Everything you ever wanted to know about the AEC industry you can learn from Danny Ocean’s – Ocean Thirteen

I received a message recently, noting that I had become ‘top contributor’ in the BIM Experts Group on LinkedIn. As much as the label pleases, it is a bit strange, since most time I write to this forum or any other BIM related one, I tend to be questioning the views of the majority of globally active BIM-enthusiast or even worst, quickly get classified as ‘a troll’ because my comments are seen as discouraging if not downright negative and damaging to the future of the industry.

As much as I’d love to share the enthusiasm of those that believe ‘BIM is getting there globally’ (led by the UK or whoever else..) – slowly but surely, I’ll close off another year spent working hard in this field with the view, that BIM (as promoted still) is doomed and will fail sooner or later, unless the industry changes the fundamentals of its modus operandi.

And, I am not referring here to the ‘paradigm’ changes that BIM evangelist like to talk about that involve armies of change agents, champions and missionaries.

My view is that, until the industry becomes such that entities (people, companies) are truly and consistently judged by their results and are made accountable for them, BIM is just going to stay an expensive appendage to projects, a pretend improvement on processes, a perceived tax to pay to stay in certain parts of the market (refer to mandated BIM) a career path or a way to make a quick buck for a few BIM-wave riders;

Still, what gives me hope at the end of another year, that even though there are few and spread apart thinly, globally, there are others that get my point too.

If you want to see one obvious example, go and (re)watch Danny Ocean’s – Ocean Thirteen;

It shows multiples of very good and relevant examples of how the AEC and its participants operate in almost any environment (both the BIM infected and the ones that are not) and I may yet do a serious write-up on those one day.

For today, let me just quote a discussion between Al Pacino’s character Willy Bank and a member of the construction crew working on his project:

“I don't want the labor pains.

I just want the baby.”

Picture from here:

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/oceans_thirteen/pictures/#21

Aussie_BIM vs the UK_BIM, AKA the global BIM leaders (When and why had Graphisoft given up on their Australian ArchiCAD users?)

It all started with a nice little coincidence:

Last week, due to having some free time to roam the earth between two jobs (the future one yet to be fully defined) and having not seen my eldest daughter for 2 years, I visited her in Melbourne, where she now lives and works.

Parallel to this little personal event, a BIM author I’ve previously critiqued on my blog for representing the UK BIM as unjustly superior to the rest of the world had published a new writing, this time with the following title:

“UK professionals are seen as world leaders in BIM adoption but now we must let the Australians tackle BIM challenges their way” (ref 1)

I will not jump-in ‘wholesale’ to defend the development and status of BIM in Australia, I have not the qualification, relevant experience nor specific data to do so, but would definitely expect some heavy-weights from ‘the country of dangerous creatures ‘to seriously challenge this writing.

Let me just mention a few basic points that come to mind:

·         For example the work of prof Mark Burry: he moved to Melbourne in the mid 1990s – by then a visible and globally respected BIM figure.

(the author, Mr Peter Barker – according to his LinkedIn page – (ref 2), was working as an Architectural Technician on the other end of the world at this time, maybe that fact can be used as a mitigating factor for him missing out on any of prof Burry’s work, though Gaudi’s Sagrada  (ref 3) – one of is his ‘real’ projects, is remarkably close to where Mr Barker lived and worked and has been/still is a forever cool subject in the Architectural fraternity)

·         On the other end of the spectrum, even the (from my angle seen as) notorious buildingSMART chapter in Australia can comfortable claim to have been active since 1994 (it was called something else in those times) (ref 4) with its chair (forever) Mr John Mitchell promoting various ideological forms of BIM ever since I’ve been BIM-ing myself, and that is getting close to 2 decades.

But, even if the academia and the various industry organisations select to stay quiet and accept to be labelled ‘BIM-backward’ by the UK experts, what about Graphisoft and other software suppliers active in the region?

See, once upon a time, some decade or so ago – BIM (or VC) and Graphisoft (with ArchiCAD) were doing very well in Australia (and New Zealand)!

In 2004 as an employee of the NZ distributer of the software, I personally organised a string of extremely well attended seminars held by David Sutherland, the director of FKA, (ref 05) designers of the Eureka Tower in Melbourne (ref 05) and celebrated power-users of ArchiCAD.

So successful was Mr Sutherland in selling the concept of BIM (or VC) to the architects of NZ that even after many years had passed I was repeatedly told by the director of the competing software company (AutoDesk) that these seminars were the turning point for many of his clients to step up from 2D to 3D.

In 2004 David Sutherland was talking not only about the technology and its use in their Australian and globally operating business but also how it reformed the way his company worked, how they become more productive and better hands-on as designers.

FKA was not the only cutting edge BIM company that pushed the boundaries of BIM using ArchiCAD in Australia in the early 2000s – Rice Daubney, Woods Bagot and others did too.

My point is, Graphisoft and ArchiCAD were doing OK in OZ then.

Making progress. getting somewhere.

Their results were well beyond what Mr ‘Know It All UK BIM Expert’ would give them credit for now, even a decade ago, based on the tone of his lecture in the print.

Yet, Graphisoft had lost that battle, not just judging by my personal failure to land a simple ArchiCAD trainer role in Melbourne (ref 06, embarrassing, I know - my application did not even get acknowledged!) but also by Woods Bagot being all but Autodesk's poster boy these days.

Refs:
Original article here:

http://www.building.co.uk/communities/construction/bim/batting-for-bim-in-australia/5064249.article

My husband just pointed out that the original article can only get accessed by registered users;

This little quote from the same will hopefully make those reluctant to go that far intrigued (annoyed) enough to do so:

“Therefore the nation that surfs the waves on a white board, braves the rip tides, four metre great whites, and swarms of stinging jellyfish and comes back for more, can easily overcome the initial steps in BIM.

