Balfour’s troubles nearing end, despite the latest £70m profit warning

“An expected cut in dividend also won’t please shareholders, with more details to come in the firm’s full-year results in March, when it will reveal its second successive pre-tax loss.

On the other hand, Balfour Beatty doesn’t seem to be struggling to win clients’ faith. Its appointment to Scape’s latest framework, worth up to £1.5bn, is proof of that.”

Writes one of the army of analyst that tries keeping up with Balfour Beatty’s shenanigans.

I parted with BB in mid-2013 and by the end of 2014 I almost totally lost interest in the largest UK construction contractor. I have since also stopped expecting for it to fatally fall on its own sward of historic dodgy activities and I got on with my own mundane life instead.

Yet, BB keeps on popping up in headlines of Construction related news, daily alternating between the good and the bad.

Today, a ‘what if’ thought crossed my mind as I rolled over the multitude of BB banners.

What if one of them said something like this:

Balfour Beatty figured out a way to end all its troubles!

The reconditioned management of the deeply troubled Construction Company has unveiled its revolutionary idea that will fix all its historic and more recent difficulties.

BB are going Paper Free in all their activities. This approach has benefitted many other industries before and BB is pleased to be the true pioneer of the industry to recognise and first implement it within construction.

Starting immediately. Including all of their construction sites and involving every staff member, all the employees of the company.

To ensure this approach – destined to revolutionise the global construction industry is trademark protected all the legal work has already been completed in the critical geographical markets including registering its name with the relevant authorities:

BB Paper Free by Decree, BB-PF-BD in short.

The historic moment of the Decree becoming live is being celebrated by simultaneous public burning of all remaining paper-matter on 100 BB construction sites located all over the globe, involving the highest of local dignitaries as first-match-lighters.

… and the story could go on – mentioning hard hats and wiz-wests and an array of digital gizmos that BB had already granted with compatibility certificates. A subheading could describe how the BB-PF-BD academy has been churning out PF-enabled graduates by the hundreds since its inception a couple of months ago, biggest campus being currently established in the UAE (why not?).

….

Of course I know there is a fat chance for anything like this to happen any time soon, even on a relatively, small scale – let alone under the sponsorship of a big beast like BB.

To keep up a bit of hope, of a better (paper free?) construction industry at least for the sake of future generations, I re-watched the video my daughter made for me when I had my pretend –‘show down’ with the mischievous Balfour Beatty some year and a half ago:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qn6PXQ9uQxQ

“BIM is struggling in USA” The Role of BIM Minions in spoiling the Global BIM initiative’s potential to succeed

“BIM is struggling in USA” is the title of an article by Mr. Iftikhar A. Gaur. The statement itself s deducted from the end-of-year reporting of the buildingSMART alliance™ USA’s financial performance summary.

Nowadays, I rarely react to such obvious BIM-baits as this, LinkedIn promoted article appeared to be – still, the blatant generalisation the title implied enticed me to read it.

The last two sentences were ‘the cherry on the top’ of the writing, in them Mr. Iftikhar A. Gaur addressed the wider BIM community with a request:

“I am interested in BIM. Can somebody tell me where can I find write resources to learn more about BIM as a manager?”

I have been known to publicly whinge about the somewhat dodgy activities of the global buildingSMART organisation in the past, yet this time, the figures quoted – as fascinating as they were, did not entice me to write yet another useless analysis of the sad state of the Global AEC industry and buildingSMART’s role in getting it there.

More fascinating did I find the phenomenon, that a professional, pretending to be active in the field of BIM, with no fewer than 6 CAPITAL LETTERED acronyms behind his name, is brave enough to make such a statement – as the title quoted, even though he obviously (see end of the article) knows little about the topic.

So, leaving the question of the buildingSMART alliance™ USA’s financial performance in 2014 for another blogpost, I’ve set out to delve a little into the topic of the ‘BIM Minions’.

