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.