Australians love UK soccer, let’s ensure they love our UK BIM.”

http://www.slideshare.net/zolnamurray/references-to-article-ozbim-20131215-v2

BIM 101 for Andrew Hayward; Balfour Beatty plc: Head of Ethics, Risk and Assurance

On Sunday, August the 25^th this year, within this blog I published the third instalment of the story I like to refer to as the ‘HK MTR BIM experiment’.

Although I was still very bitter over being fired mainly because of my actions related to this job (mainly, but not entirely) at the time of writing, I was still genuinely hoping to start an exchange of ideas going within the learned and even more importantly, experienced part of the global BIM community.

I was very eager not to breach confidentiality of the participants beyond quoting what was already out in the public domain. I definitely had no intention to create further cynicism towards mandating BIM, just wanted to call for caution, halt the horses of unbridled BIM enthusiasm that seemed to have driven some of the architects of the HK MTR’s 11xx line’s BIM framework as well as the creators behind many other large scale BIM initiatives currently in action all around the globe.

I wrote numerous blog-posts (at least the previously mentioned trilogy) I explained my story through a slideshow, with the help of my daughter, we turned it even into a youtube movie.

The reactions were meek, mooted, mostly negative, happening almost entirely behind closed doors, if anywhere.

Previously publicly available presentations on the goals and objectives of the grand ‘exercise’ were taken off air – then briefly put back just to disappear again for (I guess) good.

I suspect feverish modelling took place within many of the contractors’ offices to catch up with the dubious ‘3 month deadline’ so long gone, parallel with hastily amended specifications and briefs.

Could the entire line of contracts have been rewritten to suit the factual status of the job or had everyone just closed their eyes shut and hoped nothing bad will come out of this, I’ll probably never get to know, unless MTR ‘spills the beans’ 3 years down the track when the claims that were never supposed to happen due to the revolutionary BIM use still eventuate en masse?

For now, let me follow my colleague Andrew Hayward; (Balfour Beatty plc: Head of Ethics, Risk and Assurance) style who has bluntly dismissed my concerns of any wrong doings of Gammon on this case (as alleged by me and detailed on my other blog) and give him a just-as-arrogantly blunt lecture on BIM as set up on this large project by the HK MTR in collusion with their advisors and the actions that the directors of Gammon have taken to guide their project (and in turn BB) through this possibly fatal trap:

Timeline and background:

·         Sometime before 2012 Intelibuild had sold the idea of BIM being a great thing for MTR and employed ‘it’ at least on one project (West Kowloon Terminus project);

·         Sometime in 2012 MTR had negotiated and set in place a bunch of contracts with a number of contractors to build parts of the SCL (11xx) line and also obliged them to deliver those contract by following a highly prescriptive BIM approach.

·         This approach, though explained at a professional gathering where the CEO of Gammon was also presenting had somehow been missed by the bidders and later by the management of the project and the director in charge of BIM implementation. Missed and/or ignored.

·         As a result or due to some other reasons an unspecified amount of resources were spent by the project and the company on employing an alternative BIM, that was neither in line with what the client had asked for, nor had Gammon in house capabilities to deliver it.

·         An external consultant was hired to assist with the implementation of this non-complying BIM and engaged over a lengthy period of time.

·         I joined the company when it was close to the end of its 5^th month of the contract. After my discovery of the mandated BIM and the 3 month cut-off I questioned the strategy of the project delivery team and the guidance given to them by the director in charge of BIM.

·         The struggle between them and me lasted around 6-8 weeks.

·         I foolishly assumed that the people in charge of the project truly wanted to tick all the boxes the client presented to them with minimal extra cost involved.

As in complying with the clients requirements, but also minimising the risk of unacceptable claims in the future and assisting the project delivery.

·         I had come up with various options of various risks and costs associated with each.

·         While all of this was happening the ‘alternative BIM’ set up by the BIM director carried on even though the goals or indeed results of it were not fully disclosed to me, yet all of it was technically under my portfolio. (The Head of Innovation reported to the BIM Director)

·         Even taking all its shortcoming into account, the MTR BIM spec had its heart on the right place and implemented correctly (or at least with the original intent intact) would have given the clients certainty beyond that normally awarded by contractors engaged on their projects.

·         The fact, that 8 months in their own contract Gammon was still trying to ‘all but wiggle out of this’ requirement is a testimony to their ‘special relationship’ with MTR.

·         The fact that they attempted to still get me take full responsibility for this non-compliance is a totally different story.

·         Or maybe it is not, just another part of the same one.

·         Either way, I got kicked out because I refused to implement a half-arsed approach to ‘a pretend BIM’, on the false pretence of saving money while probably much more money was being spent freely on BIM initiatives on this same project that benefited little more than the BIM director’s ego and his relationship with the alternative software and service supplier.

Everyone but me appears to treat this little incident as ‘water under the bridge’ and it could easily be seen a bit pretentious of me to think that me listing of these events will give Mr Andrew Hayward; (Balfour Beatty plc: Head of Ethics, Risk and Assurance) any new knowledge of what this ‘BIM thing’  is or may yet do to his ethics, risk and even assurance portfolio in the future.

But it may just get him to read up a bit on it and not just accept the assurance of any-old ‘BIM expert’ (even if he carries the reputation of a ‘trusted, talented director’) that things have all been done by the book.

