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