The Rube Goldberg BIM machine...

One day.... I’ll have my own Rube Goldberg music machine....

Sitting in the garden, or maybe by the bush*, sipping a weak, lukewarm tea, I’d drop a wooden ball into the topmost opening of a whimsical creature and listen serenely to it making its way down the intestines of the handmade contraption playing a simple tune heard thousands of times yet still soothing and providing pure pleasure to the old ear...

I still have children to be raised, so while I dream of a very distant future I make the most of now, often pondering over AEC’s likes to indulge in the collection of Rube Goldbergs within its own processes.

There is no shortage of consciously (or not) designed to be over-the-top machines that perform a very simple task through a series of steps in overly complex ways.

And I’m not even thinking ‘physical’ construction here.

Take for example what happens following award of a tender and prior to doing any ‘real’ work on a site.

Usually, there is an eight-major-step Goldberg in place, made up of hundreds of mini Goldbergs interweaving the mother-machine.

Collect, find, locate, identify, examine, interpret, understand, prioritise, convert, translate, digitise,  identify, detect, isolate, record, track, raise, distribute, follow-up, chase, update, communicate, re-loop, implement, change, record, track, inform, reveal, exhibit, display, describe, filter...

Hard to follow? Refer to the graph provided!

(*I am not much of a gardener unfortunately – do like living by the bush or water, but don’t we all?)