Hong Kong may be a bit out of sight and out of mind but I’m not.

picture from here

http://www.ibclegal.com/event/world-bribery-and-corruption-compliance-conference/speaker/id/andrew-hayward_balfour-beatty-plc

                                                                                                                                                  

Isn’t someone missing here? (What is my problem with Autodesk?)

I get regular updates through my FB page on how the big event of The Hong Kong Institute of Building Information Modelling (HKIBIM) planned for the 13^th of December is shaping up.

See, not long ago I was setting up myself to attempt to become ‘a professional member’ of that organisation – saved some money on the application process by my quick exit from the town and anyhow, was not rating my chances high for passing the ‘bar’ (it was set pretty high!);

Still, the updates on successful sponsorships keep coming, so it looks like it will be quite an event.

There is one organisation visibly missing from the list (as published so far) of corporate sponsors and it is, Autodesk.

If I’m going to be cynical, I’ll predict that they will come in last minute with the overarching ‘super-sponsorship’ (whatever colour of ‘a gem’ that may be) or better still – no sponsorship at all, after all, most of the speakers will be falling over backwards to advertise their products, anyway.

Autodesk has sewn up the HK market. The global AEC too.

What is my problem with Autodesk?

In the end, they are ‘just’ a software provider, successful at what they are doing, why can’t I just let them be.

Their foot soldiers are pretty agreeable people world-wide. I’ve met many, worked with some.

I’ve learned AutoCAD on DOS, in 3D with no mouse in the early 1990s.

I owned professional licences of AutoCAD, Revit, Studio Max for many years.

I had my first training in Revit in 2004 and get around it OK.

My biggest problem is not that Revit is a ‘dog of a software’.

Although, it is.

Even if I consider the vastly superior ArchiCAD and the Bentley/Microstation range, all the more so Tekla and everything Trimble had collected over the last year or two - these tools, all together are still ‘so last century’.

As I do my own soul-searching on when did the AEC and I lose our connection so irrevocably, I go back to those late 80s-early 1990s, when things could go one way or other, not just for me, but AEC digital tool developments – probably not surprisingly in line with world-wide political changes.

3 things I can point to as relevant had their start in those years related to the global/big scale AEC:

1/ tendency to work hands-off was born (I call this large scale illiteracy)

2/ multi-national mega-sized consultancies were starting staking out new territories and were more often than not run by MBA’s as opposed to technically savvy people with some business skills.

3/ information management tool providers (unlike in manual drafting days) got given an unprecedented opening to influence a globally active industry.

The 1980-s AutoCAD was a good product for its time and the AEC industry;

It supported the thinking of the ‘old master builders’, thinking and working in 3D.

By the early nineties though, they stumbled on a much better recipe than pushing AEC into the digital 3D world.

They created the role of the ‘CAD manager’ and hooked them onto their products, or even more importantly the feeling of ‘power’ that these, up-to-that-point mostly average ex-draftsmen could now exercise over both their management and everyone below.

From that point, things were lost for the AEC – like smokers addicted at young age, these foot-soldiers become Autodesk’s slaves and savours for the following 2 decades.

For a while they backed the use of AutoCAD 2D to the hilt, no matter how much damage senseless production of uncoordinated 2D drawings and unthinking CAD people did to the industry, projects, clients.

When the pressure got a bit too much to ‘move with time’, (2 year old kids were playing 3D based computer games) they bought Revit (the business and the product) and have ever since been half-heartedly developing it.

They had various stages of marketing themselves as ‘Solution suppliers’, ‘trusted technology partners’ and whatnot – their loyal CAD managers got upgraded to BIM Managers – often even elevated to be the exclusive  ‘Change agents’ that ruled over highly sophisticated looking  ‘evolutionary or revolutionary‘ change management processes overseen by the ‘masters of the CAD/BIM universe’, Autodesk.

But, they did no good for the industry.

So finally, it is crystal clear for me, what my problem is with Autodesk and to large extents with all of the other current, mainstream AEC information management tool-and-system providers.

Knowingly or just by following the ‘crowds’ they all had become the ‘manipulators’ of the industry, and have a large share of responsibility to carry for why it is in such a bad shape, as it currently is.

There may have been a scantily clad ‘Emperor’ walking the industry when Autodesk first entered the market (in the eighties) and this is by no means their fault that the guy was a bit under-dressed, but over the last 2 decades the Emperor had lost all of its clothes while the Autodesk-machine has weaved the most beautifulness of garments around him and is doing fine from this financial/business/manipulation exercise globally, thank you very much.

Autodesk, as my first love and the biggest of cheaters is my number one disappointment and the one that wears the most of guilt in my mind of being a wicked manipulator.

The rest is not far behind, even though they may argue that the inertia and strength needing to fight the big boys took too much out of them to do anything else.

Sorry, you are all in the same arena and just by fluffing up the hot-air balloon of unrealistic, mostly undeliverable, make-believe, choice-driven, play nicely BIM probably as guilty as Autodesk of manipulating the industry into a corner, I don’t know if it can recover from, any time soon.

Trust and confidentiality

A friend of mine asked me recently, how come I was not worried about being unemployable for life due to the ‘things I wrote about certain companies’ in my blog-posts over the last couple of years?

He also added that it would be a ‘brave bastard’ (his word) to employ me in any way after the things ‘I’ve been dishing up on certain ‘large’ entities…’

Jokingly, he finished his thoughts with questioning himself and if he should trust me any-more and at all  with any personal data – in view of my ‘behaviour’.

(this is a ‘seriously close’ friendship that has been in existence for close to 3 decades)

Forgive me, and my naivety, but what has the world come to?

The last time that I remember that I knowingly mislead anyone was when my daughter cut her knee on a jagged piece of mosaic (and I’ll tell that story separately one day, no big deal, really) –

I am as straight as they come.

