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

THE WEST KOWLOON TERMINAL – QUESTIONS ANYONE?

If you thought that my post yesterday had little to do with you, please take another look…

The headline was “WEST KOWLOON TERMINUS LATE BY A YEAR AND A HALF” …

followed by a LOT of writing and references…

What on earth has happened to Zolna’s blog?

You may have wondered if I had finally and totally lost it.

If longwinded, I wanted the korero to set up the facts and framework for a simple yet extremely powerful story.

A case, which should be of interest to anyone that has a stake in construction – project owners, public or private funders, consultants and contractors of every sort, anywhere in the world.

BIM could be in the mix.

Today, I’ll give the concise version of it, with a new title

THE WEST KOWLOON TERMINAL – QUESTIONS ANYONE?

MTR runs the Hong Kong metro rail network. MTR Corporation Limited is a company listed on the Hong Kong Exchange and Hang Seng Index; it is also a major landlord and property developer in Hong Kong and internationally.

MTR has called for the development of The Shatin to Central Link (SCL) as a strategic metro line.

The railway scheme was gazetted on 26 November 2010 under the Railways Ordinance and authorised by the Chief Executive in Council on 27 March 2012. The Finance Committee of the Legislative Council endorsed the funding of the SCL project on 11 May 2012. 

Construction of the SCL has commenced in 2012. The project is expected to be completed in 2020.

The total construction cost of the entire SCL project is estimated to be about HK$64.9 billion

(in September 2011 prices)

14 contracts have already been awarded to individual contractors or joint ventures.

Most, if not all of those tenders have likely included a contractual obligation to deliver a BIM model, based on the design/tendered documents produced within 3 months of their contract being awarded to them.

This BIM model had to be fully compliant with MTR’s prescribed standards. The intention was that there would be 3 months to identify troubles i.e. all possible causes of project delays.

For 13 out of the 14 contracts the 3 month cut off has passed, on average by about 8 months.

The question is this:

Can the MTR publicly confirm that each contractor that accepted the obligation to deliver a BIM model within its SCL contract has delivered it and if not, what remedial measures have been taken by MTR?

WEST KOWLOON TERMINUS NORTH TO MISS TRAIN BY 562 DAYS

WEST KOWLOON TERMINUS NORTH TO MISS TRAIN BY 562 DAYS

The following comments are regarding two articles, both published in the Construction Post

(HK & Macau)

Author for each is Mr Danny Chung, Editor, The Construction Post

Article 1: (May the 15th 2013)

 ‘West Kowloon Terminus North To Miss Train By 562 Days’ (REF 01)

Article 2: (August 13^th, 2013)

 “Adopt BIM For Better Project Management, Says Gammon”; (REF 09)

Article 1 discussed the projected delay to the completion of the West Kowloon Terminus North of the Express Rail Link.

It re-quoted extracts published by Local Chinese newspapers Ming Pao and Apple Daily, that predicted a project over-run of 562 days, based on an estimate by the main contractor, Leighton-Gammon Joint Venture.

In addition, the estimate of cost for additional work and costs arising from delays stood at HK$1.55 billion.

Apart from a few anonymous comments by various construction professionals the article added little extra value to the basic story. The Hong Kong construction market is tight-knit, and the recently appointed Editor (REF 02) decided to play it safe and not dive too deeply into a potentially contentious issue. With a little homework, he would have realised that a lot of useful material was freely and publicly available to him, to enrich his story.

For example, September 2012 (REF 03) a conference organised by the Lighthouse club, the well-respected charity, hosted numerous high level participants of the said project including Mr Thomas Ho, the CEO of Gammon (REF 04) and President of HK Contractors Association; and Mr Ronan Collins, the MD of InteliBuild, MTR’s BIM consultants on this project. The event was widely publicised.

Mr Collins opted to explain to the audience the novel, BIM-based collaborative approach to the West Kowloon terminal’s delivery. Mr Collins used a 25min presentation he has placed on You Tube (Google “BIM MTR KOWLOON”) (REF 05). Apart from acknowledging his fellow presenter and long term client, Mr Collins gives credit to many others for assisting him pioneering a new approach to the delivery of this highly complex project.

