DebunkTheBIM

BIM surveys

2012-03-03T07:26:00.001-08:00

I get these often, 1-3 every month, on average.

Requests to participate in BIM-related surveys.

The people involved are generally nice-enough; politelyask for mere 10 minutes of my time.

Ten minutes are not a big deal for me; I frequentlysquander much larger chunks of-my time on activities that bring dubiousbenefits to the people around me, let alone the entire BIM community...

Still, most of the times, I decline the opportunity toparticipate.

I have my reasons. Two, at least:

· The first one is my strong-held belief, that BIMis not a ‘science’ that has a shortcut to-it, you’ve got to earn your stripesby doing the hard-work in a related, ‘real’ field.

And over quite a long periodof time.

Not that one should not start onBIM early, absolutely must, straight from kindergarten – but not as a career,rather a means, to an end.

· The second reason of mine is highly subjectivetoo, based on some bad experience:

I do not trust BIM-surveys!

Far too often the results ofthese ‘honest investigations’ become ‘instant validations’ to questionableclaims, bases used to build on theories with wobbly foundations.

I may be letting down the BIM-industry through my refusalto be BIM - surveyed – so be it.

Let the future be the judge.

Barking down the wrong weed... (haunted by the ‘drawing’)

2012-02-24T04:30:00.002-08:00

When I first switched camps to join the construction sideof the industry ten-or-so-years ago, it still felt like a ‘breath of fresh air’to be working in.

Tough and competitive, but also with clear-enough objectives:

‘go and build’, ‘find the consultants’ mistakes on theway, make some money too...’

Somehow, over the decade that passed since, constructiongot infected by the same virus that the design-end of the industry had beensuffering from.

This virus causes the ‘cancer of the drawing’ and noproject escapes once infected.

The construction people of the construction workflow do notseem to mind this disease, as it gives them a good excuse for just about anything;

(i.e. could not pour concrete, erect steel, tile bathroom...etc,had no shop-drawings;)

The engineering people of the same workflow aren’t appearingto be too bothered either, perhaps because the ‘shop-drawing-custodianship’ givesthem something to live for.

Or work for! In current, challenging economic times that reasonis not to be ignored.

In fact, it is a major driver for engineering departmentsof construction companies from all over the world to fight fiercely for archaicshop-drawing production processes to survive.

This mirrors the bad behaviour of the design fraternity thatmost of these practitioners have left to invade the construction fields so badly,that any hope for BIM to gain traction is evaporating.

BIM and how the Indians have taken over the corner dairies of New Zealand...

2012-02-15T07:35:00.000-08:00

A disclaimer to start-with: I am not a cross-country-migration specialist, nor someone that would encourage – or on the other hand, discourage migration on any scale, small or large. I take no political stance on the issue and no aspiration to feed arguments for or against it.

I have been an immigrant most of my life and have seen over time the significant impact (positive and negative) it had on a country, a region, a large part of the world, but also – and probably even more importantly for my area of interest: on an industry.

Few people in New Zealand under the age of 30 know of dairy owners that are not Indians, first or second generation immigrants. Very few local bakeries are run by people not of Chinese or other Asian-origin.

Rightly or wrongly – the ‘take-over’ has happened, under the noses of the people and in a relatively short timeframe.

When it comes to BIM – and its employment within the AEC industry, ‘expert-migration’ is yet to make any significant impact. The potential nevertheless is there!

Not that anyone is seriously and publically prepared to analyse this ‘opportunity’, typically highly politically and emotionally charged.

That is unfortunate.

The opportunity exists, to source the type of people that will drive the cultural change needed for the approach to flourish – without rocking the boat too much.

Initially, anyway.

A different breed of BIM out/in sourcing... ...is what could be a great catalyst for the change, this industry is waiting for.

2012-02-10T08:55:00.001-08:00

I admire many individual architects, engineers and construction managers operating within the AEC, still I regard this layer of the ‘building creation machinery’ to be a major obstacle for a ‘culture’ to emerge that would be progressive, efficient, BIM-friendly and enjoyable to work in.

I often refer to them as the ‘middle-managers’.

They operate somewhere between the ‘top cheese’ that make the strategic decisions on how things are done in the organisation and those that actually do the ‘visible part ‘of the work.

(let’s leave the ‘intellectual part’ out for the moment).

Their biggest sin (in my eyes) is their ‘hands-off’ attitude to information management.

I’ve been accused of personalising this problem, attacking the ‘people’ in it.

I believe in clearly pointing out the need to discard/replace a practice* that obviously is not working industry and worldwide:

De-privilege this middle-management within projects, get them to take full responsibility for what they are supposed to do and the industry will jolt itself out of the hole it’s been stuck-in for decades!

But, how to get this de-privilege-isation happening when strong, vested interests keep ensuring its continuous survival?

My latest hope is in the out/in sourcing firms, smart people that run them, entire-countries even that may size this yet ‘invisible’ opportunity.

No, offering modelling, coordination or (God-forbid) clash-detection-services will not do.

But there’s something-else that may just....

* This ‘practice’ is delivering buildings through second-hand information creation and manipulation and I have already written quite a bit on this subject in the past.

Arm me with BIM!

2012-02-06T06:11:00.000-08:00

AEC analysts love to compare the building-creation industry, its workings and productivity (or lack of) with that of the manufacturing.

I find this quite weird;

I see more commonality with other ‘unrelated’ fields like travel, hospitality, education, even healthcare.

The most striking resemblance still, is with the finance and gambling industries – a connection very few people are prepared to acknowledge.

This is unfortunate.

The way ‘treasures have been shared’ within the participants of the industry has largely been determined by speculation, manipulation and luck for quite a while;

Facing up to this fact – would do a lot of good for all of us operating within the field.

Such collective enlightening would not just make the game more sophisticated, but also assist the true uptake of BIM, no end.

For a start, we all would stop hoping that a general practice of ‘play nicely’ will spontaneously emerge and instead will all learn to survive – or even – thrive in the game that is tough, hostile and brutal.

Secondly, we would recognise that building owners/developers are ‘just’ another player at the table. Their stakes may be sometimes bigger than others’ but very often are not too.

Therefore, we should stop looking at them with expectations to single-handedly dampen the gamble and instead better arm ourselves to increase our own odds to win a fair share of the ‘booty’.

The biggest charity on Earth

2012-01-31T06:41:00.000-08:00

Move over Red Cross, Red Crescent, Greenpeace and WWF!

There is a new entity aiming to become the king of the compassionate:

The AEC industry.

Who says that the world is a hostile place, when you have an entire industry committed to preserve a species that was destined to die out some 2 decades ago?

I’m referring here to my ‘favourite’ part of the AEC food-chain: the hands-off architects, designer-, project- and construction managers. Collectively they rule the building-creation industry.

The marker-uppers, the second hand information users, the stay at arms’ length – decision makers, the no-real-responsibility takers.

Far from being an advocate of the ‘rule of the jungle’, or worse even, promote hard-hearted policies that disadvantage the already disadvantaged, I observe with amazement this phenomenon of an industry shooting itself in the foot.

There was a famous economist (his name escapes me as I write this) that got into trouble because he questioned the campaign to protect the Panda as a species.

In a very good argument he contrasted the Panda’s lack of ability to survive/thrive with the qualities of the domestic cat.

Non-critical, self-protection of a profession is not a new thing, both the legal and medical fraternity can lecture us all on how to do it well.

To ignore the rules of both evolution and revolution seem to be unique to the AEC.

‘The battered BIMmer’s syndrome’

2012-01-26T07:05:00.000-08:00

I’m claiming it today.

It may invite the furore of those supporting thegenuinely ‘battered’, for trivialising the syndrome, but you know what?

Who cares? I know MY pain, and it goes deep.

OK, not quite as deep as the youngest daughter’s who hasdrowned her mobile phone a fortnight ago and is saving up for themandatory-half of the new-one, but close.

The symptoms of BBS I exhibit:

I walk around like the dog that has been kickedone-too-many times.

I look jealously at the checkout operator that gets asmile and a ‘thank you’ for her service from the person in front of me at thesupermarket.

(oh, to be once more appreciated for doing something,anything...)

I sit through 2 days of BIM-related presentations withoutexperiencing any sparks for involvment or a slightest wish to criticise.

I stop caring about my DebunkTheBIM blog...

As it is with so many other things, by acknowledging tomyself the degree of emotional imbalance I found myself in, has lifted some ofits power and weight off me.

Curiously, it has also given me the almost unnatural giftof being able to recognise fellow sufferers, from quite a distance and withincrowds.

The sombre looks, the fear, misplaced loyalty, unfoundedshame and economic dependence on something very hostile.

But most of all, the inability to escape!

photo by http://theconfidentyears.aminus3.com/

$aving with BIM (‘What is this BIM of yours going to save for us?’)

2012-01-20T01:12:00.000-08:00

This is a question I get asked often.

One day, when I’m in a very bad mood, I’ll answer with:

‘It may $ave your butt yet, if you’re clever enough tojump on it in time!’

Wise-cracks aside, it is a legitimate question of course,and I would welcome it with open arms if it was raised after the questioner hadput some effort into understanding what was involved in this ‘BIM of mine’.

I’d probably even concede to the unlikely opponent that presentedme with a counter-argument that proved his Flat-CAD system could tick the sameboxes as ‘my BIM’ while incurring a much lower cost.

I definitely would, with pleasure even, as it would alsomean I could finally have an intelligent conversation on the subject.

Instead, I operate daily in environments where ‘modellingfor interpretation’ is considered to be a dirty concept.

Creating a reference model as a navigation aid capable tolink thousands of documents to, aimed for hundreds of people to be working withdaily for years is looked at as an ‘unnecessary luxury’.

Getting highly qualified engineers do their ownWord-document editing when writing reports is received as a hostile attack, ‘Iwould not go there if I was you’.

‘What is this BIM of yours going to save for us?’

I’ll tell you when you’re ready for it!

The Abu Dhabi Municipality is asking for CAD files from applicants of building permits...

2012-01-18T08:45:00.000-08:00

Not sure if this can be considered good news for theBIM-minded operating in the region.

Only a couple of days ago I stated in this blog, thatsticking to-and improving a wobbly-but functioning-FlatCAD system often makesmore sense than jumping half-heartedly into BIM.

It felt great publishing that thought publically, BTW - Ionce lost my job over saying something similar.

Doggedly sticking to the theory that the only way BIM canbe successfully implemented is by going ‘cold-turkey’ on CAD did not help myprospects of lasting in the said position, of theBIM-software-vendor-consultancy, but that is another story.

So, I’ve been reading with some interest the specificationthat CAD files provided as part of future building permits and as-built drawingswill need to comply with.

All reasonably easy to follow, technically not challenging,yet, still a major step in the wrong direction, I believe.

The last 2 decades of CAD existing within the official framework,yet contractually non-binding has kept the doors open for changes to be made forthe better.

For FlatCAD to be leaving these murky waters for officiallyendorsed ‘standards’ solidifies something that the industry should have left behindby now.

In fact, my hunch is that making these CAD standards workacross the board (in one city alone) will be difficult, might as well go cold-turkeyand BIM.

...A brave manager would recommend anything but Revit...

2012-01-14T06:49:00.000-08:00

According to Brendan.

He wrote thisresponding to my comment in the long-time-raging discussion on a Linkedin-Group(see link below) under the ‘relatively generic’ question of ArchiCAD vs Revitand to do with ‘due diligence’.

It would be interesting to be in charge of doing duediligence on ‘what BIM solution should a company go to’, have the luxury of notbeing tainted by 20 years of ‘making-do’ with inferior products and hostileenvironments, yet still have the intelligence to collect meaningful data.

Given such opportunity I’d still most likely come up withthe conclusion, that there just IS not enough evidence OUT there that any onesystem, or even a combination of off-the-shelf and proprietary systems ANDprocesses IS working.

Sorry, the jury is out on this issue and statingotherwise is pure bluffing.

So, I’d advice the company setting up the task of duediligence for BIM implementation to go back to the initial question.

The most important factor in the BIM-quest IS thequestion;

No way can the answer be right if we have the wrongquestion!

Replacing a slightly dodgy, but functional FlatCAD systemwith a ‘pie-in-the-sky’ BIM one is far worse than being told to re-examine theoriginal BIM-brief.

Should I be surprised that not many prospects are beatingdown my door seeking out BIM ‘due diligence’ services? So far.

http://www.linkedin.com/groupAnswers?viewQuestionAndAnswers=&discussionID=60527145&gid=796267&commentID=64540092&goback=%2Enmp_*1_*1_*1_*1_*1_*1&trk=NUS_DIG_DISC_Q-ucg_mr#commentID_64540092

To lose a face and save an industry...

2012-01-12T05:50:00.000-08:00

Is that too much to ask for?

It must be, as despite of persistent nagging from myside, no progress can I see in the area.

In my workplace, on my jobs, in my industry.

It is the issue of ‘hands-off’-nes practiced by a largepart of the industry when managing project information.

You may feel totally unaffected by this worry of mine,but if you run a company, consider this:

Do you provide (excessive) admin/technical ‘support’ toyour engineers, architects, construction managers because their time is morevaluable than the ‘lower ranks’ and consequently most ‘menial’ tasks should beoff-loaded?

You may be thinking of this strategy as wise task sharing– in fact it is just a perk you are giving to some of your staff.

Don’t kid yourself that you are saving money!

Unfortunately, this ‘privilege’ dished out by you is notjust some additional weight on YOUR overheads or a bit of extra that yourclients end up paying for, it has far reaching consequences impacting on justabout everything I DO during my workdays.

Like, the software packages I use ....and how they arenot developing as they ought to be.

The people I hire ....and how they are not developing asthey ought to be.

The clients I serve ....and how they are not developingas they ought to be.

The clandestine practice of consultants modelling for tender documentation...

2012-01-11T06:46:00.000-08:00

For more than a decade I’ve held the belief that anundeclared game was going on between consultants and contractors that was basedon and revolved around ‘drawings for construction’.

It went on a bit like this:

Consultants would prepare drawings to tender.

Thanks to CAD, these drawings would number in thehundreds if not thousands for even modest buildings.

