8-floppy drives. Damn, I feel old!
What is BIM? Well it's not using Revit to produce a set of paper plans no matter what the Autodesk salesman tells you. BIM is, at its base, communication. I can hear you now, "Oh, Lordy, I thought we had left that communications bullshit back in the '90s." Hear me out. This is not New Age communication I'm talking about. BIM is a process that starts with a building owner who wants to save money on construction, operation and maintenance of his new building. Notice that I didn't include "design" in that saving money list. Programs like Revit can make us more efficient, but to make a model that has all the information to truly implement BIM requires a lot more time and effort than is included in the current design team scope of work.
Once the building owner has made his decision, he hires a design firm whose ultimate goal is NOT to produce a set of paper drawings that will be sent out to construction firms to bid on. The design team's job is to produce an electronic model that has all the information that the contractor needs to do electronic materials take-offs right down to the number of screws needed to mount the windows, to apply his electronic scheduling programs, sequence the construction and all the other esoteric stuff that contractors do, including allowing him to have the electronic model in the field.
BIM doesn't stop when the construction is complete. The building owner then takes possession of the model for use with his facilities management functions which may include tenant improvements, monitoring energy usage, scheduling maintenance, and other things.
This means that the design firm MUST share the electronic model with other people. As Emeril would say, BAM!! That's a big deal. What about intellectual property? What about liability? These are questions that can be answered, just not yet in any standard way.
Some of the questions that I'm going to be addressing in future posts:
What do the insurance companies think about BIM?
What is the true cost ($) of implementing BIM?
What kind of language do we need to put in our contracts?
Who owns the BIM model?
Do the smaller design and construction firms even need to consider BIM?
How much of a pain in the butt is Revit?
What kind of communication infrastructure is needed to implement BIM?
What kind of IT hardware do you need?
And so on.
Getting back to communication for a minute, please feel free to comment on any and all my posts. Feel free to call bullshit if you think I'm off track or out of my mind. I have a very thick skin, and every criticism you have helps me to improve the information I give you and the manner in which I give it to you. Ask questions. Give answers. If you ask a question about software tips-and-tricks, I probably won't be able to answer it, but I may well know where you can go to get the answer. I'm a believer in Jeff Jarvis' saying, "Do what you do best, link to the rest."
So don't be shy. My goal is to make this blog a conversation with people, some (many? most?) of whom are smarter than me. Post comments. Tell me what you think. Tell me what you want me to talk about.
See you next time.
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Don't forget the leader in the BIM software world, Archicad, by Graphisoft. It has been in existence as long as Autodesk has had Autocad. It is just a point of reference that seems to been missed by experienced people in the industry especially when they are about to transition.
ReplyDeleteThe cost of BIM, well I don't think that it is really a matter of how much it costs to implement BIM. You are always going to have to buy software, upgrades, hardware, that is where we are as a profession. The real cost is not implementing it, and incurring errors and omissions on the job. The cost is not being able to fully understand the situation that your building creates for the user, the systems, the structure, the interaction between one or all of the systems involved.
Personally I can see that the small firms are in the fight of their lives. And they need more than ever to adopt proficient production methods using BIM platforms. A lot of people feel that this recent economic slow down is only recession based, unfortunately it is not entirely the recession. As we have evolved our ability to produce construction documents and information we have expanded the capabilities of the designers, engineers, and architects to the point, that more is done with less people. That is the good and bad about BIM. Once we get out of this recession we will see less firms ramping back up that have BIM weapons on hand. Why hire 25 people to do what 5 people can do?
Another point of reference is that BIM isn't contained in one software, even though autodesk claims that Revit is BIM. BIM is the connection between all disciplines, all parties, all information.
BIM was coined in the early part of this decade as a marketing effort to explain parametric modeling and xml data formates.
Thanks for commenting, Willard.
ReplyDeleteYes, Archicad is out there, but when you are talking smaller firms, AutoCAD has the market share. For good reasons.
Again, for the smaller firms, it does matter how much it costs to implement BIM. When the aging on your receivables is averaging 90 days (you'll get paid when I get paid), there isn't a lot of immediately disposable income. Smaller firms have to know what they are getting into and budget and save for the money to convert.
You are absolutely correct about the productivity improvements we are seeing is driving the need for fewer people. In my current firm we are doing work with three people that used to be done with five.
Again, you're right about BIM encompassing more than one piece of software. That's a particular point of misunderstanding. Most people outside the ENR 100 aren't really clear on the concept that BIM flows from the owner, through the design team, through the construction team and back to the owner without ever issuing a set of paper drawings, that all these people have to have interoperable software to make it work the way it's supposed to.