Saturday, September 3, 2011

The question of BIM scalability...


When I talk of ‘scalability of BIM’, I think of the ability to maintain integrity of the end-product while expanding the workforce from one person doing the job (me) to a few and then to many.
Over the last couple of years, I found this issue to be another ‘elephant in the room’, too big to tackle.
It is generally ignored. The various ‘p’ words get banded around a lot instead – process, people, procedures, policies, performance, practice...all linked closely to the issue of scalability, still, I am yet to find a company operating within the BIM space than can convincingly prove to have tackled the issue of ‘quality’.
This elephant does go under the name of ‘quality’, scalability stands for the ability for me to maintain the quality of my product/service even when I stop doing the work myself but employ others to do it.

You know, the McDonalds thing.
The critical factor in making a ‘real business’ out of a ‘good idea’.

Some mistake this scalability requirement with the size of the projects, they show me LARGE buildings done in BIM. Square meters and feet get shouted about, anything can be handled, they claim.
Others quote the numbers of people involved in each project, graphically present locations of participants, peppered around the globe.

All good. Still, size does not equal ‘quality’, or does it?


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