Should have 3D computer knowledge....

 States the job ad – on a well known, respectable, international consultant-company’s website advertising for a ‘senior architect’.

Not that I am searching for a new job, nothing like that, just part of my research.

You see, to find out what software-packages the companies that we may be dealing with in the future could be using, nothing beats their ‘vacancies listings’.

In fact, hardly anything gives such an instant indication on where a company (consultant, contractor or client) is with their understanding of BIM as how they advertise for roles that deal with the handling of project information.

It is a sad state of affairs when no brand name of preferred software appears, though it leaves an equally unhappy felling seeing that someone is after a “Revit architect” – and this is not because of the specific software they nominate in the ad, but due to combining those two words in such an unfortunate way.

It is well known, that the programming (IT) industry had high-jacked the term ‘architect’ – so one should not be surprised if the candidates that apply for the stated job turn up to be of a very-different profile than what the advertisers were after.

If my Grandma (soon to turn 92) declared I was ‘in a field of computers and 3d’ – I’d be chuffed, yet AEC’s HR people should know better than that!

A bit more of a balance would be nice...

OK, I do admit, I looked up those shoes once. Only once, really...

And I did book airline tickets online, a number of them recently; it is that time of the year.

Now, I have to endure ‘from-subtle-to-invasive-and-anything-in-between’ attacks by the shoe and airline marketers of the world.

Thankfully my work environment is safe.

Pristine even, no evil promoters have managed to crack into the company’s MS Office or Outlook, nor GS’s Archicad/ Autodesk’s Revit.

Sometime, I wish they had.

As I model simultaneously in the two packages (as one does) I wish I had the perky gremlins of Google and Facebook lurking behind my tools trying to guess my next move.

You are creating a complex profile? How about some new Alucobond parapet flashing to use there, dear?

Oh, choosing from the limited range of store-entrances from the libraries?

Look, we have hundreds here for you, all the latest models, the cheapest would come straight from Argentina, delivered to you by lunchtime tomorrow...

Hmmm using ‘that’ hatch for your tiled-surface on the slab, nah, we can do better, these come pre-coloured  and pre-priced, ready for renders and BOQs...

One might say, ‘be careful what you’re wishing for’, cherish the privacy of your work-environment!

Wise thinking of course, still, the ever-widening gap between the ‘two ways of being’ can’t be that good for me, either.

Who needs BIM flowcharts?

I have a bit of a phobia of flowcharts. They creep me out.

The ones that are designed to describe BIM processes are the worst, maybe because of their impact on my day-to-day life.

On one side, I support structured approach to BIM, a formalized graphic representation of a logic-sequence should do no harm.

However, as an Intuitive BIM-mer, I tend to focus on results and flow-charts just don’t cut it for me. Even on a very abstract level, they just do not reflect what I see in the real world, where activities get all tangled up in multiple dimensions, blatantly disregard artificial rules and generally fail to behave in a well-charted manner.

Building design stages have stopped being packaged in distinctively separated boxes some time ago (schematic design, developed design, detail design…) – yet are still favoured by those unable to keep up with the changes of scenery that have been hitting the AEC over the last 2 decades.

Similarly, BIM practitioners keep promoting a neatly compartmentalized process that BIM is – or at least should be, using colorful flowcharts.

Is it because they have originated from the programming and process driven manufacturing industries that no one really questions these charts?

Or are they just safety blankets that give comfort to those that run BIM processes, something to burrow one’s head in when the reality hits?

Have you got any idea how silly you look and sound?

…as you try nonchalantly to bluff yourself through the maze of BIM related questions around the boardroom table?

You remind me a bit of some ‘try-hard’ baby-boomers I once knew, that went to great lengths to keep up with the new hipster generations, doing the clothing, the music, imitating the moves, the lingo.

And those over-confident, largely mono-lingual tourists I often see on my travels, that work enthusiastically to out bargain local sellers on ethnic markets using a 100 word-phrase book.

I am a bit sorry if this BIM thing was dumped on you ‘suddenly’ and caught you unaware.