I have a terrible memory to keep even the shortest lies going-on  and look after ’made up’ stories, so I say things as they are, keeps it easy for me.

Is this really such a big crime? I see fraud - I report it – if it gets not acted-on (in-house) eventually I write it up to the public to make its judgement on it.

Where I see negligence, incompetence that causes other parties lose money, I point it out.

First to the ones involved; then, if no one cares, to the ones above.

If the impacted party is too removed (like a public-client or society at large) I try to get the average ‘Joe Blogs’ take ownership of issues and start to care.

Mostly unsuccessfully.

It is construction after all. Concrete, bricks and mortar. Very un-sexy.

Not rocket science, not even medical stuff where answers to tricky questions would mean the difference between life and death.

We build buildings, small and large and the questions I raise are most often about how clients’ money is spent in construction processes. Spent or squandered;

Mostly wasted through blatant negligence.

And quite often we do talk of a lot of money

And more often than not, ‘people’ do not want to know.

Construction is, as it is. Everyone knows: Uncertain.

Bless it’s heart AND keep it that way!

So much easier for everyone to keep their highly paid jobs!

Still, just because I publicly say any particular company is incompetent to build any building to a set budget and set time-frame, and the impacted party is more than happy 'to forgive', should I be the one and the only one left penalised?

Should I be the one to see all my friends shy away from telling me little friendly secrets, because I'm a certified ‘nark’?

This ‘fact’ is hard to accept.

It would be the other way in almost any other industry

Bring me the Mafia, any day!

One can be a defence attorney or part of a public prosecution team and have a proper social life.

One can work as an auditor for any IRD and still get workplace gossip handed down freely.

.

One can even be an ‘f…’-en parking warden and still keep seeing friends.

Why can’t I speak frankly about the global AEC and stay employable, let alone retain a handful of friends that will share a joke or two with me?

Is it because this industry IS more rotten than the medical, judicial and political sector combined together?

Could be! Think about it!

Go back to that ‘watchdog idea’ I wrote about a couple of weeks ago just as a reminder…

http://debunkthebim.blogspot.ae/2013/09/cops-and-robbers-in-aec-has-anybody.html

(picture here is taken 24.5 year ago when I become an architect –soon to turn into an unemployable, highly over-qualified, dangerous nark! Maybe not as soon as I faired , but it happened, anyway)

Blog-post number 500! The truth is (almost) always in the numbers….

There was a special topic I had been saving up for this nice ‘round number’ as a gesture of goodwill of providing some globally interesting ‘food for thought’ for the steadily increasing group of my blog-readers, instead of posting another one of my usual self-centred servings of whinging;

It was to be a follow-up to the ‘Secret Google magic will save the global AEC’ story from a week or two ago and it was going to be titled something along the line of:

‘Take a page out of Gehry’s book Google, and then learn something out of it…’

See, there is something really nice in sharing this personal milestone of 500 blog-posts with 2 famous entities.

Frank Gehry, the architect and I go back a long way.

Not that he would be able to tell me from a bar of soap;

Google on the other hand knows more about me than my husband and mother jointly do, and that is quite an achievement, in itself.

In preparation for the story I even made a trip to the first Gehry designed residential building in Hong Kong before leaving the city a week or so ago. (see pictures);

But then, again my pathetic little survival game interfered with the celebration plans and I decided to dedicate this special number to another special topic and put up (yet another) challenge for the wider audience.

Faithful readers will remember that not that long ago, I had a whirlwind affair with a well-known entity. (Gammon Construction in Hong Kong);

The affair ended in tears, (mine) when I got kicked out because I alleged some wrong doing by some pretty high-level people within the company. That is my story anyway, the company denies this.

I accepted the job with the named company in the first place partly due to its big-named parents, so I thought that at least the ‘family’ will look into what is happening in this case I would have classified as a typical case of ‘whistle blowing’.

But no, after repeated begging of both sides to investigate, still no progress.

My latest request asking them to at least release what their policies are for such cases has been left un-responded to, too;

(my email request quoted here)

Dear all,

Could you please ASAP send me a copy of your company’s (Gammon, Balfour Beatty and Jardines) official ‘whistle blower protection policy’ and any associated procedures that may be in place to enforce such policy?

If you are not able to do this personally, please provide me with the legal department’s contacts that can.

I’d appreciate receiving these 3 documents by the end of today.

Regards,

Zolna Murray

So, this brought to mind the thought that begs belief.

Could these three companies, individually and jointly not have such policies in place at all?

Remember, these are not small companies!

The number of people they employ according to their own and other websites are close to 300,000 people.

That is a lot of people, almost like the joint population of Wellington and Christchurch in New Zealand.

Even my beloved Novi Sad’s (in Serbia) population is below this.

Would that many people, working in at least 80 countries (as per BB’s claim) have really no protection any time that any ‘standard employee’ put their hand up and says:

‘Hey Mr Company there is something really fishy going on here, it may cost you a lot of money in the future, can you please look into it?’

Or is this just a Gammon privilege to have its big parents close their eyes to such lack of action discretely?

So, here is my challenge:

I invite anyone from the named companies to write to me (zolna.murray@gmail.com) and send me their own experiences of these companies’ whistleblowing policies in action.

Or at least copies of such documents if they really exist. (full confidentiality, totally assured)

Once I can clarify if my case is really a unique one, I’ll reward everyone that had been reading any of my 500 or so blog post and still comes back to them with the promised Gehry/Google story.

Or maybe even earlier if it takes too long to get that data together.

