Pay attention to the ones missing!

At the latest ‘first’ conference I went to recently, there were representatives from (almost) across the AEC.

Manufacturers and suppliers of materials and products were (again) mostly ignored and highly under-represented, which was unfortunate. I see them as a crucial party in bringing BIM to anything close to reality.

Even if invited, I speculate, most of those companies probably declined to join, on the premise of having just blown the annual promotional budget on entertaining thousands of ‘tire-kickers’ at the BIG5 held in Dubai, marketing their fares in a glitzy-yet-disappointingly ordinary way.

Oh, for the missed opportunity!

Throughout the two days, the conference chair repeatedly referred to building-owners and contractors as ‘bookends to the construction process’, and placed design consultants somewhere in the middle, as ‘the’ books.

Industry organisations and the academia were not consigned a role within this imaginary-bookshelf, thankfully they were all still there.

I wish the organisers laced their speaker’s line up with some innovative manufacturers, fortify the summit with intelligent product suppliers’ intelligent virtual construction products.

Give it some real ‘content’!

It was ‘buildings’ they were talking about after all, bits of concrete, steel, glass, ceramics!

Think, what a tiny percentage of the money spent collectively on trade-fairs could do, to boost the slim offering of real, meaningful libraries for BIM-practitioners, should the manufacturers and suppliers chose to redirect their efforts!