I also sympathize with the pain that you must be experiencing, as a fish out-of-the water, pushed from your comfort zone, but hey, it is time to change tack, simple bluff will no longer work.

Nor will the rest of your arsenal, I’ve so often seen in action.

The first: ‘ignore it, will go away’ attitude.

Then, the ‘give them some morsels of ‘logistics-modelling’ and throw in ‘clash-detection’’, will keep them happy for a while…

Counting to 6 on your fingers to show the 6D’s you know will not cut the mustard any more, and reciting the poem of how ‘BIM can be used in OM/FM’ will not impress anyone any longer either.

It is time to deliver the goods, walk the walk, or walk away.

Little yellow stickers

Have you noticed them yet?

They are turning up en masse on consultants’ drawings these days!

Little golden stickers, shiny and holographic, a real candy for the eye.

They carry a message:

The consultant that provided this drawing is a CMBC (Certified Model Based (AEC) Consultant) and all the information within the marked drawing is guaranteed to be based on a 3D digital-model.

No need to check the alignment of grids and consistency of floor levels between views. Sections, elevations for discrepancies between each other or the plans.

You know I’m dreaming, no such certification exists.

And no other industry logo on drawings (AIA, RIBA, NZIA etc) will provide anything similar either.

Currently, there is absolutely no guarantee that officially issued AEC documents make sense spatially.

With all the blurb out there on small BIM – BIG BIM, pretend and real BIM, why are there no little steps taken to get over this bridge first?

Many consultants do work model based these days, however, even they aren’t always able to ascertain, just how far they’ve gone with it?

Was the model broken up while they developed IFC drawings? Can they certify the integrity of the model throughout the process?

You’ll seldom get upfront answers to these questions, even if you are a proposed client dangling a huge contract in-front of them.

Something for buildingSMART to tackle?

The weak link in AEC projects: consultants are largely unable to manage their projects well

I once flew on a ‘no-frills’ airline from Auckland to Melbourne.

A manageable, 3 hour flight – I decided not to purchase any drinks or food.

As the stewardess’s trolley passed my row, the chap sitting next, whispered in my ear:

“Ask for hot water, they can’t charge you for that – I’ve got some tea-bags”.

I obliged, guiltily-yet-smugly enjoying an ‘unpaid-for’ drink, for the rest of the journey.

As much I can, I avoid travelling ‘no-frills’, though necessity often makes me do so.

In those times when I do, I often keep my sanity, by repeating to myself, the fact, that at least the airline had committed to get me from A to B, at the original ‘contract price’.

Building owners in AEC contracts are rarely as lucky.

Whether they travel ‘first class’ or ‘budget’, there is no guarantee that they reach their destination (the building)  without hefty add-ons, often called ‘variations’ or other ‘fancy-claims’.

As ‘travellers’, most aren’t totally blameless either, they change their minds often on where they are to be taken to, they pick in their menus, ask for hard-to-find ingredients, slow down the ‘aircraft’, deliberately.

Still, the service-providers should be able to manage them, keep them on track and constantly aware of what they had purchased, with what strings attached.

Consultants operating in the current AEC are woefully hopeless at doing this.

“Committed to making nRAH an exemplar for the industry”

It does not seem that long ago that the BIM environment was swarming with pilot projects.

Everyone was doing them, carefully selecting ‘appropriate’ projects and placing them in the hands of the BIM enlightened, then charging them to pave the way to the future for many a fledging BIM company.

Some were completed, some abandoned, many ended up as glossy case-studies in industry magazines carefully referencing chosen software packages used.

Nowadays I see another extreme; megaprojects setting out boldly to become the exemplars for best practice on how to do all encompassing BIMs, multi-disciplinary modelling, coordinating, energy analyses, OM/FM, BOQs, the lot. Ambitious plans, heralding the biggest and best, the new ‘blue prints’ everyone will follow. No disclaimers, no hesitation!

In between there is: nothing.

From ‘no practice’ to ‘best practice’ in one clean sweep of the pendulum.

Call me cynical but something is not right here.

Only yesterday we were ‘boiling eggs’ in a highly controlled environment, making sure that spare ones were always close by, all hands stayed clean, the water did not get too hot and risks stayed fully under control.  

