18 pairs of rafters in the cottage

There were no trusses. 18 pairs of rafters. In the cottage. If you had trouble working this out, ask your child to do it for you; Not mocking you, just giving an incentive to understand how today’s kids communicate; You’d need to tell them what a truss is, maybe even what the difference between a truss and a rafter. But the rest, they’d figure out.

Building owners. A diverse bunch of physical and legal entities, ranging from a family reroofing a garage to a country-government building a new city; One can argue that they have enormously varied needs, budgets, tastes, responsibilities. There is something truly common to all: When they are involved with the construction industry they all embark on a process that they hope will result with a new/improved building. So, in theory they should not care much about types of communication. Whether plans are scratched into stone-slabs, charcoaled onto paper or modelled in a multi dimensional virtual environment, as long as the end-results meet their expectations. That being a building built to a preset budget, quality and time. But more often than not, they don’t. Meet expectations. Even when expectations are pitched quite low, to match ‘reasonable’ within the industry. Still, apart from low level ‘grumbling’ there seems to be an acceptance that these things are ‘unavoidable’. Well, are there really?

How many trusses does the Cormilligan Cottage have?

Reading my posts you may assume that I like whinging. Maybe, do be patient; There will be plenty of thoughts on how I believe we can make this work too; Perhaps not for everyone, especially if the verdict is ‘revolution’,... all will be revealed in time.

I often hear people say – this (as in BIM way of work) is a lot like when we ditched the T square 20 years ago. Sorry, it is not; Flatcad is not a natural stepping stone on the way to reaching BIM – It is a ‘dead end road’ that has been maintained as the ‘standard’ by those with vested interest in the tools and those that are unprepared to accept the need to raise quality of work.

Flatcad should have been a means of achievement of higher goals had we moved from it the moment other conditions for real BIM were ready. Hardware and communication practice.

The sad fact is, that hardware specs, their affordability and usability has improved rapidly over the years followed by a prompt change in how we communicate in everyday life by adopting more fluid, user needs addressed, dynamic methods.

Flatcad refused to act as a stepping stone and become a big boulder of a liability in the river of the industry.

Question: How many trusses does the Cormilligan Cottage have? (see link – Use Acrobat)

https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B4GF8MRLb0DANGMzMTM0OTgtMTQwNS00OWE2LWJlYjktMDMyMmRkMTEwYjc1&hl=en_GB&authkey=CPWts8AP 

Flatcad now defined;

Last  time building owners took an interest in who called the shots was when ‘project managers’ got established in a central role,  independent from design consultants. I have a lot of respect for PMs  in construction. It takes a great amount of skills to do what they do. Their highest achievement: making themselves absolutely essential on all building projects from reroofing granny’s garage to building entire new cities.

I wish they did tackle the Flatcad syndrome now.

Flatcad? Definition: Computer aided drafting that uses purely orthogonal projections and ignores most of the rules and principles of ‘traditional’ documenting. When you produce a technical drawing by hand you do: 1/ work on various projections simultaneously; 2/ set these views out in a logical order; 3/ (most importantly) you think what you draw and where and how much of it; Flatcad has ‘copy and paste’, within very short timeframes almost anyone can produce huge amounts of ‘drawings’. You’ll find small buildings documented using hundreds and hundreds of sheets. Larger developments will go into thousands; What is behind this phenomenon? 1/ lack of technical skills in ‘grassroots’ levels of documenting 2/lack of understanding by management (consultancy, project, company etc) on what is going on at ‘grassroots’ levels 3/ the control CAD managers have, often puppeteered by software vendors;

Unconvinced? Tomorrow, I’ll post an example how I wrestle flatcad.

BIM will not happen until building owners start asking for it

Surprisingly, building owners tend not question why their ‘cakes’ KEEP turning up misshapen, bitter and overpriced; Building-creation is an industry that is based on high level of speculation, ‘endless’ rise of property values as well as supported by propaganda machines reinforcing the idea of construction being a totally unmanageable and unpredictable beast.

Or, USED to be the case up to a year or two ago. The ‘bubble reportedly burst’ since and the times of senseless construction have (supposedly) changed. The GEC has brought the construction industry down to the ground. Indeed, building owners are tightening their budgets and want more accountability and better value for their money. But is this happening in a meaningful way? Could it be happening realistically, when we have an industry characterised by: 1/ a communication language highly outdated and risky (flatcad based); 2/ intentional misleading of clients by those in charge of their projects 3/information fatigue not controlled but encouraged.

It is widely accepted that BIM would fix these 3 issues for clients, however BIM will not happen until building owners start asking for it; Why? Because there is too much vested interest in the status quo. Design consultants, software vendors and project managers all have vested interest in keeping building owners BIM illiterate and stop them demand buildings get documented BIM way. Time for owners to get BIM educated!

BIM promotes inbuilt authentication of information within processes and replaces information fatigue by gradual verification of data

Let me throw another player in the game, called: “integrity of project information”; Most of construction projects suffer from lack of it. When it comes to truthfulness of project information there is very little to find; In short: there are lots of drawings but very little information you can trust. No dimensions, levels or explicit instructions. And you are not allowed to scale off drawings.