The contractor would price with a superficial look overthe documents.

(no way could all those sheets be properly assessed).

Once a contract was won and building had started, bothsides would comb through the said documents looking for ammunition to gainadvantage over the other side.

The contractor would search for discrepancies and excusesfor variations, the consultant for proofs that the buildings were properlydesigned.

Sometime one party won, other times, the other.

Owners lost either way, of course, but owners did notcare too much as long as the ‘building bubble’ delivered the numbers at thebottom of the sheet.

Still, it was equilibrium of a sort – with everyonehaving a chance of landing the jack-pot.

Then, a slight shift happened.

Consultants started using modelling to prepare tenderdocumentation.

Relatively low key, nowhere near the full-blown BIM, butgoing far enough to ensure that their own vulnerability was dramaticallyreduced.

Most contractors missed this shift and got caughtunaware.

No surprises there.

Best bang for your bucks

2012-01-05T22:17:00.000-08:00

They may call it a ‘BIM Audit’, a ‘BIM healthcheck’ or refer to it as a ‘BIM Gap analysis’.

There are companies operating within the AEC thatpromote services fitting the above described categories. If you have anythingto do with BIM, you would’ve come across at least one of them by now, urgingyou to take the assessment.

The premise of their promotion is to establishwhere had the client company got-to BIM wise, and what remains to be done.

In principle, not a bad idea, however be careful,very, very careful what you are spending your money on.

First, check the assessor’s credentials. You wouldnot want to have your ability to speak a foreign language tested by someonethat is not fluent in it.

And fluent means, fluent. Speaking it, daily. Out andabout. On the ‘street’. So to speak.

Second, commit to further steps even before theresults come in.

Third, still be prepared to change tack, no matterwhat the assessors recommend.

Keep an open mind. Research. Research. Research....

I have an 8 page PowerPoint that I am happy to sharewith anyone that wants to do a 10 minute self test on BIM readiness.

The best use of your ‘audit’ money may yet be ponderingover it for a while!

Email for it if you are interested:zolna.murray@gmail.com
or can see it here:
My latest SlideShare upload : A working bim system2
http://www.slideshare.net/zolnamurray/a-working-bim-system2 via @slideshare

Ignorance can be bliss, but should you really flaunt it publicly?

2011-12-31T03:04:00.000-08:00

There.

Done it, not quite like running a Marathon, but I’ve completed the year of BIM-blogging.

What did I achieve with it, apart from securing an ‘outlet’ for some of the frustration that would have been most likely bottled up and/or released on people least deserving?

Although my children forbid me telling jokes in front of anyone whose opinion they care about I’m still going to quote one I heard recently:

Chap asks a priest: Father, can I confess?

Priest responds: sure son, you don’t have a FB page?

What good did this commitment to dream up a ‘225 word daily snippet’ do to anyone else?

(got me out of cooking dinner and mostly doing the dishes too).

I learned that the BIM question continues to be a puzzling one, not because it is so hard to make sense of it, but because it DOES make sense and yet remains almost a totally unworkable idea.

It is also the classic case of the ‘tail wagging the dog,’ archaic people, customs, systems and processes running the show with little space left for thinkers and innovators.

I stay positive, helped by little-gems of people and ideas twinkling at me from unexpected places.

Still, let me dedicate this post to those colleagues of mine that start their conversations with:

“I know nothing about BIM but....”

Happy New Year!

Fight duplication with duplication!

2011-12-30T05:58:00.000-08:00

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.

Lifecycle BIM – Yeah, right!*

2011-12-29T05:19:00.000-08:00

I am preparing material for an FM-conference, will be presenting on the subject of BIM with regards to its relationship to FM.

If I was a cynical person (thankfully, I am) I could argue that BIM has ‘suddenly and seriously’ started eyeing the FM/OM end of the construction process because it miserably failed to make much progress in the construction part.

This fiasco followed another major, unsuccessful group-of-efforts focused at the design end.

I read and classify this move as an ‘upping the ante’ a bit every time, raising further the stakes without the benefits of successfully completing previous levels.

Sort of like, let’s climb Mt Everest since we failed to pull ourselves up on Mt Maunganui.

(the weather was too hot, the mountain too steep, we were too tired and had better things to do).

It has always made more sense for us to aim for the highest mountain, anyway.

Looking at the big picture, lifecycle and all!

It is considered a major ‘letting down of-the side’ by me, when I state, both that BIM could be (and more importantly often should be) done at the end of the construction process rather than using a badly-built ‘construction BIM’ and, that selling BIM with FM as the ‘carrot’ is hugely misleading and usually counterproductive.

Still get invited to conferences, can’t be that bad a traitor.

* there has been a hugely successful campaign running for years in NZ by the Tui Brewery based on/around this saying – it became a ‘common phrase’ (may have been that before too, the ads definitely promoted its use in the common language);

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0303/S00244.htm

Not strictly BIM: the nerdy cup!

2011-12-28T06:09:00.000-08:00

“Jonny, get up!” Is the Hungarian name of a toy, that works on the principle of self-righting itself whenever someone tries to knock it over, thanks to a strategically placed weight in its bottom.

It is often depicted as a clown or a doll with a nicely rounded backside.

The concept is also used by designers of drinking-cups for toddlers.

I wish someone had commercialised the adult version of this drinking vessel, many a computer would have its electronic life extended by it.

Have tried locating one on the net but found only speakers, toothbrushes and standing-lights benefiting from the physics of their counterweights.

Staying with computers, still not exactly BIM:

I was sad/surprised to learn a couple of days ago how all the lugging of two laptops and an obscenely-heavy power-unit (for the HP) had done little good to my arm-muscles and totally failed to help me pull myself up on a 1.5m high wall.

I got locked out of our house and repeated bell-ringing, yelling, treats and threats failed to get my youngest daughter to open the front door.

I peered longingly at the wide open back door over the previously mentioned concrete fence-wall, while numerous neighbours prepared for Christmas Eve celebrations.

Talk about embarrassing.

Not as much as pouring a large cup of tea over two laptops though.

In a single sweep.

BIM = The ArtS AND ScienceS of making buildings

2011-12-27T08:15:00.000-08:00

Middle daughter is contemplating going down the route of studying architecture in the future, so with husband they discuss the list of subjects she’d need to take while still at high school to be able to apply.

I’m in two minds about whether I should en-or-dis-courage her, thankfully, (and admirably) at least I do not straight out ‘forbid’ her or indeed any of them to follow a chosen career path.

Unlike their father who has been talking them out of ‘teaching’ from the age they started role-playing.

Architecture requires its practitioners to have both sides of their brains equally well developed. By no means the only profession to do so, still probably one of only a few.

You mention chemistry, physics, geometry and visual-arts in one sentence and not many teenagers will stick around.

You tell them that it takes a lifetime to master the skills needed for one to be a good architect and they’ll think you’re pulling their leg.

While we collectively mulled over this subject, an unexpected answer came to mind, in response to why was it so difficult finding good BIM-mers in the AEC?

Good BIM-mers, (just as good architects) must be equally talented in both arts and sciences to be successful...

And ADD to ‘the injury’: they need to have an aptitude towards IT.

A combination even harder to find.

Dr Vera and seeing the world from the bottom up...

2011-12-26T05:50:00.000-08:00

Dr Vera was a friend of mine that almost 2 decades ago arrived to New Zealand with a medical degree she was unable to practice with. She did get her paperwork eventually recognised and specialised in obstetrics but not before she had done her share of low-level immigrant work.

She worked in a fish shop, she knitted jumpers for sale.

Hundreds of jumpers, indeed.

When she finally was allowed to deliver babies at the local hospital, she credited the masses of knitwear produced that honed her knitting skills for the ability to work quickly and efficiently on women post childbirth.

The moral of this story? Well, sometimes the experiences you thought were the least useful to you bring you the most benefits in life.

My equivalent to Dr Vera’s knitting is contract-drafting.

I had done a lot of it, as a new immigrant, often for very low pay and for some dodgy companies.

And that is exactly where I earned my BIM stripes.

There and working with builders and their quantity surveyor project managers.

I credit a pair of particularly eager-to-please-the-boss QS-es combing through my documentation while building a house I designed, with giving me the best lessons on BIM.

Combing and combing through my earnestly modelled and drafted-on drawings to find even the last measly variations and slap me in the face.

Thank you!

Christmases in sand and snow...

2011-12-25T07:24:00.000-08:00

All in all, I don’t travel much.

Have been in the UAE for 18 months and had not got to Al Ain yet, a town not that far and definitely worth a visit.

Still, when it comes to Christmases I’ve been fortunate to experience many shades of it;

Winter and cold

Self awarding a break from exams in my twenties and taking the last train on Christmas Eve to the village of my friend’s parents’.

Walking the 2km-es from the dimply-lit train station to their house through knee-deep snow while treasuring the experience of seeing the heavily-laden Christmas trees twinkling behind laced curtains on our way.

Summer and warm

Scooping up a bottle full of metallic-magnetic-black sand on a beach in my late thirties, suffering from morning sickness all day and watching the sun dip into the Pacific Ocean, while husband is practicing his trumpet for the family New Year’s party we’ll be going to.

Summer and cold

Shivering on the inter islander-boat in my early forties, watching the green cliffs of the Marlborough Sounds slide by the slowed vessel due to over-zealous regulators’ eagerness to run the world. Reminiscing of the honeymoon spent on a magic spot, accessible by water only and now infamous for a high-profile double-murder.

Winter and warm

Past my mid-forties, celebrating with the immediate family, near the desert.

Merry Christmas!

I’ve inadvertently engineered a cat-head out of my web statistics.

2011-12-24T06:45:00.000-08:00

I must use my ‘last’ days to float the most boring topics related to BIM, to prevent the cat gain a third ear just before the end of December.

I do not need to lose any sleep over the subject, the trend is definitely downwards, my post regarding the emergence of the ‘ideal’ BIM client yesterday received only a lukewarm welcome.

I think it does deserve another mention:

Hardly ever do I come across a self-proclaimed BIM expert that does not put ‘educating clients’ as a number-one priority on the road to widespread BIM adoption.

The notion of a homogenous group of people (entities) that sit in rows of undersized desks, eyes peeled on a blackboard, eagerly waiting their BIM enlightenment from the above mentioned specialists is something they believe in, I’m certain.

Lo and behold when the pupils turn out to be an unruly bunch, unprepared to be spoon fed, worse even, demanding credentials from the teaching crew, wanting proof to their claims to be at the forefront of the topic.

This picture imagined puts a smile on my face and reinforces my HOPE in the sector to drive this BIM where it needs to be:

‘A cutting edge toolset that not everyone can use and/or get.

Something that the smart cookies of the industry will have to get one over on the others’

The end of the year brings The Hope!

2011-12-23T04:43:00.000-08:00

He came in a creamy coloured kandura and blew my socks off.

May not have struck others present as the representation of the ‘ideal AEC-client’ by any official-or-unofficial measure.

I certainly could see in-him the drive for a hard bargain and am sure he employs it with anyone and everyone that crosses his paths.

Still, for the time being he jumped into the role of the human-representation of what an ideal BIM client should be, for me.

He had what very few of my clients ever had: ‘a good bluffometer’.

Don’t confuse this with pure business ability, I’ve had the pleasure to deal with many of those smart, savvy operators getting the best out of the AEC, skilfully turning any situation into their own benefit, no matter of what side of the property bubble they were in.

Even the concept that the entire industry on an international level is running on the principle of “Make it up as you go” is not that well kept secret for many, so labelling various professionals serving him from design teams with unkind epithets would on its own not awe me as much as the kandura-clad Doctor had. (i.e. ‘stupid engineers’).

His proactivity astonished me!

I wishpered to Daniel (BIMES) the question: “Where did you find him?”

Daniel’s response was: “He found us!”

There is hope for BIM yet!

Picture borrowed from Dr Najeeb Mohd. Al Nuimi’s presentation at the First Annual Conference in the ME on BIM;

‘I told you so’

2011-12-22T06:16:00.001-08:00

I’m sad to say but all the opportunities that keep popping up where I can say the ‘I told you so’ are losing their attractiveness.

In fact they are turning into predictably boring. Or boringly predictable?

Either way, not something to use as a springboard to launch a fresh set of New Year’s resolutions. The new ones, BTW I’m going to keep quiet about to save myself from publicly committing to something that will haunt me throughout the year.

On the other hand, there ARE certain advantages in involving the world as one’s own conscience, a Jiminy Cricket to a reluctant Pinocchio and – “Always Let Your Conscience Be Your Guide!”.

I’ve been observing a project recently, from a reasonable distance, where the bar was set very high and announced to the World with a tremendous drum roll!

Something on the lines of: doing a huge BIM project with very thin BIM resources in a highly challenging environment to such standard that the

“project’s end results will be the benchmark to which all building owners, project managers and contractors in the region strive to achieve with their projects.”

Now, I call this having balls!

Petty it is not going to work, but that is just going to be another mark on my “I told you so” wall of shame and that gives me pleasure no more.

The irritant has been slowly creeping up the chain...

2011-12-21T07:58:00.000-08:00

I will not be offended if you tell me, that the title made you imagine me inching up a (chain) rainthingy... I CAN be irritating.

But as any good oyster-farmer will argue, sometimes what you need most is an irritant to get things going.

In more PC worlds, they may refer to the agent as a ‘catalyst’, I prefer the former.

This picture of a ‘climbing annoyance’ forms in my head as I watch another rendition of the graph of the ‘Chasm between early adopters and laggards’ getting flashed up on 3 simultaneous screens within the room.

Yes, I’m still reflecting on the conference from last week.

Numerous well regarded speakers presented on BIM from various angles and as almost always on such events this parabolic-graph came out at least once.

While I am fond of the shape (reminds me of the Elephant in the Snake’s tummy – re Little Prince) I am not convinced of its usefulness to understanding where BIM is.

I’d amend it, add another stage to the graph, or create another graph altogether showing the build up of frustration as the indicator of the level of adoption likely to be happening in the future.

I’d also explore how nuisance, aggravation, pain, identified within project delivery systems changes through the hierarchies and its impact on successful BIM adoption experienced within the company.

Universal format for BIM libraries?