References:

http://www.slideshare.net/zolnamurray/references-to-article-legal

Is the ‘rarefied bubble of advanced best (BIM) practice’ of the UK AEC under a threat suddenly?

I copped a bit of flack when I wrote in my blog recently about the status of the UK BIM being the ‘rarefied bubble of advanced best (BIM) practice’ – even though I dutifully quoted the original source of the claim.

Barely a month after this confident statement the author is somewhat rattled, his latest writing says:

“BIM is a very seductive concept, but the allure of solving the ills of industry should not distract us from recognising the challenges associated with implementation.”

I love the world ‘challenge’ – it so often is associated with BIM.

 While in some other fields it may mean ‘some difficulty in achieving desired results’ when it comes to BIM, more often than not, it means ‘don’t bother, can’t be done…can pretend for a while to try it, anyway’.

There is a point in every committed BIM-mer’s  life, when the big question pops up – often totally unexpectedly, sort of coming from nowhere;

And from that point his/her life will never be the same again - regardless on which one of the two possible paths s/he chooses to accept to follow in the future.

This is the point when one realises that ‘Santa does not exist’ and the ‘tooth fairy really is your mum’. Just, translated to BIM – the entire idea of a single model co-operation based BIM is as far from reality as the little blue people of the Smurfs world are.

This time, as Mr Barker calls for leadership for BIM to happen I may not be the only one noticing a drop of confidence.

I am a bit sorry for him softening his tone – though I’m always ready to jump in and criticise – he sounds like a really Intelligent fellow, writes pretty agreeably – someone worthwhile of giving the benefit of a doubt.

And then, look at his title: ‘Peter Barker is managing director of BIM Academy’ – I do respect it, yet how funny is that on the contrary, myself,  the more I know about BIM the less of a title I want with it.
I just want to be known as a sort of an ‘honest doer’.

Dear Mr Barker, I am so sorry to see the word ‘challenge’ in your writing.

I do hope you reconsider and re-establish that ‘rarefied bubble’ from the beginning of the story.

It gave me such a buzz.

http://www.building.co.uk/communities/construction/bim/bim-needs-leadership/5062269.article#!

Secret Google Project Could Transform Construction Industry

"Secret Google Project Could Transform Construction Industry" – is the next big thing, wait for it! Numerous friends and acquaintances have alerted me to this news and I…wait for it a bit longer..,  well …I ‘Googled it’ (check for the results, yourself!);

And not one to get easily surprised by anything anymore (in spite of the latest happenings in my life) I can’t believe my eyes, for what I read!

Yes, I am going to be the Grinch, knock the thing straight down even without knowing what ‘it’ is! And bloody well will stay to be the Grinch of this particular topic…Not just a cautious sceptic, but a prefect Grinch that will say: bollocks!

It’s like if the twitter guys suddenly claimed to have discovered the cure for cancer or Richard Branson flew unexpectedly to the moon, oh yes, the latter might just happen… but really…the magic pill for the AEC industry?

Has this AEC thing really sunk this low?  

I can just about say that no communist propaganda of the past could have no longer competed with the rubbish that some media is prepared to publish about the  AEC these days.

Talk about dark ages.

Sad.

Get real guys! Google was smart enough to drop Sketchup while it was still saleable.

There is no magic pill for the AEC, cloud based or ploughing the darkest of dirt.

It is the industry itself,  is the one that will have to roll up its sleeves and decide if it is going to carry on as a gambling pit or start to play by some more scientific rules.

And Google will be of no/ little help until that dilemma is decided on, globally, no matter on how many ‘o’s it puts in its name.

It all started with a surprise rejection.

No, it was not really a surprise, that…

"The HKIBIM Conference Working Group regrets to inform you that your paper identified below will not be included in the program of the HKIBIM Hong Kong BIM Conference 2011 on 25-Nov-2011.

Paper Title: An alternative form of use of Building Information Modelling (BIM) : BIM Forensics, theory and practice

Author: Zolna Murray

The paper is not accepted as the paper review panel considered that the topic of the paper submitted is not fully aligned with the focus of the conference."

Totally understandable. After all, the conference is being promoted with the following PR masterpiece:

 The HKIBIM Hong Kong BIM Conference 2013 is the premier event and 4th Annual Conference for experienced BIM and AEC professionals to demonstrate the practical use of Building Information Modelling (BIM) processes using real cases and an ideal networking opportunities with experienced BIM professionals, Executives and practitioners in the industry.

What was I thinking, Forensic BIM?... in Hong Kong?

Anyway… This was just the start. I did look up the programme, a nice line-up of familiar faces and an old favourite to top it off.

Not a speaker, sorry, but a building.

Between the 10:50 – 11:10 on the day of the conference a Mr Stuart Bull, Managing Director, BIM Consulting  will be speaking on the topic of the

Sydney Opera House : BIM for the past, present and future

Over the last 2 decades it had become a bit of a hobby (obsession?) of mine to take an interest in the creation and re-creation of that particular building, to the extent that while researching for an academic paper on the use of Parametric Digital Tools in architectural design (wait for it, in 1996!) I exchanged a pair of letters with Mr Joern Utzon, himself.

So, as I was reminiscing about the time of my first attempt to master Computervision’s CADDS5 through 14 massive printed manuals to enable me do some speculative work on Utzon’s famous shells, I remembered another publication, though much smaller I devoured enthusiastically at the same time: John Yeomans’ The Other Taj Mahal.

And the thought of the little book brought me back to the present.

According to this website, http://acms.sl.nsw.gov.au/item/itemDetailPaged.aspx?itemID=153186

Yeomans played an important role in the History of the Sydney Opera House. His book about controversies surrounding the architecture, construction and design of the Sydney Opera House, ‘The other Taj Mahal: what happened to the Sydney Opera House’ was first published by Longmans in 1968. He won the Walkley national award for headline writing in 1987.