In the past I called these individuals BIM-Careerists, ambitious professionals active within the global AEC somewhere mid-career taking on BIM with the goal of giving their own job prospects a major kick.

In principle, not a bad thing – the industry, a bit starved of truly smart drivers can do with the positive initiatives of its smartest players. The by now reasonably well experienced, well qualified middle-level workforce is opening its eyes to the BIM ‘potential’. This should be a good sign.

BIM has traditionally been powered by the army of foot-soldiers, ex CAD – often self-trained modellers and the occasional top level smart thinker, but the middle benches have been generally ‘BIM free’ for the last 2 decades.

I attributed the usual apathy of these mostly 30 and 40 somethings towards BIM to a combination of factors. The main one has been, the ability to get-by in Construction without needing to know anything about BIM.

Furthermore, not just ‘able’ but almost actively discouraged to stay away, CAD-ish looking acronyms after one’s name did not generally prove in the past to be a good career booster. (as opposed to a couple of ‘p’s, for example).

The fact, that the likes of Mr. Iftikhar A. Gaur are appearing to be ‘en masse’ setting out to add something BIM-ish to their strings of letters, points to the changing attitude of the previously disinterested layer of mid-level AEC professionals.

More and more often they find themselves put into positions that require them to act knowledgably on the topic of BIM, either by their superiors charging them with BIM-merising parts of the company or their subordinates requesting leadership for upskilling into BIM.

And this is where things start getting scary for the global BIM.

While these would be BIM Minions stayed away from BIM, too busy building their own careers, there was a blissful stage of ‘live and let live’. Sure, they chimed in occasionally, presented at a BIM-related conference or contributed to BIM-flavoured events, but at least they made sure they did not get their hands dirty with anything real BIM. The closest they got to it was in them outsourcing or in-sourcing BIM packages and occasionally pressing the ‘go’ button on a flash animation prepared by others. They were even prepared to admit to their ignorance.

Unfortunately for all, this stage had come to an end.

Even in the sluggishly slow overall BIM progress of the global AEC industry there, are now strong pressures on the top managements of companies to ‘keep up’ and/or better even, lead with BIM initiatives. Various government mandates on BIM processes add weight to this urge to ‘do something’, ending mostly on the shoulders on these ‘at first reluctant’

Minions to ‘Make BIM work’.

A nice little challenge for them, one would think, but unfortunately a disaster-prone one.

These Minions, while having clocked up a decade or two in the industry are at the upwards climbs of their careers are also blatantly ill-equipped to pick up BIM.

They are too old, too comfortable and very often too lazy to learn BIM from scratch; so instead, they try to get-by through bluffing.

Finding themselves on various BIM implementation committees and other subject-forums, asked to make important BIM decisions, they learn to look knowledgeable on the topic. Their managers, themselves only barely literate on ‘high-level’ BIM topics, appear in turn only too eager to let them steer the company across the choppy BIM waters, unchallenged.

And so it goes, the global AEC industry, having started on the back foot with meaningful application of digital tools within its processes some 2 decades ago, carries on the downward spiral of self-deception and pretence.

Rereading the article quoted from the top makes me believe that this charade is only going to get worse in the near future.

Reference:

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/bim-struggling-usa-iftikhar-a-gaur-cmit-iciob-mba-pmp-leed-ap?trk=prof-post

Image from here:

http://despicableme.wikia.com/wiki/File:Despicable_Me_2_Does_Not_Play_Well_With_Others.jpg

BIM Viewers in the Cloud vs. PDF Spatial Re-constructors on Earth (Part 2 of the overdue PDF trilogy I promised some time ago)

The global AEC is swarming with BIM Viewers, any service provider dealing in Building Related Information appears to have a proprietary one on offer.

Some are better than others. Commonly they offer the ability to view BIM models of various origins, maybe combine them, rotate, zoom, filter information. Some have mark-up tools, others provide fancy gadgets for tracking model-revisions. The models are usually stored on remote servers, they live in the Cloud, so to speak.