2011-12-20T07:27:00.000-08:00

BIM is a ‘group sport’ – not particularly well suited for the ‘lone-rangers’ roaming in it, wanting to make a difference.

Both success and failure depend on the quantity and quality of data available for BIMmers to play with, an environment hard to achieve for any one-entity on their own, regardless of size.

Even a super-powerful, super-rich and super-committed operation will struggle building up a database that will let them play meaningful ‘super games’.

Consequently, almost everyone within the field will quickly recognise the need to share the tasks out across the board and to charge building material manufacturer- and supplier companies with some.

I have dedicated numerous posts to this subject.

I believe that this part of AEC has a huge role in content creation.

The question is in the format of libraries offered:

Should manufacturers and suppliers of AEC products be taking more interest in creating IFC-formatted representations of their products?

What would then a pervasive use of IFC-objects do to the overall development of BIM?

Would it encourage fit-for-all, low intelligence development with large volumes but not great substance?

Or, would it move current BIM ‘modellers’ away from own content-creation skills and focus their efforts onto better manipulating IFC formatted objects instead?

Hard to know.

Will widespread practice of reheating of pre-frozen meals replace the need for full blown kitchens in the future?

“I expected a younger audience”

2011-12-19T09:57:00.000-08:00

David Wilcox said, while waving a conference brochure from 1985 to the participants of the latest BIM event I went to.

If he anticipated a hip audience in their twenty-somethings, that were only just alive when the early BIM he was referring to came to the market, he would have been disappointed.

The roomful of addressees in their solemn and predominantly black, Sunday-bests were mostly David’s contemporaries.

Equally ‘cool’ was the reception when numerous other speakers’ kept alluding to the dangers our industry was facing, because at present we ignored the needs of those we may hope to employ in the future.

I have plenty times attempted to persuade my peers in the industry to pay more attention to how their children communicated these days to be able to read from the faces of those present that they were unconvinced.

I could just about quote their thoughts ‘verbatim’, list the various shades of “no way we are going to be driven by today’s teenagers’ actions” and “I had to earn my stripes through hard work, they will need to, too”...statements solidified into cynical-smirks they had not even attempted to hide.

From all of the misguided excuses people use for dodging BIM, these kinds amuse me most.

Where do these people live?

Don’t they ever come across teenagers?

Eldest daughter is turning 21 today. Happy BD Barbara!

“We looked around in the market and found nothing that would fit...”

2011-12-18T07:11:00.000-08:00

...was the reoccurring theme for many of the speakers at the conference I went to a couple of days ago....followed by an inevitable...”so we built the toolset from scratch”.

It made sense. And did not.

I wrote previously how I could not see ‘backyard’ or even professional-but-small-scale program writing feasible anymore and that the baseline expectation of a ‘standard’ user of any digital tool is so high that customisation of mainstream, off-the shelf products should be considered first.

Can’t say that the glimpses into a number of these in-house tools did much to unsettle me in my conviction.

Some quite clever-looking, potentially very useful but the way to go?

Doubt it.

If we have only shonky tools at our disposal, we are partially to be blamed for the sorry affair.

We collectively, as an industry assisted or failed to assist various software developers reach their potential and/or meet our needs.

Truly useful instruments, systems and approaches do not tend to develop in isolation from practice, they rarely pop-out fully formed, but are often results of endless tinkering.

Even with very limited programming knowledge, I find it very hard to accept that it is worthwhile investing in a self-sufficient, noncore-business, technical arm for any AEC based company, as opposed to putting the boot (so to speak) into the existing tool-makers and get them to perform better.

Pay attention to the ones missing!

2011-12-17T04:02:00.000-08:00

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!

The telltale PowerPoint

2011-12-16T04:33:00.000-08:00

Went to another BIM conference this week.

Should not call it ‘another’ since it was a ‘first’ of its kind, firmly indicating this intent in the title:

First Annual Conference in the Middle East: BUILDING INFORMATION MODEDLING (BIM).

Not a bad two days after all, set-for and aimed at the middle-to-bottom level of the ‘BIM-informed’ folks of the AEC, it still provided plenty of breadcrumbs for me to follow through in the next couple of days to fill my daily bloggy quota.

The obvious target for the old, ‘give-a-dog-a-bone,’ in me would be the ‘role and influence of technology’ in the event itself, how it helped and hindered its success considering again the theme and central point of the summit.

While plenty on offer to chew over that particular subject, I’ll park it for a while and go for an ever more obvious ‘sitting duck’:

The good ol’ Power Point.

Consider these questions:

Why do people with 20-30-40+ years of distinguished carrier repeatedly fall into the traps this simple-yet-ingenious tool sets for them?

Why do they fill up tens of slides with densely written text and read it up to the audiences time after time, speaker after speaker?

Why do they ignore the facility to help them stay on course and finish on time using self timing of slides?

Why don’t they rehearse beforehand?

Why?

Kitchen planner: clumsy but honest

2011-12-15T05:58:00.000-08:00

Having worked in BIM for many-years and been regularly subjected to hot-air type of marketing by software vendors, I really appreciate when I come across an honest operator that is prepared to say things the way they really are.

I was playing with the ALNO kitchen planner when I got the little message that so pleasantly surprised:

You have maximised the application window (yes, indeed, I had done just that);

If the application crashes, (did not for me but obviously does for some) please restart the programm (sic) without maximising the application window.

Followed with the OK button. (no question mark by it, should consider adding one, maybe even two optional responses too, like: Fine then! and No way!)

A long-lost acquaintance has found me recently on Linkedin.

An architect and someone I studied with, he did not enquire about my work and/or life not even about my family’s health or happiness;

His first message related to my Linkedin byline: Model based BIM practitioner

‘Are there other ‘based’ BIMs as well? That people can practice in/on, around?’ he asked.

Of course there are, I responded, we, the ones really concerned with the model are the minority in the field.

The rest are career BIM-ists, one needs to be cautious taking advice from them.

The smoother their talk, the hotter the air in their balloon is.

My BIMblog and the books I’m reading

2011-12-14T06:40:00.000-08:00

While rereading Jonathan Franzen’s book ‘Freedom’ over the last couple of weeks, the recognition of my own traits’ in his heroine’s mock self-depreciation made me feel a bit uncomfortable.

I could see myself in this blog using an amateur version of Patty Berglund’s sense of humour minus JF’s literary brilliance, of course, let’s keep it suitable modest.

Almost a year of winging and wining in ‘DebunkTheBIM’, no wonder my anonymous fan found it so difficult to follow the posts. (not that it stopped him/her, just made the experience very painful, I presume from the comments still landing occasionally).

I sympathise. Or empathise? Whatever.

Look at it from my angle: Once I committed to find the ‘holy grail’ of BIM, I was sort of stuck.

At the end of the day, how many different ways could I say, that:

The methods of task-sharing used on AEC projects are preventing the successful implementation of BIM...

...while widespread implementation of BIM is essential for the ‘creation of buildings’ to become better, more economical and sustainable.

And stay profitable.

Or become profitable again, provided no property bubble comes to save our skins and profits in a non-BIM, easy to digest way....

I’m into Dawn French’s novel now, ‘A Tiny Bit Marvellous’;

Another varyingly mild but sometimes heavily-sarcastic, self-depreciating heroine to entertain me.

Must be the fashion these days.

Ask me what my job is...

2011-12-13T06:08:00.000-08:00

... and I’ll tell you that I am re-using the bits of a broken-down car to make a working aeroplane.

Don’t take this as me wanting to insult anyone involved, as the bits that will not make the car go, can on their own be of pretty high quality. They can and they are.

That is what keeps me going.

On some days. On those days I tend to brush the rust off the almost obsolete parts, polish them to their original brightness and marvel at the potential they express.

One by one first, then put together in various clusters.

A windscreen wiper, a revived gear box, an exhaust pipe given a new life.

On some other days I eyeball my tasks and while aware of the futility of my action I pile the tarnished elements into groups, attempting to make some sense of the material I’m left to work with.

When our middle daughter was little she used to say “doing, doing” a lot, her answer to any question with regards to what she was up to.

In honour of the perpetually busy two year old, the concept of the ‘doing, doing’ mentality stuck with me forever.

By now it gained a less than cute undertone, for it implies to me that people are ‘working hard’ and getting nowhere.

Like a pile of car-parts.

How we pay for software

2011-12-12T06:44:00.000-08:00

Friends complain about Facebook and the way it treats their personal data. They feel violated, robbed and cheated.

Fair enough! They also use their Facebook pages to let the world know just how appalled they are with this practice.

Good! Free speech, democracy in action! The consumers fight back....

Hmmmm.... Is this so clear cut, really?

Facebook is a medium, a platform that one voluntarily joins (still) even if it is a bit harder to leave.

It offers hundreds of services to millions of people at no direct cost to users.

Does ‘a free lunch’ exist after all?

Not really. The time has come that we face up to the fact that everything we get, we pay for one way or other. Or we should.

And when we think we are not, we still are.

For years the story around the AEC had been that Autodesk ‘willingly’ tolerated piracy of its software, furthermore thanks to this practice AutoCAD became the ‘standard’ toolset of the industry.

Even if Autodesk had done OK despite (or because of) millions of crack AutoCAD packages in action, the industry suffered long term from this, I’m certain.

I’ve been a stickler about having properly licensed and up-to-date software in my office most of my career, to an extent that was often a huge burden for my little enterprise to stay afloat.

‘Now, that IS clever!’

2011-12-11T06:38:00.000-08:00

I thought, examining the little office-kitchen object.

I found it in Archicad’s Object Depository while searching for something else.

Created by Tibor Szolnoki and uploaded in 2006 (5 years ago!) it is a very smart example of good object-making.

Strangely enough it was not the high-level of parametric-versatility nor the clean interface that delighted me most, but the automatic/simultaneously updating ‘projection dump’ it also offered.

The object was obviously designed to be used within Archicad and supposedly by professional kitchen designers, yet the ‘output stamp’ was so highly pre-created that anyone with access to the software could make use of it.

Must have been a flop – I found no recent updates.

As a significantly different take on the same task-set, ‘kitchen (and other room) planners’ have been the first examples of attempts to create technically clever yet easy to use branded applications aimed at both professional and amateur designers.

I wrote about IKEA’s example before, following the ‘bread crumbs’ of the office-kitchen object on the www took me to another: ALNO’s, built on a similar concept.

Numerous other companies have gone down this track recently, ditching the idea of writing objects (families) for ‘mainstream’ BIM packages, opting for stand-alone applications.

While I supported their pro-activity in the past in principle, the said approach now feels like a dead end road.

Bring back the clever objects!

For the argument’s sake: let’s assume I was a smart woman.

2011-12-10T06:18:00.000-08:00

Not that convinced of the above myself, I need to state it as a given, otherwise the theory I’m about to outline is not-worth considering:

BIM is useless without raising the level of integrity of the (construction) project-information.
Integrity of project-information cannot be raised without ‘robust and timely’ project data verification in place.
Robust verification cannot happen, or definitely not in an efficient/timely manner without the project’s middle-management getting their hands dirty and manipulating the data in a direct way.

Useless = costing extra w/o bringing in much value-for-money
Integrity of the project information = transparency; allows for the project management to have a finger on the pulse; know scope, timing, responsibilities, finances anytime, anywhere;
Verification = nominated parties are held responsible for the status of the data, anytime, anywhere.
Hands dirty = all decision-makers are able to assess, manipulate, filter and extract data without help; Anytime, anywhere.

The need to do an insanity check on someone putting this theory forward has two sides to it:
On one side, it is all very logical and many would argue to be doing exactly this.
On the other side, it is an impossible idea to deliver on.
I just have to think of a selection of the ‘middle-managers’ (construction, architecture, engineering) whom I had the pleasure to interact with over the last decade and I give up.

Remember Archie?

2011-12-09T00:02:00.000-08:00

In my spare time I make lists of characteristics the ideal Archie will one day have.

(the core ones I identified in my post from the 1^st of October, others are added and deleted daily, depending on my moods and work related experiences).

But I no longer think of calling the little, virtual construction man Archie.

A new idea has popped up recently: How about Rivet?

Ok, it is not original. I have seen the word in numerous BIM related job searches

(I do those just to keep up with where the market is), but it is such an appropriate name!

This would definitely put the spanner in the wheels within the AEC!

A construction modelling programme called “Rivet!”.

You’d be hard pressed to know who is mocking whom, and get all the free publicity from people mis-pronouncing the name of the toolset forced onto them by their CAD department!

Fantastic!

Mischievous thoughts aside, I still hope that someone soon will take on the task of creating a real construction modeller.

It is such a sad state of affairs to work in a digitally orphaned industry where hardly anyone bothers to put some programming effort into.

Where hand-me-downs from consultants get rebranded and passed on as customised.

Where the software makers just don’t seem to be having any idea on what we, the users need.

To BIM train or not to...

2011-12-08T06:01:00.000-08:00

I still remember clearly how I first learned AutoCAD. From a book, step by step, in DOS.

I give the authors the credit for they started me straight on 3D, no mucking around with Flatcad in the early 90s.

The chair I created within the first chapter was a bit like the picture accompanying this post.

Times have changed, no longer have I got the will or patience to follow a step-by-step guide to learn a software from scratch.

‘Can I figure it out?’ Is the minimum threshold for establishing the usability of a package for me these days. This attitude may come across as arrogant, but it is still a far cry from what new, much-younger-than-me users will be showing towards various teaching methods offered to them in the years to come.

Actually, I’m faced with a bit of this mind-set even these days, the young don’t care much for training, while the old expect everything to be broken down into easily digestible portions and spoon fed.

Reality is somewhere in between – to get into BIM one needs some basic training, then practice and support.

Lots of practice and lots of support.

How much exactly of each depends on where you’ve come from, how much you’re prejudiced, your views pre-coloured.

Sometimes I give this advice:

“You don’t need training, you need a complete brain-defrag!”

OM/FM is the new spring, not the old summer in the BIM-model’s life

2011-12-07T08:22:00.000-08:00

Despite of the everyday chaos of AEC projects, there is something profoundly beautiful about the way information matures through the delivery process, and I like to describe it as ‘mimicking natural changes within-seasons’.