That WAS investigative journalism. And it was done about a building.

Can you match it with anything like that these days?

And forget the HKBIM conference; I never wanted to go there, anyway – the latest similar one I organised myself and funded it to a minimum of 300K HK$.

Claim Managers

The BIM Utopia of the UK Government Mandated BIM: When Ex CAD Managers will rule over ex Claim Managers

There is one thing about the UK Mandated BIM thing that is as certain as anything – you do not question it;

If you do, you get the quintessential army of the most serious of BIM zealous-followers  descend  on you with all their might questioning your questions, so much so that you will wish that you just accepted straight up right, that the UK BIM idea was the best idea ever, since sliced bread or even well before that, around the time the wheel was discovered.

The theory works reasonably well for a while, once you get over the ‘triangle-or wedge’ and process all the residual doubt left from knowing the current practices far too well.

Still, there is one thing that keeps on hanging around,. The role, of the ‘claim manager’. Or contract manager, or the QS, dressed in the cloak of whatever colour you like as long as it is is closely related to guessing the best value of work done/or to be done by whoever hires him/her to do so.

And these guys are not cheap. And are very active. Have a look at various forums, pretty vocal too!

What Is going to happen to this body of specialist so vital for the UK industry at present once this squeaky clean BIM thing comes on board? So scientific and exact with no room for the relaxed padding the ex-claim managers are so used to? Anyone prepared to quesss?

The year is 2016.

The inverted (alternative) BIM triangle

When I first glanced over Pierre Venter’s comment from within a linkedin forum (link below) – 

I thought: exactly! 

Then I realised, he was not thinking the same way as I was when I initially tried to understand this graph/ic and immediately wanted to flip it upside down;

For me, BIM means literally, how Building Information is managed within the Industry;

Not just on what media or with what tools or by whom within the process but how its management adds or removes risks from projects and how that risks then get distributed to the various participants?

This may be a foreign concept for most people, but within the AEC everything lives or dies by how ‘information’ is managed i.e. used, abused and misused.

So, when I first saw the illustration, I thought that it was meant to be describing the development of BIM from a set level in time to a much higher level over time. It included CAD too, so I assumed the start-time was that of the emergence of CAD and related to ‘real (actual) time’.

By now it has been proven that I read the graph in a totally wrong way, for whatever reason, the closest may be what many implied, ‘I just did not get it’;

Let me note it here, that I still strongly believe the real (as opposed to an aspired to) level of BIM maturity changing over a set timeframe and across the AEC industry is worthwhile to be represented on a graph, and how that one would show a falling trend, no matter how many new tools and initiatives have emerged over the last 2 decades that have been added into the process of BIM and qualified as progresses.

So, to satisfy my need for such a graph I drew up a simple diagram and turned it into a slideshow:

http://www.slideshare.net/zolnamurray/the-alternative-bim-triangle

The fact that I use BIM interchangeable for BIModelling  and BIManagement is that in reality the two ARE inseparable.

There is no AEC project info management without ‘modelling’ there never had been. Before the emergence of the smart ‘multi D models’ of the current digital world, the models of yet-to be built buildings and other creatures of the AEC industry lived in their creators’ heads (pre CAD) and/or represented through scale models and/or drawn projections.

Modelling in AEC had not started with the official birth of the BIM acronym, not even with the development of the first digital modelling software.

Arguing to the contrary mocks a long line of history and the achievements of many competent people on one side, but also prevents any progress for those active nowadays because it is blinded to the real issues that stop the contemporary BIM from being effective.

http://www.linkedin.com/groupItem?view=&gid=98421&item=258616690&type=member&commentID=160669475&trk=hb_ntf_COMMENTED_ON_GROUP_DISCUSSION_YOU_CREATED#commentID_160669475

What is a word worth?

I am a New Zealander because I chose to be.

Proud of it in spite of quite a few obvious flaws and weaknesses.

It is a pretty little place with nice people, although it gets a bit carried away with outrageous claims from time to time. For instance lots of the foreigners who hear the “100% pure” can’t help cringing. 

There was an article in the NZ Herald a couple of days ago headed:

“The Land Of Bad Milk and Fake Honey

Britain's Food Standards Agency has issued a nationwide warning about misleading and illegal claims made on the labels of manuka honey jars, in a worrying blow to the fast-growing Kiwi industry. ”

Showing great timing, the same paper fired back at the British, with a picture of a fishmonger’s display claiming ‘fresh NZ snapper’.

Joking aside; these stories all raise the same questions:

Our world is highly manipulated by the media. Are there some words that have a higher value or weight than others?  Should companies that use them lightly be held accountable?

Words like natural, fresh, pure, honest…

When one or some of these words are used to describe a product, do we as consumers have the right to expect a certain something in the product? Or do natural, fresh, pure or honest depend on small print, or interpretation?

What about the word: integrity?

If Integrity is claimed, does the world read “100% honesty”?

Or is 40% honesty adequate at times?

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=11113964

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/entertainment/news/article.cfm?c_id=1501119&objectid=11117924

Cops and robbers in AEC, has anybody seen a Watch dog?

If the game is ‘cops and robbers’, there have to be some bad guys.

Unlike in the children's game of hiding and chasing, in which the participants pretend to be police and criminals – and almost universally everyone wants to be the good guy, the AEC industry’s version of it is the exact opposite.

There are really no cops in the AEC game to speak of.

Historically the role used to be that of the architect, next the project managers claimed it, more recently the practitioners of BIM technologies.

