Post pandemic AEC: BIM to the rescue? Don’t get your hopes up!

‘We are experiencing unprecedented times’- flows from every tap I turn on in my miniature home.

Digital and otherwise. No-one knows what’s on the other side.

One thing is almost certain, there will continue to be some need for building/construction for whoever survives.

It will be tough times, so the survivors will have to do their best to make the most of resources, natural, building, human and digital at hand.

Global uptake of BIM will rise, companies will see the opportunity to clean up their operations under this ‘rebirthing’ and work smarter.

Maybe. Maybe not.

As often is with ‘unprecedented’, people try to relate to precedence for reference, my personal experience is, that tough times don’t generally help AEC improve on itself.

When things go well, there is so much work, that there is no need to do things better.

When things don’t go well, there is so little work that all available effort needs to go into relationship/building-retaining, schmoozing and scrambling. No time to do things better.

I can just about see my friend Djordje nodding with mild sarcasm as he is reading the above:

Yep, Zolna – positive as always.

Just for Djordje, a little memory from the past – with a bit more hope:

In 2004 as an employee of the NZ distributer of ArchiCAD, I was in charge of organising a string of extremely well attended seminars held by David Sutherland, the director of Fender Katsalidis, designers of the Eureka Tower in Melbourne and celebrated power-users of the software.

So successful was Mr Sutherland in selling the concept of BIM (or VC as it was still better known then) to the architects of NZ that even after many years had passed I was repeatedly told by the director of the competing software distributer (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 when they decided to go ‘cold turkey’ 3D.

If I remember correctly, he was referring to a global crisis that forced the management to reduce the number of its people and they went form over a hundred down to a staff of 30.

I don’t wish on anyone to lose their jobs; I just hope that something good will come out of this crisis.

For the AEC. For BIM.