Had Mr Chung listened carefully to Mr Collins, he could have isolated numerous slides of this BIM presentation and then interviewed MTR and the contractors involved, on how and if the approach had really worked at the time the possible troubles were made public (8 months following this very upbeat presentation) and how, if at all, it helped minimising the risks of project derailment for both MTR and the HK Government.

‘Why BIM for MTR’ from the point of MTR’s view was very clearly and openly discussed there (REF 07), though admittedly by the BIM service provider, the claims have never been rebutted by others.

The following questions would have definitely added useful scrutiny to the topic had someone had the courage to ask:

Would the cost and time overruns have ended up EVEN higher without the use of BIM, was the cost to even trying doing BIM really justified and value for money with such low level of skill and understanding on offer amongst those involved?

Mr Chung wrote the article on the troubled Express Rail Link and how late the project was likely to be. Even if he had deliberately chosen to ignore the existence of the claimed-BIM approach and its possible impact on the success of the project, It would have done him a lot of good to make a mental note of another ambitious plan heralded by Mr Collin’s presentation, which referred to a dozen or so companies which at the time of the conference, were yet-to-embark-on MTR contracts.

 ‘TC Chu and his team have propagated BIM further into MTR projects…

Anybody that ends up working on the SCL (Shatin to Central Link) will need to work with a full blown BIM specification’ Mr Collins claimed, and provided a summary of these specifications on his slides; (REF 08)

‘The trigger is, they want to find the problems early and MTR want to collaborate to resolve those problems early… so it is not for the contractor to “keep the secrets as in …and we’ll tell you later”, they want to know the issues, they want to see the details, they want to see the model early…’ he concluded wisely.

Article 2

Being aware of these highly demanding BIM expectations by MTR of their contractors would have better prepared Mr Chung for writing the article that he published in the same magazine, on August 13^th, 2013 under the title “Adopt BIM For Better Project Management, Says Gammon”; (REF 09)

By writing an article dedicated solely to Gammon, he could have presented a useful fact-based analysis of results of Gammon Construction’s attempts at BIM adoption on the previously named 2 MTR projects. Instead, he provided a mouthpiece for a company PR release.

Knowing that Gammon was one of the contractors on the previously mentioned SCL (REF 10) – the fully mandated BIM project line, where a 3 month cut-off for modelling and issue-raising was stipulated clearly and contractually by MTR – would have made it obviously important to enquire about this exercise from the Director of Innovation, Derek So, who appeared to have interviewed for the article.

Especially since Mr So was making some pretty bold claims, like:

“Citing data from the US, company director Derek So Kwok-leung said costs incurred by the contractor could be cut by 10 to 20 percent if they used Building Information Modelling (BIM) on their projects.”

Referring back to Gammon’s own website (REF 11) and noting the contract to be that of 3.4 billion  was he forecasting a saving of a conservative 340+ million to be shared by the JV and MTR at completion of the project? Or was this saving already priced in at the time of tendering?

Full compliance with this contract’s BIM component obviously would not be something the journalist would need to question this gentleman, considering that,

“Mr So said while some projects did not stipulate use of BIM, Gammon went ahead anyway with it since the potential benefits were too important to ignore.”

It is unfortunate that the author of the advertorial had not gone back to relevant government authorities to ask for their response to Mr So’s allegations that,

“…However the government has been slow by “several paces” in BIM adoption apart from the Housing Authority.”

Gammon’s bold BIM-related PR statement had given the paper “The Construction Post” a good opportunity to start a meaningful discussion on behalf of many government shareholders and MTR’s stakeholders on how these respected companies indeed managed public money, including where and how risk management approaches the likes of BIM were employed.

An opportunity obviously too risky to take.

Yet, this would have been a great forum to also analyse if MTR truly had set out to de-risk their projects with a mandated BIM-approach. Ask has it the skills, willingness and resources to police it properly or will it leave the various contractors to lead MTR by the nose, pretending to be doing BIM while carrying on with their old ways of working and making up for lack of care or productivity through inflated claims?