What this reminds me of? Using a recipe to make a complicated cake that gives an incomplete and confusing list of ingredients, fragmented instructions on how to put them together, no indication on dosage and definitely no clarification on cooking time or temperature.

It amazes me, how even the savviest building owners tend not to question this information environment. They are letting their cakes be made out of very dubious recipes. No wonder they turn up all a bit bitter and expensive? “Flatcad” loves and thrives in this environment. And it spends a lot of time convincing you that this state of affairs is inevitable.

On the other hand, producing documentation this way is very hard using BIM.

While not foolproof, BIM promotes inbuilt authentication of information within processes and replaces information fatigue by gradual verification of data.

BIM bakes your cake as you expect it and lets you it eat. BIM ensures integrity of information.

“Flatcad” hates it.

Design consultants working in construction intentionally publish incomplete drawings

Orthogonal projection? A bit of a mouthful;

My answers to yesterday’s questions:

1/ Orthogonal projection is a drawing created by projecting objects onto planes at 90 degrees (orthogonally);

2/ Object are represented in true size and shape (albeit often scaled);

3/ At least 2 (there are exceptions);

So, OK – you may not associate plans and elevations with orthogonal projections! Should you? Is needing to understand what is behind the creation of a plan or elevation not a bit like having to know multiplication tables by heart when calculators are there to be used?

Well, I believe that many things that are wrong in the construction industry can be traced back to people not understanding how drawings work and others using this lack of knowledge to their own advantage.

Design consultants often intentionally show incomplete drawings with a lot of padding (irrelevant information) to keep the mental image of the proposed building as vague as possible for as long as possible. So, a savvy party within the industry can do one of 3 things: 1/ strive to educate everyone in the rules of orthogonal projection; 2/ use their knowledge to their advantage; 3/change the rules from 2D documenting to a truly 3D based documentation;

BIM needs the 3^rd point to happen now. Unfortunately, there are very few signs within the industry to show this happening.

People in construction do not know how to read plans.

People in construction do not know how to read plans. Neither do those that draw, nor those that interpret drawings.

An unfair generalisation? Unconvinced? Orthogonal projection is the base of most construction related graphical documentation. It is performed every time a plan, elevation, section or detail is drawn or interpreted; What are the most important rules of this technique? Here are 3 questions:

1/ What is an orthogonal projection?

2/ Why has orthogonal projection become so popular in construction?

3/ How many views are needed to adequately describe a spatial element?

Why are the answers to these questions important? Because a technique that performed well for a number-of-hundreds of years has become an exercise that lost its meaning. Nowadays, most technical construction drawings come with a tag “do not scale”!

How is this related to BIM? We need to acknowledge that it is supposed to replace a well balanced system of tools, processes and a knowledge framework that existed for a long time. Unfortunately, the system disappeared. Construction people stopped learning what orthogonal projections meant, and what basic rules they must follow to use it. Then the processes disappeared followed by the knowledge framework; All three got replaced by flatcad; What is flatcad? My definition will be coming soon, before that, I’ll give you answers to my 3 questions noted today, tomorrow.

Construction lost its language and no one protested?

I should define ‘my’ BIM at the start. Instead, I plan to go backwards and find my answers by exploring elements that are commonly associated with BIM and are easier to define.

Take for example how we communicate buildings:

In the past, when a building was needed, someone drew a plan, an elevation and sections to describe what it should be like. This process required both the originator of the information (the designer) and the one using the information (the builder) to be fluent in rules of orthogonal projections and know the meaning of symbols used. There also had to be a strong ‘common knowledge’ framework that both parties were familiar with, so certain assumptions could be made.

By now all three conditions have been all but lost; There is no universal understanding of how orthogonal projections work, there is no one standard of industry symbols and the common knowledge of widely used techniques is very thin.

So, I say that ‘the language’ the construction industry is based on has vanished, together with its grammar, letters and words (the equivalents of the 3 ‘conditions of communicating buildings’) and noone within the industry asked – hey, what is going on?

How could that be?

Thirty or so years ago ‘flatcad’ entered the construction industry.

Tomorrow: what proof is there to support this theory and what is ‘flatcad’?

BIM: Evolution or Revolution? Finding the right answer is my New Year Resolution;

BIM: Evolution or Revolution?

No matter how much buzz is thrown into the arena of building creation that heralds the impending wide acceptance of BIM and IPD industry wide - I am unconvinced  that it will happen in the near future.

And, if it does happen – it will not be painless. Nor will be a fluffy – evolutional change. In this blog – over the time I will record my thoughts on why I believe this to be the case.

I intent to write about the rise of Flatcad over the last 30 years. About the damage it did to the industry and how buildings are documented.

About the lack of basic understanding most construction related, design consultant management people (the higher the worse) have of what is being produced within their companies.

How owners of buildings are intentionally kept in the dark on why most building projects turn out to be less than successful.

How there is little future for the currently under 15 year olds to meaningfully contribute to this industry in the next decade when they start working, without the revolution happening before they enter the workforce.

And much more...

I plan to muse over this dilemma and offer a though for each day over the next 365 days;

People have short attention spans; I’ll keep my daily postings to max 225 words.