Fight duplication with duplication!

Many of the managers I deal with within the AEC are aware of the perils of data duplication, several make extra effort regularly to minimise those within their day-to-day tasks and the work of those they manage.

Very few observe and/or are capable to distinguish between good and bad duplication, in fact very few would ever contemplate the premise of a ‘good duplication’.

I wrote previously about using modelling redundancy to achieve better project information integrity.

Not a novel idea, many other industries use it successfully by duplication selected functions to increase reliability (and accuracy in our case).

In the BIM world, sometimes you should have two (or even more) parties modelling exactly the same thing, or run a system where the same information comes from two different places, originated by two different entities.

Most people find this idea not appropriate and ill-fitting when applied to AEC projects.

I used to go to great lengths to highlight the unmanaged duplication that goes unnoticed and compare the cost/risks these carried with the minimal (perceived) cost increases that ‘managed’ duplication added to a project.

I no longer bother explaining this, you either get it or you don’t.

Still planning to build in-house BIM capability?

Here is a tip:

Teach your middle managers Word, Excel and Power-point or employ ones that already know how to run those programs.