I write this post with the hope that in response to my notes Mr Chung of Construction Post (HK & Macau) and his or another local paper will pluck up the courage and approach the GM of the SCL line, Mr Philco Wong formally for a progress report on BIM implementation on projects under his watch, especially those that have passed the 3 months deadline set out for BIM deliverables.

His reassurance that all is proceeding as well as expected and no one is let ‘off the hook’ due to unhelpfully close associations to the said manager will give a peace of mind to all involved.

It will also assure the public of Hong Kong that not only will there be no big unwelcome surprises down the construction track of any of the current MTR projects but a likely windfall of savings between 10-20% will be enjoyed by all, just as promised by the leaders of BIM in the Hong Kong market, Gammon Construction, championed by the Director of Innovation, Mr Derek So .

(for all references write to zolna.murray@gmail.com)
also see them here:
http://www.slideshare.net/zolnamurray/references-to-article-mtr1?utm_source=ss&utm_medium=upload&utm_campaign=quick-view

C‘mon, how difficult is it to turn 2000 drawings into a digital model?

Well, not very difficult.

Easy in fact, if you know what you are doing.

It’s just that….. it takes a bloody long time.

…To do it badly.

About 10 if not a 100 times that long, to do it well.

‘I see’ – he says and I know, that he does not.

In the world of large scale AEC projects I operate in, I tend to meet people that have had their own ‘first BIM experiences’ finally behind them. This, of course makes them feel totally qualified to come up with a ‘grand strategy’ on how to do it next time, regardless of how hands-off they themselves were in the said experience, or how deep/ shallow that particular BIM had been.

The wave of ‘BIM cynics’ of 10-or-so-years ago is now the new-wave of ‘quasi experts’ that slosh around the (still) lucrative end of the industry.

More and more of those people also feel obliged to personally vote in the widespread debate of ‘who is benefiting most from any BIM project: the contractor, the designer or the client?’.

Yet, very few understand the topic to the extent that makes them eligible to vote at all.

We have truly entered a stage of BIM, where the design consultants of mega-projects are largely ‘let off the BIM hook’ and the focus is on the contractors to make BIM work for the owners.

It is an interesting stage, not only because it is evolving parallel with the activities of the still very vocal proponents of the ‘truest BIM-based collaboration across all participants’ theories, but also because contractors seem to be much less prepared to take on this battle than the consultants had been when first hit by it on a large-scale a year-or two ago.

And not because they are less technically endowed then their design colleagues (anyone can buy cheap modelling capability) but because somehow their own PI insurers have taken their eyes of the ball and failed to advise their clients to thread very carefully into that little muddy pool of BIM.

Probably I should not be surprised then, when I daily meet people that say we should process thousands of drawings within days and take responsibility over their accuracy with no additional thought of how that risk is managed.

Or when others will propose confidently to ‘just model our own stuff’ in parallel to the consultants 2D production on huge D&B projects.

When I question the wisdom of their strategies …they bat no eyelid while confirming how easy this is going to be and they've done it all before…

…anyway, as a ‘so called BIM expert’, I should know this!

How difficult can it be to turn 2000 drawings into a digital model?

(the illustration shown is the representation of the drawing production of a real AEC project) 

Who are the ‘A list-ers’ of the ‘Society of High BIM Maturity’?

(or, is there any relation between the ‘factually’ very low level of BIM-maturity of the industry and the aggressive buy-outs happening in the AEC’s consultancy-field?)

Recently, on a well-attended BIM group’s discussion site, I re-floated my view that the UK Government has little idea on what BIM really is, or should be like.

After a couple of days of debate and gentle lecturing by a number of learned participants, a consensus was reached:

‘I don’t know what I’m talking about – let alone question, could I please go away and grow up in quiet or eat worms, whatever is going to make the least noise.’

So, having arrived to such a happy and universally satisfying ending … I let the topic fizzle out.

Still, there was one commenter within the thread that bugged me just a bit more than the others.

It was not even his comment that annoyed me that much, but the fact he was working for a particular company and referencing it as something equivalent to a ‘mature BIM practitioner’.

