Building
project clients come in all shapes and sizes.
From the
very small, ‘let’s build a garage’ or ‘renovate the kitchen’ types, to gigantic
institutional owners of city-size developments.
To
create their projects, apart from the staunch DIYers, most draw on a plethora
of advisors and consultants for assistance.
BIM
advocacy rarely makes their list.
Sure, ‘digital
approaches’ do get thrown around by various participants of the servicing pool,
most of the time packaged as ways of working smarter, while, a poor cover for an
additional fee grab.
Some
providers are BIM specialist with genuinely useful offerings of digital construction
ware, others are barely fluent BIM consultants of the mainstream type,
brandishing their occasional BIM achievements.
But I am
yet to see them seeking out independent BIM advice.
BIM has
been around for a long time.
Even if
I base it on my own, subjective experience, at least for the last 30 years, BIM
has been a justifiable and doable approach to ‘communicate buildings’.
Yet, despite
of several big waves of international BIM hypes rising, it has hardly made a visible
impact on the industry.
Many
will argue against this statement, mostly those with vested interest in the digital
part of the industry and its tools.
The
development of AR, VR and other gadgets, drone scanning, robotic devices and
the like are collectively considered to be proof of the success of the global
BIM journey.
And in
their own way, they are massive technical achievements. But they are also
‘just’ tools and equating the smartness of the industry to their sophistication
is a bit of a stretch.
I view
BIM as a language and measure its effectiveness by the level of industry
fluency.
At its
core is the ‘model’, a representation of the building that is different from
the traditional process of the ‘drawing’ as the depiction of the same.
While
fully defining either of these opposing principles is a complex exercise and
requires a lot of dedication from those wishing to understand the area, anyone
participating in the building industry should at least know the difference.
Or, that
there IS a difference.
With the
emergence of BIM, thirtysomething years ago, a new communication language had
come into the industry. Yet, the presence of the new language is rarely
acknowledged or accounted for.
We see
the tools it brought, not the language.
We see
the tools, we choose to use them or to ignore them, and are lulled in the
pretense that our involvement with BIM is optional.
Shaping
the communicating environment is treated purely based on commercial aspects and
the risk of getting it wrong is underestimated.
These
days we operate in hybrid language environments where construction projects get
‘spoken’ simultaneously ‘drawing’ and ‘model’.
On the
surface, this is not a bad thing. After all, we live in the transitional period
where the communication ‘type drawing’ is growing into ‘type model’.
We are
waiting for the contractual arm of the industry to mature to ‘type model’ and
while this is happening, we make the best of both worlds.
Or do
we?
No. We,
the industry is struggling in the worst of both, no longer speaking either
languages fluently or hardly at all.
The
often ridiculed ‘traditional, drawing based’ communication before BIM had a supporting
infrastructure that made it work very well. It enabled everyone in the industry
communicate and participate. That infrastructure has largely disappeared by now
and BIM has not replaced it.
BIM
professionals often push the seamless model-to-drawing workflows as the goal
and reality, yet it is neither working as such in practice nor should it really
be the aim.
The fact
that in BIM language speaking ‘model type’ communication also needs orthogonal
projections, dimensioning and notations can cause further confusion.
In the
‘olden days’ just about anyone could update a drawing, cloud a change, create a
revision, enact a design decision and record it. In the new hybrid environment
making even the smallest of changes to ‘a’ drawing can be cumbersome and tedious,
not to mention time consuming.
There is
the paradox of being able to flick over a full-length movie to the other side
of the world in seconds yet being forced to wait for a drawing upgrade from a
local consultant weeks at a time.
One can
also spend hours at project PCG meetings where dozens of people discuss the
project yet most of them can’t open a model let alone edit a drawing associated
with it.
I’d be
surprised if there were other industries in existence where such a large
portion of its practitioners did not speak its language.
We like
to hide behind the contract and its illusion of protection through the negation
of models.
Yet do
we really know what is on our drawings?
Realistically,
in my remaining work-lifetime, BIM (or whatever fancier name it gets given in
the future) is not likely to improve significantly.
The
toolsets will further modernize and some of the ways we operate may change but
the quality of the ‘language’ and its true uptake will likely not improve at
speed.
Still,
in the bleakness of the last paragraph lies one aspect of the situation that is
still worth fighting for.
That is for
building clients’ right for true BIM advocacy.
Any
building client at the outset should be able to clearly define or at least understand
the communication language of their building project.
Even
before any digital tools get considered, the language must be defined.
Is it
going to be drawing based or model based? Most likely hybrid? Proportionally
definable? Not? Why not? True pros and cons for each? How cross - overs are
happening?
No, BEPs
aren’t adequate for answering those questions if they are not fully integrated
with the project (contractually too).
How can
we measure a company’s BIM literacy?
Can a
servicing consultancy be called BIM fluent with only a token BIM manager
amongst hundreds of illiterates? Even if the token manager constantly wears
fancy AR/VR headsets.
Building
project clients come in all shapes and sizes. Some are smarter than others.
I’d love
to see more of them pushing stronger the BIM buttons of their projects, asking
the hard questions and demanding answers. Even be brave enough to say ‘no’ to
half-baked BIM attempts if confident that pure ‘drawing’ will be spoken
effectively.
We live
in a world ruled by supply/demand, their demand should create a supply of
independent BIM advocates.
Will
they come from the ranks of client-side PMs?
Pic from Predefine2020 https://predefine2020.co.nz/
(disclaimer:
my husband’s company)