Don’t call it BIM! Delegation and BIM.

What could/should a young architect working within a traditional/hybrid architectural environment do to advance BIM without jeopardising his/her career?

You’ve got to be creative!

At the heart of all traditional design processes is delegation and delegation is highly reliant on trust.

Design and decisions are made by one party and interpreted, implemented, executed by another.

If you are the one being ‘delegated-to’, challenge the medium and the tools not the decision making hierarchy.

Here are 3 hypothetical scenarios for a senior/ junior architect setup in a medium-sized design company with a strong ‘hybrid’ (confused) BIM/CAD approach and process*:

1/ SA: 50+ (years old) JA: late 20s

SA will know how buildings go together; will not be hands on;

Help SA become hands on by providing many inroads to the database and work through resolving the model with whatever outputs the SA can relate to.  

2/ SA: 40-50 JA: late 20s

SA will know what documents should be created (in 2D) but will not have a good understanding of how to check them;

Suggest ways to restructure outputs for checking to become easier; (reduce number of drawings);

3/ SA: 30-40 JA: late 20s

SA will be somewhat hands on and very vulnerable. Combine approaches 1 and 2 and be very careful not to tread on egos.

Applies to all: Don’t call it BIM! Don’t call it anything!

(*there can be further senior people above and draughtsmen/CAD people below)

SA = senior architect JA = junior architect