I will not name the individual, let’s just say, on this particular forum, he represented a large, big-name, multinational AEC consultancy, starting with the letter ‘A’.

Ha, you may say, that is not really helpful, don’t they all start with ‘A’s?

Or most of the big and multinational-multiconsultancies?

Indeed, they do.

The ones still sticking with their old names in spite PR advisers’  suggestions and/or multiple mergers and by-outs, I guess do this probably after weighing up the pros and cons of ditching a moderately valuable brand for something that will stick out from the Aecoms, Aurecons, Aedases, Arcadises, AMECs and Atkinses…

But, I digress…

                             

What the participant of the forum was implying to me, that not only was himself as a person ‘very’ BIM mature, not even all of the projects he was working on, but the ENTIRE multi-multi company he was representing.

Now, that is hard to accept.

Especially because I’ve had the fortune to interact with various representatives of this entity in numerous locations scattered around the word (some very recently) and I can clearly state that this company is no more BIM mature than most of the other ‘A’ listers.

So, since this discussion, I spent a bit of time in re-thinking of what ‘maturity’ could mean in the BIM arena, prepared to find that I am really the totally misguided one here.

Is it just age that will set its level – as in wine – or would certain behaviour be expected from a certain level of maturity of BIM?

Just like, when we talk about maturity of people relevant or irrelevant of their age?

Are there different levels of BIM maturity for individuals, projects and/or companies and how are they related to each other?

Can an entire country really achieve something that independent assessors might value as ‘mature BIM’ in the near future?

So, as a due diligence against self-justifying arrogance I mentally collated all my knowledge of the A-listers I know and/or had personal dealings with, who incidentally through various buyouts over the recent years are present on most of the biggest projects in the AEC happening globally.

Admittedly, by now they all have dedicated BIM specialists on board, have dreamed up a fleshy  BIM manifesto and claim to have the commitment of the ‘topest’ management.

Also they proudly sponsor a crew that flies around the world representing them at BIM conferences.

And a number of ‘pilot projects’ showcasing their advancement, nicely repackaged for all flavours of BIM.

But, I can bet my top dollar, that once you scratch the shiny BIM surface, you will find that most of their projects are still done ‘traditionally’ – their so called frontline, BIM enabled people used to answer to CAD titles until very recently and their BIM processes are pretty much ‘under development’.

Furthermore, if you are an unlucky client, already locked in a contract with any of these A-lister chaps and hope to squeeze in some Q&A on your project post-contract by utilising their over-marketed BIM maturity, the answer will most likely be:

‘we had not priced that in’.

BIM after all has a clear  price-tag attached to it.

I wonder, when will my teenage children figure out to give a similarly clever answer justifying their immature behaviour questioned occasionally?

As in, ‘sorry mum, I know you would not expect from a mature person to behave as we acted at Grandma’s but our maturity is pretty much limited to certain places and events, when it comes to family gatherings, we only allowed for ‘traditional’ teenage behaviour’.

It goes without saying that this example is totally hypothetical, my children always behave perfectly at family events. I guess, they are mature beyond their ages.

Not something that can be guaranteed from the A-listers of the oh, so mature BIM High Society;

I may not be your saviour but will not be your scapegoat either… (A bit of self-indulging winging on a gloomy Saturday)

As I’m getting settled into my new job, the members of my immediate family are crossing their fingers behind their backs;

They may even be mouthing silently while doing so:

‘please don’t blow this one up… or at least do it slowly’…

Despite of their hopes and my best intentions, I start here with ‘a hiss and a roar’, setting of a real war for opportunities to meaningfully apply BIM.

Of course not everyone sees this as a ‘just war’ and quickly I get to be considered as someone that claims to know the answers to everything.

An obnoxious persona, with a ‘My way or the highway’ attitude,

ready to throw a mighty Drama Queen fit, at a drop of a hat when things do not go her way.

I sure believe to deserve the title of ‘the Queen’,

‘The Queen of knowing just-about-everything that does not work in BIM’.

I am a proud owner of more than two decades of ‘live experiments’ trying out just-about-any theory that there was, on how BIM should be applied to design, documentation, construction support and claim management within the AEC industry. A bit of operations and FM too, post construction.