While the intentions behind creating these digital spectacles are usually good, the self interest of the owners to get a larger market share combined with the genuine want to make the usually exclusive and elusive BIM outputs more accessible to the non-BIM literate, I can’t help but seeing them as ‘wasted efforts’.

In my experience, those AEC practitioners, that (for whatever reason) do decide to ‘suddenly’ get familiar with ‘a’ BIM originating software will always prefer the full software to a dumbed down viewer and will learn to use the ‘real’ thing as opposed to the somewhat idiot-proof substitute. The rest (majority) that are still doing fine in their careers even blatantly ignoring anything BIM, will stay ignorant to ‘viewers’ too, no matter how user-friendly they may become.

My view is that the ROI on any proprietary BIM viewer (apart from probably the absolute market leaders) is likely to be far too low and those engaging in the development and maintenance of these should think again about their investments and spend the efforts/money on something more worthwhile, instead.

For example, PDF Spatial Re-constructors.

These are 3D digital work environments where large numbers of PDF’s can be placed in for the purpose of reconstructing the physical environment they were originally created to describe. At a minimum they are able to accurately place PDF sheets within the digital environment, across 3 axes and to correct scales. The more advanced versions allow the users to spatially connect corresponding points within various sheets to create a digital mesh, approximating the end-(or originally documented) building. The really good ones are either synchronized within comprehensive modeling programs or offer a range of modeling tools to sculpture BIM ready models spatially tracing the PDFs.

I do not know of any comprehensive PDF Spatial Re-constructors available on the global AEC market at the moment. That fact by itself does not mean that they do not exist, i.e. are no tools to successfully combine lots of PDF’s (hundreds and thousands) into usable digital skeletons for BIM or other purposes.

The two BIM toolsets I’m reasonably familiar with, each have cracked parts of this problem, unfortunately neither is looking to be in much of a hurry to extend these, well established features into a comprehensive system.

GS’s ArchiCAD is pretty snazzy with large numbers of PDFs, able to bring them into the digital environment and manages these through nifty color/trace/slider options. It copes well with sizes and is very agile in handling them through all of its 2D views (plans, elevations, sections). It however offers not the same option for the 3D environment, falls short of making the PDF’s ‘dance’ in the real-imaginary-virtual world.

Autodesk’s Revit is pretty clumsy with PDF’s, the last time I looked at this issue, their import was still in a very around-about way. On the other hand, Revit will bring and manage DWG drawings well, including in 3D, resulting in very satisfying looking standing up ‘line section’ placed correctly within digital models.

Having got half way there, both of these companies are in good position to offer up a really useful PDF Spatial Re-constructor in the near future, should they decide to cater for this need. Alternatively, those that are struggling with making BIM-viewers built from scratch might also see some fantasy in going down this direction instead.

Admittedly this concept may not be as glamorous as the ‘full-on’ BIM likes to think of itself to be, it definitely has the potential to assist a large segment of AEC participants be more productive when reviewing drawing based building documentation.

Part 1:
http://debunkthebim.blogspot.ae/2014/07/pdfs-and-bim-trilogy-of-posts.html

If banks were truly running the global AEC, all construction sites would be paperless by now!

Banks generally like to keep a close relationship with the AEC industry.

Apart from small scale works and cash-jobs here and there, anything to do with creating buildings in large parts of the world involves banks as financiers or partners. In return, banks’ fortunes tend to be impacted by the destiny of the AEC markets, the threat of a ‘property bubble busting’ is well known for both.

Conflicting with this cozy association is what can be perceived as an apparent disinterest from banks on how the AEC is going about its day-to-day work.

One can argue that bankers should stick to their knitting and leave the hammer-heads to run their industry as they see fit, but it is interesting to note, how different the two sides are in their approaches to information management.

Paper as a medium rules the AEC while the banks have all but banned it from their processes.