Unfortunately all have fallen from every type of a watchdog role. There has been compromise, corruption; independence has gone, integrity too.

I’m not saying everyone working in the AEC is bad - I never have and never will. 

Just, that the ones that make the rules have lost the plot and it is no longer fun to play the game even for those that do have the means to get into it (i.e. savvy AEC clients);

So, when Graham and I set up MMA, what we had in mind was the kernel of the ‘good guys agency’ of the global AEC, a private company with two objectives, to tell things as they are for those that ask for true advice within the AEC and are prepared to pay for it and to provide a spring board for talented, smart, experienced, capable people in the industry to do a fulfilling job well and advance their careers.

No, we are not talking about a non-profit organisation.

This is to be a proper, robust business and will fight the current players on their own turf, playing by their rules but with much better weapons.

How are we going to fund this company?

Well, we were going to grow it organically saving up slowly from other employment.

Unfortunately, that was not to be, so instead we decided to raise the funds from two unlikely sources.

One is a somewhat unusual IPO – watch this space for details to be published over the next couple of days.

The other will be the establishing of an ‘industry-guilt-tax’ we will be collecting to provide the seed money.

A couple of large global players are in the queue to be the first to contribute and we will unveil them this week.

(picture drawn by my Nephew Boki)

Global AEC is limping, hobbling. It should be handed over to our children. Turn it back into a viable career choice and let them thrive and contribute to its recovery!

Prologue: This blog-post is written for the millennia generation +/- one or two;

They do not like reading long stories, I will work on a shorter, more digestible one for them – something that can be tweeted or texted;

This is aimed at their parents and caregivers, who should still be able to handle a 2 page article.

Nathan Zraicat looks proudly over the Melbourne construction site as the photo gets taken (REF 01), with his hardhat, safety vest and glasses, a poster boy for the AEC industry and the company he works for, Leighton. (REF 02)

Meanwhile, half a world away, his father, Elias Zraicat (REF 03) in the role of the  Executive General Manager, UAE, Oman and Northern Gulf of HLG, another Leighton Group associated company, is busy tidying up the mess he has been left by his predecessors.

It must have been a very big mess. The company’s top management made a hard decision to relocate the project director of one of its key projects in Hong Kong, by now publicly known to be in a bit of a trouble itself. (REF 04)

While I look down the big hole that Mr Zraicat left behind in Hong Kong, (the unfortunate West Kowloon Terminal of the Express Rail in Hong Kong, (REF 05)) I can’t help being jealous at his parenting success.

There is the proof, clear as the sun, his son steadily walking in daddy’s path, towards a flash Leighton future, safely tucked away in peaceful Australia, while I drag mine around the world and have no idea how I am going to feed them next month, let alone get them through university.

As well as differences in our parenting success rate, Mr Zraicat and I have very little in common.

For example, for decades I’ve been working on exposing the story of a deeply corrupt global AEC industry.

Forget kitchen alterations, bathroom refits or even new houses built for individual clients.

The big money and murky deals are higher up, where the mega projects of our built environment are arranged.

The media do not seem to care. The public are given no hints.

“No blood in it” they might think, or “it’s not tainted milk powder poisoning babies”.

The big money and murky deals are only about building our most valuable collective assets: hospitals, schools, roads and rails.

No big deal.

My audience from within the industry that I have entertained over the last 20 years with my theories of the corrupt AEC had almost always split unevenly onto two groups;

The first, a large majority would say ‘no, it is not’ and believe it.

They’d carry on obligingly climbing the limited staircase of their careers by keeping their profiles low and sticking to forever designing cheap office layouts, calculate bending moments or size sewer pipes.

The second group, a small minority would also say ‘no it is not’ but would not believe or live by this statement. They’d ignore everything they learned in their architectural/engineering/construction management schools and focus on building one thing only: their careers.

You’d recognise these guys on the boards of all major AEC companies, often light blue shirted and with loudish ties, bald and pot-bellied – or tanned and over-trained, inevitably male.

Unable and unwilling to fit into either groups over 2 and a half decades ago, I set off on a doomed road of building up a career in AEC while retaining some self-defined level of personal and professional integrity.

First I put one house up to fund this quest, then another, then another.

The proceeds all went eventually, also lost in the game were the various companies I poured my energy, time and money into, trying to bite the ankle of this ‘loosely defined monster’ and move forward while keeping the family afloat in New Zealand for close to 18 years.

Ending up with nothing but chased by a bank with a half a million dollar GFC-fuelled  debt – I set off globetrotting – dragging the family behind.

Over the next 5 years I managed repeatedly to land respectable roles within respectable companies – only to lose them one way or other due to identifying and exposing high levels of negligence, incompetence and corruption.

After the last one, getting fired within 12 weeks, my personal best – I found myself at the end of this road.

Now, you can join the queue of many that will quickly conclude that I am basically unemployable within the AEC, incompetent to hold a job down and am trying to cover these flaws up with all sorts of made up ‘conspiracy theories’.

Neat and convenient, yet the facts were falling in exactly the opposite direction.

But even without the facts and proofs, and even with taking me out of the picture, don’t you think that there is something very fishy about this industry?

And what is most fishy, is how it treats ‘the young and bright’ that end up in their midst.

Unlike Nathan from the beginning of his story, most cannot look forward to bright steady rises through the ranks of the corporate ladder.

Droves of young, bright and enthusiastic would be architects/engineers/construction managers rise from their schools to the industry. They are then quickly hit by the reality that this industry punishes anything that has to do with innovation, progress or threatens the SQ in any way, for those that have their paths to happy retirement planned out decades in advance.