A BIM approach used well allows for the model to adapt to these changes.

It functions like a tree, the trunk and branches form the solid base of information to be referenced to. Grids, levels, origins.

Just like a tree that grows its flowers and leaves in the order of priorities, a good BIM model will develop and refine its elements in order of importance too. Taking into account long-lead items, various weather constrains, site limitations.

Just like the tree, it will bear its fruit in summer.

The parallel gets a bit tricky when the project is completed and the building starts its operational phase.

Promoters of BIM like to brand this stage as the one where the well developed model is ‘FM-ready’.

I like to ask for time-out.

This is not the time the fruit is borne. We are passed summer.

The OM/FM model needs serious clean up, redefining, often rebuilding from scratch.

Those that have battled through sunshine/wind/rain to get their little buds turn into rotten fruit, yellow leaves and bare branches may rightly feel disheartened.

But this is not the end.

It is the beginning of a new cycle.

“Insurance is all about risk management”

2011-12-06T06:09:00.001-08:00

...Says Walid Shidani in his interview given to Rupert Wright, this week.

Mr Wright’s weekly column in the National is one of three reasons that make our little investment into the paper’s annual subscription worthwhile. The other two are the crossword and the designer sunglasses that I would have never bought had it not been for the ‘free’ subsidy that came with the subscription.

But, back to insurance...

Earlier in my BIM promoting phase I naively believed that the insurance industry, specially the part related to construction would welcome the development of BIM based tools and services with open arms.

Soon enough I had to face the fact – not only could most of the insurance agents I talked to hardly spell the three-letter-acronym, with no exception, they all advised me to review my own PI insurance cover, if I was to dabble in such fringe activities.

Nowadays many agents believe that BIM is a liability to practitioners and I have not come across one that would recommend developers and/or public owners mandate BIM processes on their projects in order to reduce or better manage risk.

“Insurance is all about actuarial forecasting...” Mr. Shidani reveals in the above mentioned interview.

For me, the high level of transparency BIM can bring to construction projects makes it an ideal risk-management and forecasting tool.

Should be promoted as such.

There is some advantage to working in a stale industry...

2011-12-05T06:55:00.001-08:00

The risk of me waking up one morning to the news that all the problems that have been bugging me for some time, have been solved by someone else over-night, is extremely low.

No sleepless nights are endured because some revolutionary system may be potentially bubbling in a lab with the intent to upset my steady, apple cart of ‘changing the world, one-person-at-the-time’.

Still, I do regret the unlikeliness of a morning dawning to the discovery of a super-duper-clever model-verification toolset having popped onto the market and spreading over the AEC like a storm.

On a more modest scale, I could get pleasantly surprised by the main ‘claiming to be BIM’ vendors coming up with some smart ways of codifying information within their models according to their status. A bit like the various methods now distinguish “renovation” and “new build”, the source of the information and consequently its status could also be tracked and automatically filtered.

I know we could/should and probably will achieve the same results through custom coding, adding tags or parameters to tools/objects and scheduling them.

It is just a bit strange to have these vendors/service providers descend onto the construction industry like they were ‘the heroes everyone’s been waiting for’, without applying an effort to understand how information matures through the construction process, and what their model could do to help?!

“Shifting planes always implicitize a surface of revolution”

2011-12-04T06:38:00.001-08:00

...Is a slightly weird title of an article*.

I’ve borrowed it because of relevance to my topic, today. First, I really liked the way it connects ‘shifting planes’ with the idea of a revolution brewing under the surface. Then, I got intrigued by the word ‘implicitize’, fully convinced such word did not exist (and the MS spell-checker was with me on this one), so I looked it up and it DOES exist...so one thing led to another and...

Actually, the original question I was going to put up was:

Why do planes (floors) shift away from their original locations when exported out of Revit as IFC 2x3 files and imported into 3 different applications?

I wrote on ‘twisting columns’ recently and received some assistance in principle.

These shifting planes are even more interesting then the twisting columns, for two reasons:

ONE: floors are supposed to be ‘system families’ in Revit, I’d expect them to behave more predictably then hosted ones (what I believe columns were);

TWO: the same issue occurred on three very different projects, created by three very different companies over a six month time span.

... but then, do not worry too much. It all got fixed up.

The helpful chap at the tech-support located the patch I needed and following the download/installation, the planes no longer shift from their places.

Sleep easy.

* Shifting planes always implicitize a surface of revolution

Author: Eng-Wee Chionh School of Computing, National University of Singapore, Singapore 117590

Published in:

· Journal

Computer Aided Geometric Design archive

Volume 26 Issue 4, May, 2009

Elsevier Science Publishers B. V. Amsterdam, The Netherlands, The Netherlands

BIM and corruption

2011-12-03T05:58:00.000-08:00

My adopted country again made it to the top of two, ‘best of something in the world” lists published this week.

Auckland and Wellington came in high as the best cities to live in, and New Zealand is in first position as the least corrupt country in the world. Denmark and Finland are tied second.

I’ve never been to Finland or any of the other Nordic countries. I hope I’ll get there someday, am very fond of their architects and architecture.

Finnish has been associated with my mother tongue Hungarian and while that theory has been discredited lately, I enjoy interacting with fellow professionals from Scandinavia.

At the buildingSMART gathering last week, the esteemed director from Finland expressed his faith in public building-owners as the main catalyst to bringing BIM into mainstream.

If one was a fan of simple cause-effect theories, one could follow this line of thought:

Non-corrupt countries have public building owners of high integrity that ask for their buildings to be delivered fully model-based.

Thus, NZ as number one non-corrupt country in the World will have for public owners the MOST BIM friendly clients on the planet.

So, if you want success in BIM, go to NZ!

Not me though....Fifteen or so years of running businesses there taught me to sometime value the obvious and clean-cut one, over the perceived ‘non’ corruption.

Picture: Thinkstock

BuildingSMART going backwards? (Do not look for round trip-tickets here any more!)

2011-12-02T05:24:00.000-08:00

Went to a buildingSMART gathering last week, driven by curiosity about the new version of IFC.

The technical director of the local chapter was enlightening us on the developments.

And enlightened us he did, presenting a complete ‘u-turn’ to the approach they promoted up to very recently.

It was refreshing to hear someone in-the-know publically backing away from the utopistic idea of a central database and a single project model.

Disappointing nevertheless as I personally believe in the integrated database.

Phases, stages, uses, disciplines and functions can and should be all pointing to ONE place.

There are and will be limits on size, speed, access but these should not be the drivers, rather the challenges that need to be worked through.

Just as I said previously, at some point of my life there may be numerous medical specialists having an interest in my ‘left ear’ it is still only ‘one’ ear and should stay with me.

As a counter argument, you can say, it is the ‘information’ about the ear we are concerned with, it can sit in hundreds of different places, fragmented or coordinated, will not hurt the ear.

Or will it?

Actually, the case of my left ear is not that appropriate for another reason: it already “exists” (thank Goodness) as opposed to being planned for as most buildings in this context are.

Biased and proud of it

2011-12-01T07:08:00.000-08:00

92% into fulfilling my pledge to produce a BIM-blog-post-a-day for a year, the “results” are interesting:

The post that received by far* the most hits has been the one where I declared my deep devotion to the ‘Archicad Marquee’.

One can argue, that I promoted the blog heavily on Archicad based forums, I claim to have been even handed on self-promotion from the very start of blogging, if the scales tipped to favour one over the other, that was not of my making (or intentional, anyway).

Somehow I stumbled on something quite critical. Something that first occurred to me more than a dozen years ago when I still drove AutoCAD as a pro too: Archicad was made for the thinkers and doers, the hands-on solution makers.

I use some other smart packages daily, DE, Tekla and even Revit (yes!) ‘blow my socks off’ regularly with unexpected (or previously unknown to me) abilities.

I may be prejudiced but I do usually give credit where it is due.

When I’m charged with making decisions about a project I consider all relevant factors, and based on the particular circumstances Archicad may not get shortlisted at all.

Still, when I put on the hat of the ‘virtual design manager/construction coordinator’, I go for Archicad.

Multi directional section lines and/or clipping-planes just won’t do, if you’ve ever known the Marquee.

* ratio of post ‘popularity’: about 3 to 1 for the Marquee compared to the second in place

You need to be smarter to document buildings in 2D than in 3D.

2011-11-30T07:08:00.000-08:00

Properly documenting that is, rather than ‘just drawing’.

Using orthogonal projection-rules faithfully and making sure everything is fully resolved and defined.

Coordinated, sorted, kept up to date, throughout the project’s lifetime, regardless of the interfering circumstances.

In fact it is so difficult that almost no-one does it any more.

Furthermore, this has been going on for so long and all over the world that the skill-set required for 2D based (proper) documentation has almost totally died out.

The industry has compensated for the loss by evolving the ‘pit-bull engineer’.

A creature weak on the technical side, strong on persuasion, will ‘manage’ him/herself out of any tricky situation both in the design office and on the construction site.

Helped by a string of construction bubbles dominating the AEC environments over the last 2 decades, the industry took on the characteristics of a gambling room.

The skills needed to consistently win were not in line with what 2D based documenting would have asked from its loyal practitioners.

The growth of tools that collectively became to be known as ‘BIM methodologies’ for a while looked like the answer for the ones questioning the sustainability of pit-bull managed project-practices.

Where they got it wrong was missing out on the fact, that while it may be easier to document in digital 3D, ‘project management based on bullying’ is still cheaper.

Has the time come to look for the loose change?

2011-11-29T06:33:00.000-08:00

We have a little, fake treasure-chest sitting on our kitchen bench where we put our coins in.

I occasionally empty my wallet into it; husband clears out pockets there when doing the laundry.

When the month drags out a bit too long for our liking and all the cards have run dry, we dip into the box and use up the coins.

Despite of some serious cycles of ‘booms and busts’ I’ve had the privilege to observe within my working time of over 2 decades and hundreds of companies forming and failing on mass through these, AEC as an industry never was forced to go on a genuine search for ‘the hidden coins’.

In good times, everyone had a piece of the pie even if not in proportion with their abilities/performance.

In bad times small companies disappeared, larger merged into bigger ones and the reduced pie got shared to those closest to it. Everyone felt the pinch and was supposedly tightening the belt, still at the industry level, no real attempts have been made to improve efficiency.

The fortunes of participants of AEC-projects were driven by a combination of factors not easily identifiable, nor separately analysed, murkiness was (and by-and-large still is) the name of the game.

A couple of coins here-or-there could make no difference to most.

Not even when combined into a coin-tower.

I am a big fan of clever stop-motion movies; see one relevant to the topic:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YsOaTEouwpA&feature=relmfu

Add a couple of new letters to your name (PBIM)

2011-11-28T09:25:00.000-08:00

The easiest way to lose friends that work within my (AEC) industry is to tell them to become more ‘hands-on’.

Apart from a few that are architects and document their own buildings*, all my other industry-based mates fall into ‘that’ category.

A generation of engineering/design and construction managers that like to take their information nicely packaged-up and if possible, served on a silver plate.

This ailment seems to be non-discriminatory to nationality, age or gender. As if all universities around the world simultaneously set out to train construction and design managers that once they pass the intern-job-level and are put in control of ‘a’ human resource go into a totally ‘intellectual mode’. They will instruct, order, redpen and mark up, but ‘god-forbid’ to ask them to generate, manipulate, order or output the information.

Actually, the fact that BIM is not yet a ‘press the button, fix it all’ solution nor can work unaided, on its own should be good news to my friends...giving them the opportunity to ‘shape up’ as opposed to ‘ship out’.

I’ve been suggesting establishing the role of a ParaBIM-mer, someone that is highly skilled in manipulating, navigating, investigating the model but not necessarily a model originator.

Doesn’t even have to be a stand-alone position but a qualification that will enhance one’s ability to work as a manager in a model-driven project-environment.

* and some of them are staunch graphic-artists with their own take-on of the famous ‘section line’

Breaking down the doors to construction modelling...

2011-11-27T09:20:00.000-08:00

I stated before, how I believed there were no decent construction modelling software–applications available for the AEC market.

I still stand by this claim and to support it, let me turn to the ‘humble’ door.

When I look at the two modelling programs that claim to be ‘out-of box ready’ for construction and I’m familiar with, what they ‘do’ with doors is not what I’d call a construction focused approach.

Someone early in the development of these tools decided that doors (and windows) should be ‘hosted’ elements, a type of digital parasites, not able to stand on their own.

Fair enough, you might say if you are a designer, this makes sense. Not only will the practice prevent modellers plonking doors down randomly where no walls are there to support them, it is mostly the host’s duty to set the way the joinery item should behave, the way the cladding must wrap around and into it.

For a true BIM-application to function properly, both the door and its host need to be able to stand on their own. A block wall is built well before the doors are hung; the openings are still needed to be provided for.

There are numerous ways construction-modellers can get around these shortcomings, they can and they do.

A little interest and help from the developers would do too.

The fancy role of the terminator...

2011-11-26T07:21:00.000-08:00

...is the one I’ll establish one day when I have it my way. I’ll be on a main construction contractor’s team and we’ll be still producing drawings. I guess, that condition indicates I wouldn’t quite have it all my way, but let’s assume I’d be happy with the set-up.

The job of the terminator will be to constantly scan the central model and all its associated drawings and remove redundant data. S/he will be identifying dimensions and notes related to elements that have been built, verified and as such become ‘existing’ within the process. This data will be then made invisible for the new issues of the drawings, and the elements will become easily identifiable. (by colour, labels)

S/he would include a register of data removed too, a bit like we do in revision clouding, just the other-way-around.

You may say, there is nothing revolutionary to this concept, the traditional process of documenting buildings via IFC and shop drawings does exactly this.

Well, does it? In practice?

Do you know of companies that have people charged with the task of ruthlessly going through data and moving them onto invisible layers for progressive issues of IFC drawings? Oversee the creation of shop drawings to prevent them carry unnecessary, “existing” information?

Most companies I know still believe the busier-looking the drawing the better the results will be!

I’ve been aggressively campaigning against BIM outsourcing-companies lately...

2011-11-25T05:11:00.000-08:00

Or that’s what people at my work perceive me doing.