Where did the practice of going into a bank with a little saving-account’s book to withdraw (deposit) money, fill out multiple forms, get a stamp and signature from the teller disappear?

I recently phoned one of my bank managers for advice using her mobile number and she asked to call back on her main-line. As they say, ‘all our calls are recorded for quality purposes’.

While it is partially to assist efficiencies and maybe even to improve customer service, the main driver for ‘ being all digital’ with banks is to control their own risks.

Banks ‘know’ at a very high level that what makes or breaks them at the end is their handle on the information part of the business, possibly even more than the ‘real money’. The high level strategy is then implemented throughout the process leaving little room for individuals to manipulate the data against the banks’ interests.

Contrary to this approach the AEC is anything but organized with their information – at high level there is talk and maybe meaningful looking strategies set by the big players, but what trickles down to the everyday work of individuals is as archaic and manipulative a framework as it has ever been in the past of the industry. Probably even worse than in the ‘old, traditional days of building’ where certain level of global technical knowledge and universally accepted tradesmen’s ethics guided the use of information away from the muddy waters of mistreat.

Exemptions do exist in both camps. Low level individuals can sometimes intentionally or by error mismanage information/funds, causing large losses to affected banks. There do also exist AEC based organizations that can truly claim to have their fingers on the pulse of their project information, meaningfully assisting their companies’ risk management and also helping the bottom line.

However, so uniform in behavior the two camps are within their own fields, that the exceptions, if anything, prove and solidify the rules.

And they are unlike to change in the near future.

As much likely is for the large scale mandating of BIM (in the UK and elsewhere) to work and make a significant impact on the industry as it would for any bank to suddenly opt out of central and digital information management in favour of a paper based one and still thrive.

My guess is, that the banks will continue to keep their own houses as tight and tidy as possible but indulge in the fruits of the chaos, that their closely related sister industry, the AEC serves up.

  

Meanwhile, congratulations are due for David Philp, who has a new job and is now Director BIM – EMEA @ AECOM! A news that warrants an entire blog-post on its own. May yet write it in the near future as it offers young generations of AEC professionals a great example of a career-path as dazzling as a successful politician’s might be.

Ten out of ten people think that paperless construction sites are about saving paper

I did an impromptu survey today and asked a dozen people for what reason did they think I was pursuing the idea of establishing a paperless construction site. Two of them gave silly answers I had to discard and that left me 10 with responses loosely classifiable around the topic of the ‘greenies and saving paper’.

A surprising result.

While saving paper is not a trivial goal, it is definitely not the main driver for this project. What is even more exciting than the savings project owners could be making by eliminating paper from their construction sites is the behavioural change that this move would likely to cause.

A controlled environment that forced information creating, storing and sharing exclusively digitally, better even doing it in a managed way and within a relatively short timeframe a full cross section of project participants will start positively changing their own behaviour …. TBC

The question is not WHY should one ban the use of paper on construction sites but WHY NOT?

The ‘Paperless Construction Site’ concept has interested me, for a long time.

The starting premise is similar to all ‘BIM stories’, it builds on the theory that the AEC industry is notoriously bad at modernising its processes and its archaic information management causes losses to many, if not all participants.

The proposed solution to the problem is however fundamentally different to most globally accepted ‘mainstream’ BIM approaches.

Rather than turning to smart tools, software packages, programmes and systems, the onus of the strategy is put on the non-BIM construction practitioners to raise their performance.  And the strategy suggests, they will do so when they are put in a paperless environment for a long enough timeframe (i.e. the length of a construction project) while tasked with their ‘usual tasks’.

Think of the Project Directors, Construction, Planning, Engineering, Design and/or Cost Managers. Foremen, tradesmen, labourers, document controllers.

They make up the large percentage of any construction project’s team, BIM people, even on highly mandated BIM projects will be in a small minority compared to them.

Far from being judgmental about them, I actually admire how they get by – and completes projects, sooner or later, to budget or thereabouts, largely let to their own devices.