Suddenly we are preparing a ‘5 course meal for a crowd of a hundred’?

Same people, more or less the same equipment, give or take an extra pan or a pot we squeezed into the ‘mega budget’.

I am not convinced.

http://www.bimstop.com/blog/royal-adelaide-hospital-australia-and-bim/ 

The entertainment value of BIM

I run a pretty versatile BIM department.

We don’t only simultaneously model in numerous packages and produce outputs in all possible D’s one-can-imagine, we offer unprecedented entertainment for our colleagues.

See construction sites, for example: places with dynamics, varying from totally-laid-back to spinning out of control from pressure, they quickly transform to a ‘jolly-mode’ when one of our BIM-guys turns up.

No longer are missed milestones, casting delays, shoddy subcontractor workmanship worrying issues. The pending visit of the big bosses is even of little interest when the ‘village fool’ arrives, clowning with flash IT equipment, speaking in funny BIM-lingo and cutely pretending to know something about construction while producing mere pretty pictures.

Our special talents are thankfully appreciated across the engineering offices too – I often watch with delight how engineers in their thirties (unable to print PDFs on their own) mock my multi-lingual trickster-modellers behind their backs.

Still, I trust the collegiality of my workplace; distinction is made between clowns and country bumpkins – we are BIM-jesters of the most professional sort!

If there existed worldwide championships to measure how much ridicule any given BIM group could provoke within its native environment, we would score pretty high!

The reason I’m happy to provide this entertainment is that historically, Jesters could also give bad news to the Emperor that no-one else would dare deliver. Think about that!

Reconstructing drawing-sets and the case of the 'Great Pretenders'

Something is fundamentally wrong with the way AEC manages its information:

We have numerous solutions available to handle large amounts of paper-based (flat) drawings in a reasonably sophisticated way. There exists a significant number of commercially available tools to collect, track, distribute, measure-off, even mark-up these drawings electronically.

Yet, I know of no application that works within these systems with the sole objective to automatically and efficiently reconstruct sets of 2D drawings into a ‘quasi 3D depository’.

Imagine, if Aconex (or equivalent) had created a 3 dimensional grid based on the drawing-set it got fed-in and placed every drawing on it in the right position (i.e. sections, details, elevations…);

Should not be too difficult, should it?

Every drawing is supposedly well referenced (grids, orientation, levels), should be a real piece of cake.

Users would then easily locate details, sections, elevations, zoom in and out, jump between views, a bit like the way Google Map and Google Street view work.

Truth to be told, I’m not that keen on the idea, since even most ‘pedestrian-BIM-approaches’ address this need already adequately.

On the other hand, still experiencing how zillions of non-BIM users within the AEC work, I say, that either everyone truly has the supernatural ability to simultaneously process and cross reference thousands of 2D drawings or a large percentage of them are in fact, faking understanding.

Design managers working in the AEC: specify what ‘type’ are you!

Are you a ‘People based DM’ or an ‘Information based DM’?

Are you primarily concerned with managing the people on the project or managing the project information?

You might say, ‘both’ – though I think, it’s unlikely that you truly are.

My observation is that 90% of design managers are ‘people based DMs’ – or if I want to be especially unkind – ‘paper based DMs’.

Within the rest, there are a few ‘holistic ones’ (less than 1%) and about 5% ‘information based’ ones.

In theory the three different types may be equally effective, practice shows, those that ignore the information in favour of ‘just pushing the people’ (or groups of people like consultants, contractors or anyone in the AEC food-chain) end up with the ‘vocal cord’ as their only tool available.

(refer to one of my previous posts on ‘shouting’).

This may work, when real end-results are not that relevant, i.e. prices, rates, timeframes aren’t set according to ‘normal laws of economics’.

Definitely not something I’d like to be left to survive with in the ‘post-gamble AEC’ era we are ‘enjoying’ now.

I must acknowledge a colleague for getting my thinking on this subject going.

She’s been defending the practice of ‘non-information based DM’ with such conviction that I could not help but get intrigued by her stance.

She may be absolutely right, yet – time will tell.