In fact, I’ve got nothing against sound providers offering BIM related services.

Not just that some of my best friends are working the described field as I write this post, I’ve spent many years being one of them.

So, accuse me of anti BIM-outsourcing and I’ll take offence.

Or will not, instead I might just happily go along as being labelled a ‘hypocrite’, but branding me as such, apart from it being a lively topic for the occasion, will not help BIM the slightest.

I see company after company rolling up and rolling out BIM related services while missing out on the fact that their targets (for outsourcing, like the one I’m in now) are becoming more knowledgeable, god ‘forbid ‘BIM-sophisticated’ then what they used to be and our demands are rising.

Most of these service providers offer us modelling, the part of the ‘machinery’ that is the easiest to re-create within our own environments.

Furthermore, there is very little incentive in us in sourcing something that will put our own-people out of work in times where projects are in short supply.

If these companies want to be taken seriously, they need to offer us something that we either do not have (but want) or is cheaper/easier to get from them then us developing it.

It DOES matter what modeller you use!!!

2011-11-24T07:19:00.000-08:00

I may have said otherwise previously, so be it.

I’m putting the record straight: I’ve had it up to my ears with the PC BIM talk!

I should add, that I’m tired of the ‘my one is bigger, better, faster, lighter, cooler, whateverer than yours is’ discussions too. So this message may be a bit confusing.

I can also say it now, that I will not take one more car/driving analogy in relation to software packages, unless it is original and comes from me.

I do not ‘just’ want to get from A to B. I want to enjoy my drive, take pleasure in it.

I like my tools to be cool and clever, fast and discrete, individual yet robust.

I consider myself to be a discerning customer, highly demanding, yet fiercely loyal.

I have been ‘tossed around’ a bit over the years so I also learned to ‘make do’.

But, there is a difference between opting for something inferior due to budget constraints or other circumstances and swallowing a load or empty talk, how it is ‘not what you use’ but ‘how you use it’.

Sure and I WAS born yesterday.

I do feel a bit responsible for all of those – yet to jump into the AEC modelling modellers that are looking at their options as I write this.

Responsible and a bit sorry.

All for one and one for all!

2011-11-23T06:18:00.000-08:00

Not referring to Dumas’ three Musketeers, but to a practice my modelling contemporaries seem to be very fond of.

It is to do with outputs: even when comprehensive models are created from masses of drawings (say, at construction stage) – and all info sits in one database, some urge exists in the model-outputters to squeeze as-much-info as possible on single to-be-printed drawings.

So, shop drawings coming out at the ‘other’ end of the model become just as hard to read and congested with information as their counterparts going in.

Add to that the silly-practice of the ‘reduced A1, i.e. A3’ size and we are almost back to square one.

Change management in action:

I am well on my way to kick my addiction to printed (hardcopy) drawings.

Never mind the little ‘green house’ plonked by senders at the end of emails with the nagging note to resist printing the host-message in order to save paper and help the environment.

My eyes did it for me on the end. My failing eyesight and the tiny desk I’m working at nowadays, squeezed in like in a ticket-booth have forced me to use digital-drawings more.

2 laptops fit side by side - one slightly overhangs the edge. I could place an A3 set in front of them, but then the coffee-cup would need to go.

The coffee-cup is staying.

The writing is on the road...

2011-11-22T09:12:00.000-08:00

My husband believes, I write sentences that are far too long and use punctuation the Hungarian way, not well for clarifying meaning.

Thankfully no longer the sensitive type I accept his criticism gracefully, promising to try harder, while I secretly collect samples of English road-signs where a comma would make a hell-of a difference;

If commas were used on road-signs.

Two great examples from my collection are “slow children playing” and “reduce speed bumps”.

Writing on the road to instruct or warn is another interesting form of communicating with the users of the infrastructural-piece in question.

While living and driving in NZ, I was often amused when multi-worded instructions (like: slow down school) were written out in such sequence that the driver was supposed to read them from the bottom-up while for me a much more obvious way would have been the ‘normal’ way.

“Way give stop” stuck with me forever. Maybe I was doing my ‘big-picture’ thing and not paying attention to detail, at least not in the order they’d predicted I would.

(or envisaged that I should)

My interest in ‘verbose traffic-signs’ has also been related to my work, the way words have been added sometimes haphazardly I believe has lessened their use, similarly to the way technical documentation in the AEC has been moving away from graphics over the last 2 decades.

For years we had a kitchen with no hot water.

2011-11-21T07:22:00.001-08:00

My mother and us-two-daughters carried the hot water from the bathroom to the kitchen over numerous rooms for dishwashing, many times a day for over 30 years, before my father got around to install a little instantaneous water heater above the sink.

My father was extremely good with his hands, built our house and assisted many.

He could fix almost everything, from cars to bikes to broken-earrings.

He was a busy-type too, often working a full shift at home after coming from work.

He just never did the dishes.

Had he had the pleasure to grab the large metal bowl from the pantry (1 door) get to the bathroom (3 doors), fit the bowl under a tight-tap, fill it up with boiling water and manoeuvre through the same 3 doors (open-and-shut, we only heat certain spaces) ...back to the kitchen even once...

We would have got the hot water in the kitchen in no time...

I thought of my dad when I saw the clever-little political sign, I attach here.

I also think of my dad as I look at the future of BIM.

Not going to happen, unless you get those in the middle to do what the ones at the bottom are doing now, then those from the middle will get things moving (tools, systems, processes etc)...

It is simple, like washing dishes.

“A stretched out policeman”...

2011-11-20T06:23:00.001-08:00

...is what a ‘speed bump’ was called in the place I grew up in, and no, this was not to mock the force-in-blue (google: lezeci policajac) – the term is still officially used by traffic planners, product suppliers, people on the street, maybe even the force.

I keep returning to traffic analogies as I try to work out some real-life BIM strategies. This could be due to me spending a significant time on the roads driving to and from work, but also because there are so many obvious similarities between issues that the traffic/road-planners have resolved reasonably well while we, making AEC projects a reality, seem to be continuously struggling with.

Here are the 5 areas of management where BIM could (should) be learning from traffic and road designers, operators and specialists:

POINT ONE:

Dealing with the clever users and the ones that think they’re are clever but are not. (the highly educated and the illiterate; the knowledgeable and the smart-alec; the clowns and the overcautious;)

POINT TWO:

Dealing with the regular users as well as the out-of-townies (the ones that speak the official language and the ones that do not)

POINT THREE:

Dealing with the quite young and the pretty old as well the technologically advanced and the low techs.

POINT FOUR:

Dealing with routines and emergencies.

POINT FIVE:

Keeping people more or less safe.

HABA* and the story of the muddy river...

2011-11-19T04:39:00.001-08:00

HABA = Half hearted BIM approach.

HABA is everywhere where BIM is present, however should not be confused with the real thing.

The ‘real thing’, if in existence continues to evade me.

‘Building creation’ as an industry is continuing to be sluggish and inefficient due to the flow of the information that it is based on acting like a big, muddy river.

Panning for gold in this medium is hard and tedious; throwing highly skilled planners, analysts, and problem solvers at it is not just useless and expensive but also counterproductive.

Still, this is what currently happens, armies of clever specialists try making sense of the muddy water as it passes their threshold.

BIM could be useful if it truly managed to clear up parts of the muddy river.

As practiced nowadays (under HABA) it continues to stay a muddy river, worse even, one that flows underground.

Only few and with specialist equipment can try to pan for gold – and the masses of ‘experts’ are forced to stand over the hyporheic zones waiting for cups of (still murky) water to be handed to them to work with.

There is a way to improve the water, but is not an easy one.

And I’m yet to find the company that is truly prepared to tackle the elephant sitting on the bank of their river;

* a slightly skewed acronym with another nested in it

(picture from flickr – Thomas Roland’s photostream)

Wash your hands! (or modelling purely for interpretation)

2011-11-18T04:45:00.000-08:00

There once lived a Hungarian doctor, Ignaz Semmelweis whose biggest invention was to tell fellow doctors to wash their hands before attending to women in labour.

Will not bore you with the full story, but for me it is an inspirational tale, even though the rightful recognition evaded the good doctor throughout his life.

Can’t claim to have come up with anything even remotely useful in my life, however I often think of the doctor and the anecdotes that surround his promotion of the ‘clean hands, save lives’ concept, when I talk about employing modelling of construction projects purely for interpretation.

Even seasoned BIM-mers shy away from the idea that BIM could grow exponentially if this question was taken seriously.

For the sake of simplicity, let’s only look at documents supplied as IFCs*. As previously discussed, the drawing-parts of these sets often number in the thousands (of sheets), not counting specifications.

Let’s also ignore people’s inability to read 2D drawings and transform the info into 3D within their heads**.

Instead, let’s just focus on the time that ONE person needs to assess all the documents once, chase all references through the ‘merry-go-arounds’ and ‘treasure-hunts’, compare various discipline’s information and confidently say, they ‘know’ the building.

How many people on an average construction site will need to do this?

You know your projects, do the maths!

* am referring to ‘issues for construction’ this time;

** anyone you ever ask within the industry will claim to be ‘over average’;

BIM is not ‘value added’...

2011-11-17T05:08:00.000-08:00

I drive a 1.6l, 2010 issue car (of a well-known brand) with a ‘manual’ key (i.e. no remote).

For a little bit of money, I could have had one with a remote key. Not because (I presume) it is that much more expensive to provide such a feature, but because (I suspect) the good people that sell cars have worked out that their clients/customers generally do not like to juggle bags-of-groceries, clean-or-dirty laundry, numerous laptops, screaming toddlers AND still try to fit a key in the socket, especially if the key can only operate one way (That, will teach them!). Snow, rain or dessert-heat all enhance the humiliation of such little experience, so it must have been a success to isolate the described attribute as a ‘value added’.

I think of this adjective (did you know it WAS an adjective?) even more often than just when I struggle with opening my car, every time someone tries to sell BIM as a ‘value added’ something. This occurs quite often.

The reason I am not comfortable with the label* is that I believe BIM, should be part of all ‘standard model’ AEC-projects, not something that our clients need to pay extra to get.

Doing it well may make them to choose us more often, but that is a different story all-together.

Will write about it one day.

(*apart from sounding so try-hard by being back-to-front ‘added value’)

Model validation through scheduling

2011-11-16T07:04:00.000-08:00

Even if you never get into providing quantities for QS purposes from your model, GET familiar with the scheduling capabilities of your modeller (as in software-application).

Automated scheduling is extremely useful for checking and validating the up-to-dateness, correctness and integrity of the model.

The idea is to use labels (metadata) within elements to reflect the stage they are at.

For example, let’s assume all the internal joinery (doors) are modelled first as ‘generic’.

Their labels will be identical with what the consultants had called them (D01 or DG1011 or ...).

As these doors get more defined (type, size, finishes, fire/acoustic ratings) – additional characters can be added to the labels. (i.e. an “F” that fire-rating has been checked and approved);

A quick listing of all doors will show up, if any of them have been missed in the updating process.

If this tip sounds totally like a ‘no-brainer’, i.e. something everyone knows, look around your office and assess what processes are used to do the same thing?

My guess is, printed/plotted drawings and schedules (of consultant info) and manual-checking through individual elements.

This approach suits construction supporting modelling particularly well, though I can see it applied at the design-end too, specially where multiple users work on the same model and/or when the decision makers aren’t necessary the ones that are doing the changes to the model.

Is the fight with the ‘dragon of building it’ more important than building it?

2011-11-15T06:45:00.000-08:00

I called it previously ‘a drive to grab a bargain’ but maybe a quest to earn a ‘badge of honour’ is more appropriate for the experience I was trying to define previously when I examined how people tended to feel about buildings and construction, and the sort of hardship they were prepared to take on in the name of it.

There definitely is something in the idea, that getting a building off the ground ‘ought to be’ hard, no matter how small or large, simple or complex the said object is. And the financial hardship is not the one I’m primarily thinking of here.

If we examine two groups of participants operating in AEC, owners (both private and public) and managers (all shapes, colours and size but mostly the ‘project managers’), we can observe the historically built-up expectation for these people to be tough, cunning and resilient.

Everywhere where people build there are zillions of anecdotes circling, telling stories on the ones that did not make it, starting from botched kitchen renovations to majorly overblown budgets on large public developments.

Yet, the ones that ‘survive’ such experiences aren’t put off them, so they stay away from building in the future, in fact – there is an almost palpable recognition of them having earned ‘their stripes in real battles’, that encourages them to go deeper in it.

A Mexican on a bike and the squashed car syndrome...

2011-11-14T07:30:00.001-08:00

A lunar eclipse is coming in early December and husband is looking forward to it.

Any such event gets his enthusiasm for illustrating planetary-arrangements going and I see him sketching a ‘Mexican on a bike’ to explain a particular phenomenon for the children in his class.

I model one too (just for fun, screenshot attached) while in parallel I think of another syndrome that has been troubling me lately: I call it the ‘squashed car approach’.

It describes a system of documenting a horizontal cut-through of a building in an orthogonal projection without separating logical-levels out.

Take a storey within a high-rise for example, Ground floor plus mezzanine with various other (minor) level-changes in between and show everything on one floor plan.

If you strictly follow ‘traditional’ 2D orthogonal projection rules and cut your space at 1m, showing what you see below and dotting what’s above, you’ll be getting close to the ‘squashed car image’.

Even under Flatcad’s regime the conditions existed for easy creation of ‘exploded’ floor plans, where more than one horizontal cut could be taken over a multi-floored – multi-height space.

Model based documenting is even better in handling this situation, not just by modelling the space digitally but also providing the tools to slice it up in such ways that the information users are not facing the mangled-up wreckage of a squashed-floor.

A pilot error...

2011-11-13T06:32:00.000-08:00

It’s been over 30 years since the deadly Erebus disaster killed 257 people of the Air NZ Flight TE901, yet the controversy is still ripe around what exactly happened on the 28^th November 1979, when the DC10 crashed into Mt Erebus on Ross Island, Antarctica.

It was in the context of this tragic story that I first heard the term: “pilot error”.