Tiny projects and absurdly large, public and private. Traditionally procured and those highly speculative. Supported by some great people and obstructed by many more, not so great.

I put everything into this 25 yearlong experiment, time, work, knowledge, money, the family’s past, present and future.

Self-titled Queen or not, I of course am not alone in these battles.

As more and more people get involved in the ‘movement’ it is interesting to observe how various individuals take on the challenge of responsibility for the ‘success of BIM’ – whatever that may mean in reality.

Also, how the long awaited and wished for mandating of BIM turns out to be quite a challenge for some of the loudest of BIM promoters of the past, forcing them to urgently look for new BIM doers to blame if things don’t work out as planned.

And things rarely work out as planned, so when a PR dress-up of a failed BIM application is not an option, somebody got to take the blame.

Some BIMmers learn quickly how to duck for cover, others tend to be happy as sitting ducks. Because they are either eager to please by nature or believe to be aiding the progress of humankind, they take on everything that comes their way.

I have seen sitting ducks turn into cover-duckers after being repeatedly shot at but never the other way around.

It’s a tough world out there in the current BIM world…

Can BIM maturity levels be truly defined at this stage as the UK government’s advisors claim to be able to?

Following my post where I questioned the logic of the ‘BIM Maturity Plan’ adopted by the UK Government, many people felt the need to quickly put me right.

A good sign, of course, that of an industry confidently moving forward.

Never mind, the distrustful minority seething in the corners and asking silly questions.

They are just being jealous, for not having thought of it first, ‘it’ being whatever you like ‘it’ to be when it comes to BIM.

It may be convenient to label the woman ‘mad’ and carry on with the real stuff, of getting to the prescribed level of “BIM Maturity” by the party-faithful.

Still, why not pause a minute and think:

What makes anyone eligible to prescribe that a country’s entire (public) industry complies with a set of arbitrary BIM requirements?

Is it not a bit arrogant to claim authority to know, how to measure the maturity of something without the ‘thing’ ever successfully been delivered in the past, not on a significant scale, anyway?

Let alone for long enough to have a good handle on what ‘maturity level’ would be desirable or optional;

An aspiration dressed up as an exact science?

Someone on behalf of the British public has decided that if all participants of their building projects did as they were told (according to the ‘wedge’ and its supporting documents) – i.e. ‘achieve Level x BIM’ they would get better value for their investment.

This is an extremely long bow to draw.

A chorus of experts with vested interest chiming in unison, that BIM makes sense – is still not a solid proof that ‘any Level of BIM maturity’ will make a hell of a difference to how much in the future the British public will pay for their new schools or renovated hospitals.

If a private company commissioned a similar report and got the recommendation to quickly gear up to Level 2 of this arbitrary BIM scale, surely they would expect some ‘proof’ for it working before they jumped into implementation.

I’m not a British citizen, nor work in that country. So, why should I worry?

Because the ‘architects’ of this scheme are defending their stance of ‘mother knows best’ so loudly and vigorously that it leaves no room for genuine questions being discussed by those not fully convinced.

And because they do not limit their evangelism to the territory of the British Isles.

Their claim to be able to ‘disambiguate’ BIM and put it into nice little boxes (or triangles) is dangerous and far-reaching.

BIM cannot be understood properly without taking into account people’s behaviour, market conditions, un-detected corruption, historical factors and many other aspects that influence AEC projects and their success rates.

Yet, who would listen to the ‘mad woman’ when all the ‘sirs’ know that the solutions are pretty simple and they are the authority on what is best for the global AEC?

They must know.

Would they recommend anything less than perfect to their own citizens?

When is ‘an annual’ not an annual? When a big name university says so; Or is it enough for a big name contractor to do this?

Almost two years ago, I attended the ‘First annual BIM conference in the Middle East’.

It was held in December 2011, a first that I went to, that gifted to all participants a seriously looking laptop-bag AND a hefty BIM-bible, the latter I have been dissecting in my various blog-posts ever since.