So, these young talents end up in two groups as well. The first will pull their heads in and join the fathers and mothers of previous generations that have fallen in line accepting that things just have to be the way they are.

They will end up forever drawing door schedules, create thousands of meaningless CAD drawings and left being manipulated into quasi BIM monkeys by their superiors, themselves often only foot soldiers to the truly powerful top management.

The others with a bit of spark and integrity will leave.

And the cycle will carry on like this, the next generation of intake will have even less bright and ambitious ones contemplating any questioning of the modus operandi, moving the industry even further into corruption and anarchy.

And the public will still not know, it is not like they are tainting milk powder or making land mines.

This must stop, for the sake of the generations to come!

Hand over the global AEC to our children as a viable career choice where they can thrive and contribute to its recovery!

May also want to check this link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=10wglvalScw&feature=youtu.be

References:

http://www.slideshare.net/zolnamurray/references-to-article-leighton-1?utm_source=ss&utm_medium=upload&utm_campaign=quick-view

FORTUNE TELLING OR FORENSIC SCIENCE? What is MMA really about?

Let’s suspend the complaining over the huge amounts of public money going into private pockets for a day, and look into what Murray Murray Associates (MMA) are about and how we are going to raise the standards of the global AEC .

We have been following the fortune-tellers forensically for the past two decades and know the field well,  

Most of the imagery found in the attached slideshow is from projects where we had been  hands on.

We have honed our skills working in many regions of the world.

Put simply, see us as the private investigators of the AEC industry;

When commissioned we prepare a report for our clients, based on the documents, so that they can see exactly what they are buying (or selling) both technically and financially, and make informed choices. 

There are many companies professing to provide such services already, but they usually fall short on one of the three critical components that MMA have:

Technical skills/knowledge, contractual savvy and total independence;

For more detail refer to the slideshow here:

http://www.slideshare.net/zolnamurray/mma-intro-20130830

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NbR4SWgPD-s&feature=youtu.be

also the press release we put out a couple of days ago:

MURRAY MURRAY ASSOCIATES

Independent Forensic BIM Consultants

We are one of the most experienced and trusted independent BIM consultancy operating in the worldwide AEC market, and are now specialising in Forensic work;

Wherever you work within the AEC field globally, we can help you address any BIM related issue you come across.

We work for private and public AEC clients, including governments;

General contractors, big and small and the entire spectrum of subcontractors.

We do not work- for or represent consultants.

When we need technical or other expertise that are not within our core offerings, we source them for our clients independently and in a totally transparent way.

BIM or NO BIM, if you participate within the AEC industry as one of the groups of our client-base it is likely that you will be losing money in the claim processes, regardless of what side of the claim-game you are sitting on.

It is a game, it is often gaming, so the results depend more on deals than fact.

Our objective is to assist our clients play this game in the most informed way, by providing them with the best possible forensic BIM tools.

If you reached the last line of our introduction and are still not sure what BIM stands for, you need our assistance, urgently. Your margins are likely to be much leaner than they should be.

zolna.murray@gmail.com

2013 August 23

The Contract is (the) King in Hong Kong.

"I know what you are doing. But, you are going on about it totally the wrong way..."
 he concludes with a hint of sadness in his voice. 

Sad? Me too – well, a little; disapproval of a fellow BIM-mer does cut, but life goes on and on.

One must carry on doing what one must do; “when the kids need new shoe’s . . .” do you answer the call?
or “when a 'niche' industry like the global AEC pleads for a radical shake up . . .” do you answer?

If I wanted to be really poetic I could say, that the “kids of this world need a new AEC industry” as this one is on the edge of a vortex, but let's just park that question for another day. 

Back to my conversation partner, who points out he once was a supporter of mine, unfortunately no longer.

Before signing off, he leaves me with an important lesson, half said. 

He implies that because I was shown the best path for Hong Kong, but took another, I'll never get another BIM job here.

He must mean a commission, since I'm now an independent contractor; forgive the omission.

Things can move along in Hong Kong  surprisingly quickly. 

A Very Important Person can overlook the current status of my CV, it is a pretty live and dynamically changing document, you see.

He may be right about my bleak future, he and others – well I might not have heard threats but there were cautions, “be careful” etc

When you arrive to work in Hong Kong, as I had, just over 3 months ago – you are bound to be told to be aware, that if you want to be successful here, you really need to understand the place, the culture, what makes it tick.

Hong Kong is about money and deals, they say, forget the contracts.

Old habits die hard, so in the new job I still work hard, forget about deals and the small print of my employment contract and am loyal to the company and my family.

Life is easy when your guiding principles are simple to define and not in conflict with each other.

I keep an eye on the money, so we can buy at least another year of stability for our kids and to earn as much as it is possible for the company that has hired me, not just in this year but for years to come, by using my skills and experience to guide them around the minefield of the yet-to eventuate Hong Kong AEC.

12 weeks into the ‘dream job of my life’ the ‘Contract’ rears its head; it says that I can be fired there and then or to keep it strictly PC ‘my services are no longer required’.

Over the following week at least half a dozen people assure me:

‘The contract is King in Hong Kong’;

Are there three sides here?
There are two sides and Aside to every contract; it’s an Interesting place, yes?

The MTR - HK 65 Billion BIM experiment!

Here is the third instalment to the MTR-BIM experiment trilogy;
Best to go backwards, first see the summary slideshow (or even better, email us for the narrated one to zolna.murray@gmail.com and you won't even need to read the script) - then read the summary background before you dig down to the detailed data.
Real fun stuff, trust us! Scary too!

http://www.slideshare.net/zolnamurray/mtr-65-bil-experiment
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mc-9BBGM7-M