While the term still tends to be used in air-accidents, there’s been an effort to replace it with “human error”, presumably to deflect blame-attribution solely from the pilots and reflect on the fact that anybody in support-capacity may’ve contribute to the events.

In BIM, there is a similar (though thankfully much less deadly) term that is often used unqualified:

“User fault”.

So, while I’m grateful for expert comments provided in response to my question regarding the twisted columns (*) and practical advice coming from various software supporters to get me through the problem, I’m unprepared to blankly accept that this ‘little’ incident is solely of my own making.

IFC is widely promoted as an ‘international standard’ for coordination of AEC project information and as a system (including QA of how various packages export to it) should be much better controlled.

The threshold for ‘user error’ needs to be set much higher, consistency and integrity of data assured against user-mis-action.

I.e. more ‘idiot proof’.

* See post from the 7^thNovember

‘I’m just a builder, how’d I know?...’

2011-11-12T06:53:00.000-08:00

He says and in instant brings to my mind multiple ‘déjà vu’s’ from times passed long ago.

Over the 25 years of my career within the AEC more than one highly placed contractor-manager has started a sentence aimed at me with those – so modestly couched words...

So, I know the rest too:

‘...tell me why should I be looking seriously at this BIM of-yours when my job is to build buildings’...

I swallow, slow and deep, before I point out to the highly-esteemed, that his job is 90% about shuffling information around and probably 10% about the physically building. Consequently, he ought to take note of what I’m saying.

OK, the ratio is random, I plucked it from the air – but even if the opposite was true, and 10% of any contractors’ work was about handling the information related to the building they were to create, the high-level of risk those 10 percent were carrying should warrant the question being taken serious.

While these contractors rarely can influence the shape, format and quality of information coming through the door, there is no good excuse the situation to remain throughout the project-delivery.

A lot can be done to establish integration validation early, increase data integrity and minimise information fatigue.

If only the question from the title implied a genuine interest to understand what could be done....

Yesterday’s post was really flippant...

2011-11-11T07:04:00.000-08:00

Tells me my conscience... and makes a solemn commitment (again) to keep championing the cause of BIM.

Or at least do my daily blog with the attention it deserves until the clock strikes midnight at the end of this year...

People ask, ‘what then, what are you going to do once you’ve completed your quest?’ – will you stop or carry on, take it down, repackage and repurpose, a homemade-publication, a multi-lingual edition, a verbal-only retelling, an international tour???...

Few inquire about the likely-results of the pursuit, few expect anything meaningful, let-alone revolutionary from this amateurishly set-up mission...

Yet, they keep on following it, just in case...

Today, I give a break to those needing to read between my lines...

I dedicate this post to the syndrome of the “section-marker”.

It was amongst architectural business owners (themselves architects) that I first encountered a rigid devotion to the ‘things-that-should-not-matter’, first time more than 15 years ago.

I was running a super-powerful modelling engine and parametrically replicated the relationships between the orange-peel skins of the Sydney Opera House.

Not only could I show numerous options of building-systems interacting with each other (ribs, cladding, the acoustic ceilings) – all views were automatically generated as well.

I showed the outputs to a friend, an architect.

While I was explaining the concept, he interrupted me:

“I hate the shape of the section-marker-head!”

I’ve got the feeling that BIM is about to go on the backburner again...

2011-11-10T05:03:00.000-08:00

...As ‘things’ are getting tougher still in the AEC-world.

While not particularly looking forward to more uncertainties lurking around my job-status, project-prospects and generally the industry, taking the spotlight-off BIM for a while would suit me just fine.

Let the market do its ‘thing’ for a while and see where we would get.

I AM very-much in favour of letting BIM off the leash, and out on its own.

If it works, great – if not, then we know we’ve been barking up the wrong tree.

There surely are many others shearing the idea that there are only so many excuses we can swallow on the subject of BIM’s failure before it gets boring.

Yes, clients should be asking for it. No, they are not. Why?

Because they don’t know that they should be wanting it or just do not care (i.e. unconvinced of the benefits);

Consultants aren’t playing ball and don’t use open BIM. So, they can get away with it?

Contractors are slow on the uptake and only just working out what the BIM acronym is? Subcontractors are not even aware of the acronym’s existence just heard somewhere that AutoCAD was no longer the standard for shop drawings? Or is it?

This is your risk, or advantage, or whatever.

Deal with it! Or let be dealt by it, so we can all move on.

I once worked for an architect that tortured his clients.

2011-11-09T06:50:00.000-08:00

Not in the physical sense, of course, he used subtle methods, like pitting them against their own builders, changing his designs on the fly and in the last minutes of construction, specifying materials unnecessarily expensive and hard-to-maintain and by not turning up at pre-arranged meetings.

He charged them exuberant fees and his projects were always late, the delays measured in years, he mocked them publicly and kept an unlocked-backdoor to his office to sneak out when they turned up unexpectedly.

And they kept coming back to him.

These clients, or if not them personally, their family, friends, competitors, enemies.

He was the darling of the industry, come to think of it, he still is.

He taught me one of the most valuable work-related lessons in life:

‘The building is not important, people love getting a bargain’.

His clients, sitting at the well-off end of the range, valued their bargains a bit differently than, say little-kitchen-renovation-clients would, or school-client boards-of-trustees.

For them the bargain was the ‘national award’ the building was likely-to win, the invitation to the architectural institute’s dinner, being considered an ‘enlightened architectural client’, the envy of the neighbours, the prestige.

I since learned that this ‘pursuit for the bargain’ is absolutely universal, yet strategically so often ignored by key building-project participants.

If you think BIM has nothing to do with this, think again!

A day full of Colours... I had last Thursday...

2011-11-08T06:20:00.000-08:00

...though the power of colours is surprisingly lost on many when it comes to communication...

First: I’ve tried explaining the umpteenth time to my, otherwise sharp-and-enthusiastic teammate, that presenting everything grey in a construction-model is not that good a practice.

He was nodding weakly while I rattled examples, where depicting beams in orange, columns in blue and hollow-core-panels in olive-green was totally justified, but I knew he was not convinced.

His eyes drifted uncontrollable through the window, out to the site, where an army of little, glow-yellow-vested men was fashioning our building out-of grey beams, grey columns, grey slabs reinforced with grey bars...

Then, I went home to our girls’ interim school-progress reports to inspect.

Presented as tables showing subjects, criteria and grades on the scale of 1-3 (translated into letters) this communication pleasantly surprised me by its simplicity.

(Especially when I contrast it with the barrage of digital-information the school unleashes on us daily, since they’ve discovered the internet.)

Yet, the colours were missing. Printed on a white sheet, the stamp on the bottom is green, the signature blue, the writing, the table are black.

Wouldn’t it be beneficial to have the three grades represented by colours? I’d think so.

Use the well-tested colours of the traffic-lights for impact.

Colour printing expensive? Maybe, but is it worth not-to use it here? Value vs. Risk?

I have a twisted little story.....that I can’t resist to share.

2011-11-07T05:34:00.000-08:00

Imagine this: A building yet-to-be built. (can’t really give you pictures due to confidentiality but this should not take away from the story as the numbers talk here better than most pictures would);

Commercial high-rise, numerous basements, podium, a split tower with a dozen or-so floors.

My interest is still at the bottom basement level.

There are 114 columns to this floor.

There are 47 grids to provide the spatial framework to the structuring of these columns.

NONE (0, zero) of these columns are based on the intersection of two gridlines. A few are ‘close’ (as in sitting on a grid or in reasonable proximity to one, many are floating totally ‘loose’.)

Interested in more statistics? The 114 columns are made up of 31 (thirty-one) individual types, the maximum occurrence any of the types is afforded is 15, there are 12 types with only one representative for each.

Standardisation? What standardisation?

The ‘twist’ of the story is not in these numbers, though I find them quite entertaining. (and a lot of work, mind you).

The punch-line comes from IFC – as in the exchange format of the buildingSMART fame, the enabler of the ‘open BIM’, I’m ‘practicing’ on this job

No matter how I convert the source (Revit) file into the ‘ifc’ format, 4 out of the 114 columns come across rotated by a random angle.

Autodesk may have coined ‘BIM’ but its heart has never been in it...

2011-11-06T04:49:00.001-08:00

It may have spent huge amount of money on acquiring Revit and then developing it into something presentable and may be constantly pumping funds into its marketing-machine worldwide to promote BIM, Autodesk never really believed it to be the future, and this shows.

Akin to a politician half-heartedly supporting a policy launch he never agreed-with in the first place, or a teenager holding a candle at his sister’s confirmation-ceremony yet hopes, none of his mates see him like this, Autodesk has been sending out ‘invisible signals’ to the world, that this ‘BIM thing’ is all a bit beneath it and will not last, anyway.

The danger of ‘invisible’ anything is though that it may not get noticed by the ones aimed at, and come judgment day, when the whole ‘BIM thing’ falls over, and the time to re-populate the world with the tried-and-loved AutoCAD suites dawns again, some of the old followers may have moved on.

Unfortunately, the routes disillusioned AutoCAD fans currently can take up are few and badly marked.

Still, would not bet on this situation to continue till the ‘judgment day’ when they can happily re-join the Autodesk clan.

My guess is, that those millions of AutoCAD users around the world that have been cultivated over the last 20-years will yet come back to bite Autodesk in one way, or other.

A newcomer to BIM? Thinking of making a career of it?

2011-11-05T06:10:00.000-07:00

Let me give you one advice: Think again!

It may look at first like an undiscovered nice, niche-area within an overcrowded field.

A sound system of utilising technology and best practice information management for the advancement of all.

A natural marriage of the new and old, a harmonious unison between science and practice.

An easy fix to a terminally ill industry, a lifeline to floundering, aging professionals that have lost their edge and focus. Also an exciting career path for the professionally freshly hatched.

A good business plan, a ‘no brainer’ as I often hear.

I blame the internet for this one. And the software vendors. And the academia.

The three together have managed to stitch up a nice little fairy-tale that seems to be doing its repeated rounds over the various levels of the AEC industry.

It looks real and credible while behaving no better than any old pyramid-scheme or hot-air-balloon scam.

To strengthen its power, this scary threesome targets the young and the old within the field, the nerdy and the vulnerable, the ambitious and the disillusioned. It has a custom created story for each, to hook them up, enlist in their army and let them do the dirty work for the cause.

Look, if it looks too good to be true, IT IS. Full stop!

If really interested in BIM, dig deeper!

Sharing means caring...

2011-11-04T07:31:00.000-07:00

The two teenage-girls were ready for a party, minus a Hermione tie yet to be fashioned around the neck of one of them.

They came to me for help, I directed them to the ‘Fred-how-tie’ I gifted my husband last Christmas (pictured) but the static nature of the instructions made them look for a better alternative.

They went to Youtube.

Obvious choice. Would it be the same for you?

If you had to clean a laptop, replace a knob on the oven or create a macramé hanging plant holder, would your first place to look for instruction be the Youtube?

Or would you Google it first?

That’d be un-cool, according to the 15 year olds.

Let’s not make this post of another litany of generational-differences, instead:

I do have an interest in sharing instructions for this-and-that on the net (mostly manufacturer’s product installations) and feel like asking the following question routinely:

Why is sharing PDFs online so difficult?

Search for answers and you get many tips on how to ‘send’ PDF’s to someone else.

I’m interested in using a PDF online, with all its clever features and without needing to download any viewers or the file itself.

Sharing, as in using something jointly as opposed to in turns.

Sharing, as in letting somebody else in-on the same information as opposed to just keeping to oneself.

“I’d rather go out of business than make my guys draw their own org-charts”

2011-11-03T05:37:00.001-07:00

Is the message I’m getting. And don’t get too smug thinking it is a ‘cultural’ thing or applies to my workplace only.

Nor is it geographically specific, if anything, it is a pretty universal phenomenon.

Business owners around the world give this message out daily to hundreds of thousands of mid-level engineers (AND architects, and construction managers, and planners, and...) as they turn a blind eye to this practice of ‘false delegation’.

In the past I used all sorts of more-and-less clever analogies to describe this system of ‘second hand information perusal’, – from needing to be driven by someone else to get anywhere to ...well, can’t quite recall any of the others but am sure they were numerous – I’m known for ample uses of clichés and truisms within my blogs.

When you look at any of these cases individually, they are harmless: An engineer instructs a draftsman to draw up his design, a planner another to create a PP. A mid manager requests hundreds of tender plans printed off, another a range of variations to the org-chart (from the title) to be coloured up in all shades of the rainbow.

Trust me, these are the seeds of a lot-of-trouble, yet to come for your company.

Understand what matters...make the changes necessary...

‘Screw it, let’s do it!’ - to quote Sir R Branson of Virgin fame.

When is a discrepancy not really a discrepancy?

2011-11-02T07:00:00.001-07:00

They both are confident to be following well established building-documenting practices.

The structural engineer sizes the concrete column; the architect places it in the space. There is a code on the structural drawing that can be tracked to the schedule and the dimensions are noted. The architectural plan neatly sets out the column’s centre point from two nearby, perpendicular grids.

Then comes the eager BIM modeller and screams with joy as she overlays the see-through plans on her digital light-table: A discrepancy! The columns are not aligned on the two images, out by a bit.

She writes an RFI! (or a query with a proprietary, fancy name).

Hate to take the wind out from under her wings, but this technically IS not a discrepancy, let alone clash. Obviously we are dealing with the results of a non-model based documentation and a slightly stroppy CAD work, but viewing the outputs from the creation of the virtual model representation of the building, neither the architect nor the structural engineer have blundered.

You don’t often hear me straightforward release the above mentioned consultants of their responsibilities for less then adequate work, the reason I’m doing it today is to highlight a silly practice that is spreading amongst those that are supposedly are DOING BIM.

The practice of lead-balloon RFI’s.

Sorry, they are waste of time, do not fly.

“I just don’t really understand what’s the point using this?”

2011-11-01T07:12:00.000-07:00

Asks Gergely, who I presume to be a ‘model purist’.

...and good on him for standing up for something as noble as that.

My intentions are generally much murkier than his (I guess) as I try to force the 3D and 2D into one environment and get them to talk to each other more directly than the orthogonal views of various packages will let them.