Sandwiched between many ‘far-too long’ and ‘far-too self-promoting’ presentations, there was one, that I still remember raising a ‘wow’ moment;

Those that follow my writing may also recall my pre-Christmas post about the kandura –clad doctor; (link below)

That presentation aside, what struck me as unusual beyond the regular hype of BIM conferences was the branding of it as ‘annual’.

‘These guys are confident’ I thought – must have another 6 lined up for the next half a decade to publicly state this to be the first, of many.

And they did not disappoint.

I’m pleased to see, that the second annual conference has been announced for the 16 and 17^th of September 2013.

Hmmmm… what about one for 2012?

Admittedly, the official website had got rid of the word ‘annual’, not as sharp was CCC in promoting the event on its own links.

If my style of questioning ‘everything BIM’ irritates you – you will be annoyed at me quibbling over semantics again.

Why can’t I just quietly congratulate them for bringing another ‘top-notch BIM’ event to the region hungry to learn more about it?

Why not celebrate the fact that the ‘largely same crew of presenters’ will lecture about ‘mostly the same topics’ 2 years on, to a hopefully new crowd of enthusiastic BIM opportunists?

Because, I’m tired of this framework where ‘anything goes’ yet hardly anything improves with time.

Someone has got to start crossing the ‘t' s and dotting the ‘i' s.

Why not be me?

Relevant links:

http://www.tekla.com/ae/about-us/events/pages/first-annual-bim-conference.aspx

http://debunkthebim.blogspot.hk/2011/12/end-of-year-brings-hope.html

http://www.linkedin.com/company/426642?goback=%2Enmp_*1_*1_*1_*1_*1_*1_*1_*1_*1_*1

http://www.bimconference.me/?goback=%2Enmp_*1_*1_*1_*1_*1_*1_*1_*1_*1_*1

http://www.bimconference.me/

Is it me, or is this total nonsense: The trouble with the BIM ‘triangle’? (my reading of the Bew-Richards BIM graph)

Ever since the UK Government had announced its ambitious plan to become fully ‘Level 2 – BIM’ by 2016 I’ve been uneasy about the idea and voiced my opinion on it, here-and-there.

My main concern was not with the audacity of their proposal, nothing wrong with putting the bar high enough to induce a bit of an industry struggle, but could not easily stomach the way they had defined BIM Maturity levels and especially unhelpful I found the Bew-Richards BIM graph to be.

Before jumping into public criticism, I had made an attempt to understand their system of classification, frame of reference and organization into a graph that could be considered a standard Cartesian coordinate system.

The horizontal axis I read as the ‘tools’ the vertical measures BIM ‘maturity level’.

The resulting graph is a steadily rising line between, ‘below 0 maturity’ and ‘level 3’, also expanding beyond, related to the addition (and I guess replacing of) various tools of data-capture and management.

BIM maturity level starts at 1 and anything CAD is considered below…apart from when one CADs in 2D using some sort of a process, then one can be called 0.5 or thereabout.

It really bothers me, that there is variation to the line – i.e. it climbs before reaching 0 – can one be negatively mature in BIM, measurably a little or more, depending on how one CADs?

Come to think of it, there are many industry participants that I’d classify as ‘immaturely BIM’ but probably not in this context.

Maybe, the illustration is not meant to be a simple 2D graph but has 2 horizontal axes one on the top of one another.

Or it is not a graph at all; just a loose visual representation by someone trying to make sense of something terribly complex.

If the latter is the case, I genuinely empathise with the authors.

The complexity of the issue of BIM is huge and very hard to illustrate, being so multi-dimensional, and I’m not referring here to the standard 3+ D’s of BIM, but the historical, political, financial, economic, cultural, technical and other factors that play major roles in the shaping and potential improving of the field.

Still, in an industry overwhelmed by engineer-like-thinkers, should we not be a bit more careful on how we represent our ideas?

Making something look clearly measurable when in reality it is not?

Especially when the results can be such far reaching or damaging as forming the baseline for a government mandated process?

But others may still say…

‘it is YOU that the problem is with, the image makes total sense to everyone else. ’

I welcome further explanations on the topic.