Rarely a day goes by that I don’t see something that confirms that buildings are often completed in spite of, as opposed to, because of, the available tools, systems and generally the ‘smarts’ of the industry.

Consequently, for a long time I’ve had this theory that, this part of the industry IS able to ignite a real change  given the opportunity, right circumstances and necessary help.

Here comes the concept of ‘the’ Paper Free Construction Site.

This simple plan modifies only ONE condition of an/any ‘average’ construction project, takes the right to use the ‘paper’ away.

Even that, ONLY on the physical site (bounded by a physical Paper Proof Fence and accessed through a strictly monitored gate). Supporting offices, off-site factories, territorial authorities are all exempt.

Everyone is free to do their jobs the best way they think should be done, or the way they always have, packaging project information into 1D, 2D,… 27D - parcels. Use words, drawings, tables, schedules, sketches, whatever.

Employ mobile phones, tablets, lap-and-desktops, small and large projectors, LCD walls, movie theatres, smart labs.

Just, no paper.

The plan provides for a highly specialised on-the ground support – 24/7 help and solution team – funded by parties other than the owner.

A truly promising idea for the industry?

This concept has been with me for a loooong time and over years I have figured out the entire machinery to make it work, down to the tiniest detail.

Have not been publicising it in any way until recently.

And the feedback has been pretty lukewarm.

Apparently, I’m not selling the idea very well.

Sure, I do accept it, I lack the charisma of a good marketer, I go off topics, use long sentences, my pronunciation is annoyingly Eastern European.  I employ amateurish graphics and I wave my hands around a lot.

The interesting aspect of this ‘fact’ is not that I’m not selling the idea well, (that really is not such a new phenomenon) but that people think the idea needs selling at all.

These people, most of them deeply engaged with this industry genuinely think, that any construction project owner would be hard work convincing to declare their construction site ‘paper free’ – given the chance and no additional cost burden.

The scary thing is, they are probably right. This industry is deeply troubled.

Not that will stop me working on the idea.

The Paper Free Construction Site – a soft launch of a cool idea

It’s been a while since I called to arms on any particular topic or posted a summons, invitation, or appeal to undertake a particular course of action on anything, having spent the last year or so in a bit of a BIM-reflecting and re-calibrating state.

I am using this opportunity to soft launch an idea that will be aggressively promoted in the future, for those that are interested to get onto it early to have the opportunity to do so.

The details (or as much as I wish to share at this point) are included in a slide show:

http://www.slideshare.net/zolnamurray/project-tpo-2

A double whammy… striving first to become a really good architect, then a really good BIM-mer…

A couple of days ago, I was sitting in a pretty ordinary design meeting at my pretty ordinary (non BIM)  job where the main topic was slagging off the non-present architect of the project by the lead (specialist) designer.  

I knew better than try to counter the clever jokes of ‘what architects are good for...’  and did not visibly flinch at the comment of ‘we let them design the colour of the toilets…’ Still the little interlude had me think about how seriously the industry misunderstands the role/job/responsibility of the ‘real’ architect. Followed by the thought that ‘real’ architects do rarely exist anymore, so the question is irrelevant any more… and what an earth was I thinking when I chose that as my profession some 30 years ago.

Even worse, why did I strive to become good at it in the true meaning of the term and pursue that idea for decades through thick and thin… mostly the latter.

Now, add to this of almost the same length of time of investing in becoming a good BIMmer (an architect with a more contemporary toolset) and I do have to wonder – will I ever learn?

So, with these sorts of things occupying my mind – it was a nice coincidence to be approached by a friend with a suggestion for a blogpost.

Djordje writes about a particular event that I was also a guest of, but also tackles the bigger picture of the lost (idealised) role of the architect and their future if there is still such a thing for them. (us?)

All that within a context of a pretty exclusive BIM gathering that had despite of being cool and fancy managed to avoid the real questions, but delivered at least one snazzy speaker that I enjoyed too.