This little-battle is between Archicad and me –

I repeatedly ignore the creators’ hints to use the product in-a-certain-way and force it ‘kicking and screaming’ to perform tasks I dream-up.

Tasks, the program generally feels to be beneath-it, degrading even – which amuses me, considering I know lot of people that still use it purely for 2D-drafting.

Now, that I’d call humiliating for a modelling program of any colour but I guess, we all have our standards, and GS/Archicad seem to be less worried about the practice of broken sections and 2D lines as long as they are ‘architectural’.

On the other hand, applying it to construction modelling and 3D/2D coordination (within one, spatial view) appears to be perceived as heresy if not outright abuse of the program.

To answer Gergely’s question: the point is to compare a 3D AND a 2D representation of a space within one environment;

The two info-packages are usually prepared by different parties.

Makes sense to me.

Gergely’s original post is here:

http://www.linkedin.com/groups/question-Archicad-developers-what-is-796267.S.76666060?qid=9d7cee6c-9628-4623-a20b-0e9a481ade18&trk=group_most_popular-0-b-cmr&goback=%2Egmp_796267

A very expensive Vitamin...

2011-10-31T07:22:00.000-07:00

If you’ve had ever had the pleasure of pitching to investors of any kind, you’d have come across the importance of classifying your solution as an ‘Aspirin’ for a problem (or Viagra in more liberal countries) as opposed to a ‘Vitamin’.

Before you get concerned about me launching into another highly-complex-allegory, let me tell you, that I have a very simple theory on this one in relation to BIM.

If you had recently come up with an idea that you think will revolutionise construction, or at least fix its main problems, do the following self-check on your proposal:

Answer with YES/NO to this question:

Is the implementation of your idea (system/approach/toolset) going to make ALL project-participants get their hands dirty with project-information?

And when I say ‘dirty’, I mean dirty.

Use information direct from the horse’s mouth and plonk it back there once done with it;

If your answer is yes, you are onto something.

If not, you’re investing in (possibly) a very expensive vitamin.

Not convinced?

Think of writing a letter through dictating to someone and having an answer read back via a third person once it arrives (much later).

Replace those two sub-processes with emailing a message from your mobile phone and getting back an answer instantaneously.

A change from first to the second required a major ‘pain-killer’, no ‘vitamin’ could manage that.

The M&M’s

2011-10-30T08:08:00.000-07:00

We humans are pretty single-dimensional and even when we say, we are open to changes, we like to have them packaged in manageable little-parcels.

When we’re hit by a divorce, we like to keep our jobs going steady; when the job falls-apart we want our health to be in good-shape, when a sickness strikes, it is good to have the family intact etc...

Strangely though, trouble seems to like to come in pairs, divorce knocks on the door at the time a bad illness is emerging, a redundancy likes to partner up with a wayward teenager getting into trouble and so on...

BIM is one of those sets-of changes that like to come in twos too, forcing changes to both methods and media.

While many within the field classify moving to Flatcad from the drawing as easy, that’s because the method stayed, the change only affected the medium used.

The forever-quoted parallel to ‘driving’ is similar – you’ll move relatively easily from driving a motorbike to a car or even a lorry.

The medium changes, methods are similar.

However, take the same medium you are familiar with (say-a-car) into an unknown environment (African Safari) and you will feel impacted stronger, especially if the car is now a terrain-vehicle and you need to manage two new “M”s, method and medium.

Adopting BIM is similar to this challenge.

(picture from M&M’S website)

The Round Tuit for construction. Procrastination runs in our family...

2011-10-29T08:11:00.000-07:00

Actually it does not run (due to its nature), rather paces slowly when it gets around-to-it.

Considering this, I’m surprised we’ve only few people within the wider family working in the AEC industry, likely to be the most procrastinating-one operating on earth.

Of course, I could be wrong – and the phenomenon of leaving ‘every little decision to the very last minute’ and ‘acting on it when one just can no longer postpone it’, is more widespread than I think, on the surface the results look worse for AEC than any other field I know.

Still, I am gearing up seriously for a career in Investigative BIM within AEC.

Maybe a while before that becomes reality but neither of Agatha Christies’ top two problem solvers (Poirot and Mrs Marple) could be classified as spring chickens;

While Sherlock Holmes was ‘only’ 39 when he first died, I still intend to declare myself an Investigative BIM practitioner when the time is right, no matter how old I become.

There is a little barrier in the way of my plans: The toolset for any aspiring BIM investigator is pretty thin, the art, science, even the craft are highly under-developed.

The imbalance of the type/quantity of artillery that the investigator and investigated own is so high, that the result is akin to police using rubbish cars, while crims run Ferraris.

It’s not called ‘the Browser’ for nothing...

2011-10-28T05:34:00.000-07:00

...and I hope its counterpart’s name has been chosen carefully too.

I refer to the ‘filtering gadget’ that most AEC modelling packages have, the one that provides for easy assessment of project data, with the capability to quickly move between preset views.

Some are more powerful than others, the two I use regularly are Revit’s Browser and Archicad’s Navigator.

As their ability goes when it comes to do what they’re supposed to and the range of features each one offers, the two are quite similar, so I’ll not do any point-by-point appraisal.

Rather, I’d like to ponder their names.

Call me biased (by now, you know I am): I favour Archicad’s: NAVIGATOR.

It is an ‘active’ word, guides the user and pushes them into action.

Either letting them take the helm directly or by giving them tools to find their ways following preset maps.

It calls for engagement, pesters and nudges, provides for a dynamic environment.

It brings to me the image of the endless ocean pleading to be conquered.

Revit’s BROWSER sounds much more ‘passive’, pictures a leisurely leafing-through environment with tools to ponder the information needed to be perused.

A workplace that calms and unwinds, lets the user take steps at own pace, contemplate and reflect.

Is this a bad thing? Not necessarily, just takes a bit more self control to keep moving.

Picture: Linda Lapp Murray

The waterfall is flawed

2011-10-27T05:58:00.000-07:00

...and it is time to face up to this.

The ‘waterfall model’ in project management is a term that describes a sequential design process and it is routinely used to represent the way buildings are created.

I seriously dislike the concept.

Actually, not the concept itself but the idea being blankly forced onto the AEC industry.

Designing a waterproof window may work well within a ‘waterfall approach’.

Pouring a concrete-slab or erecting a set of steel-trusses for a roof might do too.

However, taken as a whole, building design AND construction are ill suited for ‘waterfalling’ and it is time to accept this ‘fact’, otherwise, there is no hope for significant improvements happening within this industry in the near future.

And the reason I’m allocating yet another of my ‘valuable daily posts’ to highlight this great misunderstanding by those managing construction?

I am a BIM enthusiast (in case you missed it) and BIM suffers hugely from the misconception that the ‘waterfall approach’ to the question of design-document-construct-manage is a feasible one.

In fact, instead of a neatly cascading model, where an idea starts from the top and rolls down numerous steps in an orderly fashion, an inverted game of ‘snakes and ladders’ eventuates.

One where both the snakes and ladders can force one back to the beginning.

An alternative is needed. There ARE alternatives available.

‘Writing software for 3D modelling from scratch is unwise’

2011-10-26T08:21:00.000-07:00

I told an acquaintance some years ago (my guess: it was about 2005).

I was really referring to the full-construction-integration package he was proposing to soon launch. His heart was in the right place, had government funding to chase his dream and a bunch of PhD students to execute it, I still could not earnestly back his concept.

He argued that some revolutionary software solutions originating from suburban garages still make it to the top, I said, time for believing in magical-tales has gone, you’ve got to work with what’s on the shelf, adopt and adapt, tweak, if necessary but don’t try to go back to the basics...

Time to ‘eat my words’?

As I pick up the next modelling package from the ‘shelf’, figure out its strengths and weaknesses, pilot through various projects and discard disappointingly...

I’m more and more convinced that creating a brand new digital modeller for construction is the way to go.

Imagine yourself looking at the line up of luxury sedans in front of the window of your construction site office, sent by various tool makers to make your job of a construction manager easier.

Sure, some of the cars have been modified, thicker wheels and dust-covers, one even comes in a nice yellow colour (construction people like yellow!).

..still, you need to build a four-wheel-drive, from scratch.

Crazy!

Picture taken from flickr (by gittsy)

“I think the hurdle contractors are going through....

2011-10-25T07:17:00.000-07:00

... is that they are generally ten years behind architects and engineers.

They have a traditional process that has been in place for a long time. This is because the complexity of projects in the Middle East is pretty different from Europe. You need to be really experienced to be able to run a project over here,” says Jeffrey Freund in an article written by Gerhard Hope on May 4, 2011 and published in the ConstructionWeekOnline.com

Jeffrey Freund and Marc Durand are the executive directors of iTech, a BIM service provider.

While I read through a string of other, wise-thoughts these gentlemen are intending to release onto my backward industry, I count on fingers the months that passed since early-May.

5 and a 3/4, almost half a year...

I find myself musing over the question: if-and-how this 0.5 a year that’s just gone, relates to the 10 years Mr Freund is referring to in the article.

Have we closed the gap a bit? Made it longer? Maintained the ratio?

Also, how did he come up with the 10 year-thing in the first place?

Did he look back on his early twenties (or was it late teens?) and judge his own level of maturity of that stage as comparable to the present Construction industry?

Would be interesting to know. Should ask him next time we meet.

http://www.constructionweekonline.com/article-12168-itech-sees-middle-east-as-a-hub-for-bim/

Searching for Fettuccine...

2011-10-24T07:13:00.001-07:00

Husband is preparing a lesson for tomorrow.

As he trawls the internet for interesting examples for his chemistry problem, he marvels at the capabilities of the search-engine:

“ ...I type in a question... and...within seconds I have the 54^th page of a particular course-book, published twenty years ago opened on my screen...”

Here is another aspect of our life we so take for granted, yet is almost totally absent when it comes to my daily work within AEC projects.

Searching for information is the biggest problem we all face while getting buildings off the ground (and off the paper) and it is not getting any easier despite of the spectacular achievements of various internet-based-search engines and us using the same in our ‘other’ lives.

Actually, the gap is getting bigger and bigger....

Husband searches millions of source documents for answers to a tricky question, I spend a day on a tender-set of drawings trying to figure out something quite simple.

He compares findings from 20 countries simultaneously within minutes, I turn over a thousand pages of reduced A3 sheets to locate a simple reference....

I’ve been a bit more successful with my blog – though not tagging anything does not help ‘getting found’ as easily as the system would allow.

...and a weird statistic: the most searched word this blog has come up in response-to: fettuccine*!

On this day, twenty-one years ago my mother fell in a concrete hole...

2011-10-23T08:44:00.000-07:00

...and exploded her heel, she required multiple surgeries and numerous metallic implants over the following years.

Many observed at the time that she could have ‘easily’ died had she landed a bit differently.

She would have never known her 6 grandchildren born in the years following this accident.

That October in 1990 was eventful enough even without this crisis, I was expecting my first child while still working eagerly on getting the foundation of a new 3D modelling program off the ground.

The student helping me with the algorithms was clever, my vision clear, the Faculty mildly supporting, the bosses cautiously encouraging. Still, the said program never eventuated.

Contrary to what you might be thinking now (that I am lost in the past yet again) – I use this bunch of memories to paint the framework for a statement that is relevant, now:

Creating modelling software from scratch was possible in the nineteen-nineties, a bit into the early two-thousands, it is no longer a viable option.

The reasoning behind this thought is complex and I may elaborate on it one day when I’m short of subjects to write on, today – I just say:

Use off-the-shelf and established packages, customise if you really need-to but don’t go back to the basics.

The AEC tool-providers’ field is ruled by a few-giants, they will not let you get anywhere.

“Autodesk And Gehry Technologies To Work Together To Improve The Way Buildings Are Designed And Constructed”

2011-10-22T06:39:00.000-07:00

...is the title of the press release.

While I skim over the carefully-crafted-spin, my imagination goes into overdrive – weaving an inspired string of positive effects that this cooperation will bring to the true BIM enthusiast....

If Autodesk is going to be ‘working together’ with Gehry Technologies, then surely Digital Project will be synched with the ABDS (also known as the Revit family of Products).

Digital Project uses Catia as its core engine, and Deep Exploration works beautifully with Catia, so ABDS will play with Catia and consequently DE, now owned by SAP... so I’ll be moving my paltry little files between all these world-leading packages seamlessly...

Guess what, I’m not the only one excited about this ‘working together arrangement’!

Yoshihiro Ichioka, deputy GM, Overseas Business Division, Obayashi Corporation is quoted in the same press release as being ‘very excited’ too.

This highly esteemed Corporation I got to know through various BIM-related press releases, last time about a month or so ago, in this one:

‘Obayashi Signs Agreement with NEC and GRAPHISOFT to Deliver "Smart BIM Cloud"’

Obviously, no mention of these ‘other-interests’ of the valued client by Autodesk, curiously nothing about GT’s Digital Project or Catia either.

There is a sentence however, well couched within the press release, that ‘As a part of a comprehensive agreement, Autodesk has made an equity investment in Gehry Technologies.’

The saying ‘God is in the detail’...

2011-10-21T07:58:00.000-07:00

... is often credited to the architect, Mies van der Rohe.

It is still a regularly used view, in fields beyond that architecture and buildings.

"God is in the details," meaning opportunities come from digging into the details.

Others say "The devil is in the details," implying that the details might cause failure.

Both are true, I believe, one a bit more positive than the other.
However, it does not really matter which version is better.

The key message is "even the grandest project’s success relies on the quality of its smallest components."

Or, to continue my line of thought from yesterday’s post, digital-construction-modelling must focus on the detail, software developers wanting to succeed in this field: take note!

Another ‘revelation’ resulting from writing my post yesterday for me: using BIM and VC as interchangeable terms is not appropriate.

While they ARE similar, transposing one over the other can be misleading.

For example, a wall, slab, roof modelled as a simple digital shape and enhanced by intelligent parameters could be classified as BIM in action, however I’d not call it ‘virtual construction’ as its use within VC would be highly limited.

On the other side, an extensively detailed steel structure (including nuts and bolts) may be perfect for using in VC methodologies but unable to meet the minimal intelligence asked from a useful BIM model.

