Wednesday, February 16, 2011

BIM in the ‘chain-stores’ business


In the mid nineties I was involved in the documentation of a dozen local branches of an international bank. The process was well thought out, we received a fat book on all the standard layouts, fittings, finishes and details. A resident architect familiar with the codes adopted them to the branches’ spatial requirements, we drew up the drawings (Flatcad) and all went (mostly) well.

A decade later, my company documented a series of outlets for a retail chain providing (mid-range) clothing for children. These shops were located in the USA, ME, India, South Africa. (Designed in NZ).

Parallel to these, we worked on a top end designer shop also part of a chain, this time a highly luxurious (French) one.

On both of these jobs the designers were based on world-wide locations, often speaking different languages, even using different writing (characters); More than once our Flatcad files turned up showing little squares where notes and dimensions were meant to be.

What I want to be pointing out though is that despite of 10 yrs time difference, a much more global playing-field and requirements for complex teamwork, the working methods changed very little from the way we documented the bank branches.

How does this sit with the ‘BIM evolutionary theorists’ viewpoint?
Surely, if any field, the franchises’ should’ve jumped on the bandwagon of BIM by now?



1 comment:

  1. I think you'll find most big name chain roll-outs are BIM now.
    Crate and Barrel, Target, Walmart, Starbucks etc etc

    ReplyDelete