Sticks and stones...will not hurt you...

2011-10-20T07:44:00.000-07:00

It is the software-packages that can’t represent them well that will break-your-back as you try to make any headway in virtual construction.

Take for example walls within buildings:

Most architect-focused modelling packages create walls as monolithic entities, even when they are made up of numerous layers in real life (composites);

Therefore, when one wants to represent walls in a ‘virtual construction’ or BIM context, the work method to follow is not user friendly or straight forward.

There are two lines-of-thought:

Some practitioners, that I’d classify more as BIM theorists, believe this shortcoming of ‘AEC targeted’ modelling packages should be tolerated, as the said simple representation of the wall can be enhanced by almost endless number of non-graphical parameters to include anything worth knowing about the building element.

Others (myself included) require the capability for elemental build up of complex structures, keeping them highly detailed, well defined, accurately positioned and ‘constructurally’ intelligent.

As an upshot of my opinion on this issue, I long for construction modelling packages developed truly for the virtual constructor (or BIM manager).

Software and tools geared towards the easy creation of highly intelligent objects armed also with turbo-charged profilers able to sweep complex sections within 3 directions and beside/over/under one another.

Currently, most packages are woefully inadequate for use in the above described manner.

Barely deserve the title of ‘BIM modelling software’.

Airport security and BIM

2011-10-19T05:23:00.001-07:00

I spent the day flying again.

Don’t wish to list all the airport-jokes that come to mind, have visited the US enough to put me off that reckless habit, for the foreseeable future.

I still like to examine the practice of screening passengers from a psychological point, but with no political undertones whatsoever and as a result, almost always end up pulling together some useful lessons as I queue to have my bags x-rayed once again.

Operating within the AEC industry and regularly dealing with sets of documents prepared by respectable (and often internationally spread) consultants for designing various buildings, I have this problem of not trusting the content of their sets very much.

Consequently, I am forever searching for a magic x-ray machine through which I could push any old set of tender- or IFC (as in ‘issued for construction’) documents and have the magic screen show me all the traps that are hidden within the examined paperwork.

Just as the operators of those machines are trained to spot vicious looking nail scissors, cigarette lighters and lethal knitting-needles, I’m confident we could come up with schemes where professional spotters could highlight areas within building drawings sets where reckless cut and paste has been applied to, generic details used irresponsibly or multiples of non-dimensioned floor plans issued.

Well, time to learn something from airport security.

The idea of a “National Software”

2011-10-17T22:23:00.000-07:00

The richly decorated, highly acclaimed academic was presenting before me.

This fact on its own would not have been a problem, had he not used my laptop as a host for his densely populated power-point and had my laptop not been under huge risk of misbehaving due to its overconsumption of desert-dust.

The disease of the ‘black screen’ is manageable in the privacy of one’s office, (unplug the charger, blow through both ends...) a bit less when it happens as part of a well-organised and technology based conference.

Thankfully, my laptop behaved... However, my anxious wait for the inevitable catastrophe almost meant I missed the best part of the presentation...

This professor, whose subject was loosely based around Energy Efficiency and Regulations (yet to be implemented) in the host country, referred to something that made me prick my ears...

“National Software”.

I mentioned before, how I had the lucky opportunity to observe Sustainability related happenings unfold in 4 very different countries over the last couple of years, and attended many occasions highly influenced by software vendors. Overly for my liking.

Still, floating the idea of having a ‘national software’ to be the synonym for regulated efforts towards energy efficiency of an entire country is a bit ‘out there’ for me.

Almost like stating that Revit = BIM. (or any other modelling package for that matter).

My broken record of BIM

2011-10-17T08:08:00.000-07:00

This picture (attached) has been doing its rounds on the FB and other social websites over the last couple of... months*.

A similar phenomenon little if at all known to current generations of digital information users is the concept of the ‘broken record’, though they may still get caught accusing their mates of sounding in such way. It is unlikely they ever had the opportunity to watch a squealing-needle get stuck in a groove of the black disk, causing the performer to endlessly repeat the same word or part of it.

Alarmingly often I find myself these days sounding like a broken record.

Well meaning people interested in what I do, tend to summarise my often lengthy explanations in the following way:

“You take the consultants' drawings prepared for a yet-to-be-built building, you digitally model the building before the contractor starts its own work. You ‘do’ clash detection and find where pipes go through beams. You save heaps of money for the owner..”

...and here comes the broken record... I repeat endlessly, how consultants’ drawings are almost in all cases not sufficient for digital modelling, let alone building. That they use masses of drawings to slow us down. That ‘clash-detection’ is a silly concept created by someone to take away interest from the previous problems...that I’m tired of explaining these same issues forever and ever...

(*I know, Barbara, I’m always the last one to notice)

Twist and shout...

2011-10-16T08:26:00.001-07:00

Sure, yesterday’s post was a bit of a copout, though even the hastily put together writing had a question worth further exploring in the future, I believe.

Due to own interests and often recklessly accepted invitations I present at a number of conferences each year, mostly as a “BIM expert”.

Since the start of this blog I’ve been going to these summits with sharpened pencils, looking for little gems to praise/ridicule, seeds-of-wisdom shared by others to use and fashion a couple of posts out from.

This latest one has not quite materialised into anything overly useful yet (give it a day-or-two to settle), however there has been one thing I now notice to be a trend.

We BIM-ers get packaged together with the ‘Green guys’ when it comes to event programming.

Over the last year or so I had the opportunity to see the subjects of sustainability and BIM being closely-coupled in 4 different countries and in 3 very different geographical locations.

I suspect the righteous reasoning behind such moves; the two fields complement each others painlessly.

Yet, for me, the most obvious link between the issue of ‘aiming form sustainability within the built-world’ and ‘getting BIM into the AEC processes is’... wait for it... both seem to be attracting individuals practicing on the fringes of the industry (myself included), the slightly – or not-so-slightly twisted.

The closet organiser

2011-10-15T08:15:00.000-07:00

I once knew a lady who claimed to be a professional ‘closet organiser’. She was employed by other, mostly well-off ladies to sort their closets (wardrobes) out.

Following a get-to-know-you session, where a lot of personal information was released on how the closet and its content were used, the CO set out to ruthlessly go through the employer-lady’s bits and pieces and reorganise them.

Some things she threw out, others retained. New partitions, drawers and baskets were purchased and installed. Everything was put in their exactly set place.

When I asked the acquaintance on how successful the business was – she said very successful, most of her clients required her to come back regularly and re-sort everything.

As I search for best practice in content classification within AEC, the organiser lady often comes to mind. I don’t think best practice actually exist. There are good ones, adequate ones but not a ‘one size fits all’.

Actually, I was not going to write about the closet-organiser friend today, but ran out of time for my post today and this was the longest half-though I had noted on my list of possible subjects for the blog over the last-couple of months.

Verdict to this writing: Needs more work.

I know – will come back to it. Now off to have dinner with a dear friend I see really rarely.

...Down on the ground...

2011-10-14T07:55:00.000-07:00

...as I said yesterday, the ‘big picture’ is a bit of a problem for the AEC.

It gets lost within the masses of ‘little-ones’, fragmentation seems to be working against it.

While personal-aero-transportation appears to manage a similar fragmentation with more success – AEC projects get ground to-halt by the lack of understanding by most of what the big picture is supposed to be.

You need only look at the design phase of any old building project and it becomes apparent that the various parties involved in it, aren’t much driven to fit meaningfully within the big picture.

If they were, do you think ‘clash-detection’ would have ever gained traction?

Clash avoidance and coordination between discipline yes, but clash-detection?*

Sorry to be ridiculous, but when I was examining the workings of the 3 airports** I visited yesterday I was contemplating if the associated industry would be as welcome of an ‘aircraft clash detection approach’ to manage its main processes as the AEC seems to have been recently?

Somehow, I doubt it. An industry with little margin of error where it matters, cracked the issue of multiple aircraft landing and taking of simultaneously and hundreds of thousands of people getting to , from and transiting between those crafts in hubs located all over the globe.

The AEC gets excited when a beam manages to dodge a pipe.

* If you read my blog regularly, you know this is a bit of a bugbear for me, some of my friends regularly tease me on the subject.

**visible for public

Up in the air...

2011-10-13T08:31:00.000-07:00

Spent yesterday mostly in the air with some of it on the ground between flights, dosing...marvelling at the clockwork-style-machinery-way that the 3 airports I visited all worked – in 3 very different countries, culturally, economically, geographically varied, yet so similar in running airports.

I envy industries where the margin for error is small and where the need to fulfil is clear-cut.

Everything is about keeping-moving people and making sure no one gets hurt.

Come to think of it, on the surface, AEC is no different, the need is there and clear cut, hurting people isn’t desirable either.

Still, these two objectives are much weaker in the industry I work-in compared to the one that is air-travel, much less are they part of what drives the various participants in their daily chores – and consequently, the industry performs much worse.

The ‘big picture’ is evident at airports – even for the lowliest worker, the need, this ‘machinery’ is there to fulfil is obvious.

If you were to survey them randomly, you would come away satisfied with their understanding what they are there for, apart from earning the ‘right to take home the bacon’ or the ‘butter for their bread’, depending on the culture they’d come from.

Significantly different would these survey-results be, had you collected them from the AEC.

Will write more on my thoughts on this subject, tomorrow.

“We are in donkey-deep doo-doos now...

2011-10-12T08:23:00.001-07:00

- writes Michael Laws, ex politician, ex mayor, current radio host and commentator. Someone I don’t always agree with, but this time an urge to distribute part of his opinion-peace published in the NZ SundayStarTimes hits me too hard – so I stop fighting and re-blog it ...

.... not because of natural disasters nor the world economy, but because we lack the skills base, the employment incentives, the entrepreneurial flair and, most of all, the aspiration.

Too many Kiwis are satisfied with their lot. No, worse than that. Satisfied not to succeed. And envious of – even hostile to – those that do. There is a view that those who demonstrate enterprise and initiative are just showing off. There is an undiluted joy when the Terry Serepisoses of this world hit the wall”

One might think that my bitterness towards the country I gave half-of-my-life to is starting to be a bit of a bore, especially within this quasi technical blog of mine, however...

...Don’t you find the parallel between the country so cool and yet so not-so and BIM, a niche ‘way of doing things within AEC’ to be strikingly apt?

Both think of themselves as innovators, leaders, above the rest, yet both are unprepared to push the limits of anything really, rock the ‘apple cart’, get out of their comfort zone, make a measurable difference!

I miss the ‘Wow factor’ in BIM...

2011-10-11T08:58:00.000-07:00

Not the ‘glossy-toy’ type one, I might add – there is no lack of attempts to wow audiences with polished presentations by BIM vendors that shamelessly aim to quickly impress the curious and often ‘defenceless’ viewer and lock-up forever as a software-loyalist.

Nor the academy driven attempts to pass on lukewarm theories fashioned in sterile laboratories that may work in principle but are miles-off any reality and unlikely to turn into a workable solution this century or even the next.

No. I miss regular opportunities to be subjected-to or subject others-to positive surprises presenting substantial productivity boosts, ease of use, streamlining of workflows, navigation techniques etc...

Anything, that will make the industry stop for a second, audiences gasp with delight, blogs heat-up and kids start taking interest-in as the representation of a career worth considering.

I miss the feeling of envy that I could spend on competitors fortunate enough to come up with the answers to questions we only just asked.

A miss the glitz, the feel of contributing to something that matters.

BIM now sits between H&S and Sustainability when it comes to distinctive appeal or expectation to produce something revolutionary any time soon.

It’s kind of already ‘retro’ but not the cool type, more the cynical, ‘backwards-way-retro’, a move, if not quite to the past but not really towards the future either.

A flop.

The Sole less, the Sole full and Sohole....

2011-10-10T09:05:00.001-07:00

‘Sole-less is the digital’ – some claim bitterly, often relating to digital music, photography, food and design.

Sole-full must me the opposite then, the manual, the one off.

The construction industry could be claiming to be the last bastion of large scale art-and-craft.

The last place where sole-full is created daily.

Even under the pretence of the modern and industrial.

Cast your eye around your room. Every nook, every corner embeds hours and hours of individual labour, often performed in situ, high up a ladder, deep in a void, balancing on a scaffolding outside a window.

Can you see the trace of a paint brush?

A crooked tile, a chip missing from the corner of the door sill?

Cherish these imperfections as gifts of those that made your building. They all left a piece of their sole in it.

And then, there is Sohole...

No one seems to be bothered by my debunking of the NZ BIM attempts anymore, so let me indulge in dedicating this little post to a large, muddy hole in Auckland, located not that far from some of the RWC’s happenings.

Sohole was a large development in a pretty part-of Auckland, stopped just after the excavation and foundation were completed, ‘an eyesore’, many locals complain.

I once worked on the project, put many-many hours into it.

Left part of my sole there...

The Fale Pasifika @ AU

2011-10-09T07:31:00.000-07:00

An ex-employee of ours has just got a new job.

It’s been almost 2 years since we parted ways and I think of him as a dear friend.

One of the 2 best model coordinators we ever had, he now calls himself a FIM, for Fabrication Information Manager.

McIntosh Timber Laminates, the company he joined, I came across about a decade ago (they have been around for much longer) – suppliers of glulam beams to NZ and the world.

A couple of years later (2005 is my guess) I went to a presentation that I found interesting, somewhat bizarre.

It was about the Fale Pasifica (see link) and the project was explained by 3 parties involved, the architect, the structural engineers’ team and the representative of the manufacturer of the main structure.

It was fascinating and almost unbelievable to see how this building was designed and documented using 2D technology, to then have the Fabricator really roll-up-their sleeves and model-it-all, so their risks were addressed and spatial-accuracy and coordination achieved.

People involved within the design process may argue with me the opposite, it is likely that the team had used 3D(+) software help here and there, I base my comments on that presentation, where Ivan Mercep and the engineers left me wonder why so back-to-front their approach had been.

Good luck with your new job RDJ!

(Ivan Mercep outside the Fale Pasifika he designed for the UA – photo Dean Purcell)

http://www.mcintosh.co.nz/CASE+STUDIES/Fale+Pasifika.html