So, please welcome my first guest blogger:

Djordje Grujic:

The importance of Johnny

Almost six months ago, I have had the pleasure of attending a by invitation only conference organized by the makers of my professional software of choice. I will be conceited enough not to mention the company or the software, as I do think that most of the BIMsphere would know which ones am I talking about. Those that don't, can skip the rest.

This conference was important to me on a few levels. I got to go to a place that I love, but have not been to in nine years. I was to meet a lot of people that I have worked, fought, cooperated and became friends with, sharing a common passion. Even better, I was to meet in person quite a few people with whom I worked, became friends, and knew virtually for quite a few years, some of them even a decade or more! And, looking through the list of the speakers, there were quite a few great topics, and quite a few speakers that I really wanted to see and hear.

So, the day came … I have landed before dawn on the day of the conference registration, spent the day just breathing in the city and the weather, and kept bumping into people that I knew, and “knew”. The better part of the afternoon was spent in “oh, I know you!” moments after reading the name tags. And the cakes, of course …

Others have described the conference in more detail, and yes, it was everything I have thought it would be, except next time I will get a cheaper accommodation … and those three days went past quickly. The air was heavy with the passion for the product, the solutions and their implementation, that ranged from single homes to city districts. Everyone was playing the same song, in their own way – these tools enable us to do better.

The reason why I am writing this is the only guy that came from reality. Not from, arguably the best, solution nirvana. Johnny the Emperor. An American architect, award winning, incredible salesman, even more incredible presenter, classic car collector, that does not practice architecture, and did not mention the product, or the solutions, once. Wait, what? What he DID do is bring the reality crashing in. With the thumb and index fingers of his right hand an inch apart, and the left hand stretched as far as possible, he illustrated what is the part of the cake that the architects get (the right hand) and what is the rest. And he does it all – develops properties that he designs and builds, and then sells or rents. Or lives in.

That gentleman is an architect in the true meaning of the word. He contemplates, and does the building. He is not letting the flotsam of the construction industry eat away the fruits of his labour. He does what an architect should do: imagines a building and creates it. And then parks his collection of Porsche 356s in the ground floor – sorry, first floor, we are in the US of A. Not that we have heard what happened between the Rambler with the UHaul trailer and the 356s, but that's probably a topic for another occasion.

Most of the attendees asked themselves why did he come at all. Self promotion? To spread professional insults? To degrade the holy profession that allows us to float by the powers of our imagination and create the built environment? Some were even offended. Frankly, I asked myself at the first moment some of these questions, and discussed it with the people sitting around me. While he did stick out of the prevailing software solution nirvana, like a proverbial sore thumb, his hand gesture illustration was the illustration of the reality, and the truth. It probably helped that for the most, if not all of my professional life I have worked in the design and build environment, and have actually never practised “pure” architecture. You know the kind, when your responsibilities stop after the design is approved and the contractor comes in.

As does your income, while others', at a magnitude of order larger, is just starting to flow.

So, did Johnny the Emperor – as he has said his family and his team call him – come to the conference as a showman, or an example of something that an architect should not be, or as an example of what an architect should be? As the time passes, I do believe that the latter is the case. He did bring in a dose of reality, hardcore profit making attitude, while never actually straying from the path of architecture and the solutions that his team uses to create it. You don't have to mention it or sing praises. You don't even have to be liked by the audience. You only have to tell what you are there to tell: that architects should finally take their destiny in their own hands, and yes, there are those wonderful tools and solutions that have been around for three decades and still people hear about them for the first time, and that the cake is very, very large. He does not want to pick the crumbles off the plate, he eats the cake.

As should we all.

If nothing else, that was the reason he should have been where he has been, and the lesson we should have learned.

Can BIM maturity be objectively measured?

BIM, as a project delivery method, is quite a recent industry initiative to some people.  

To others, it is a very old one that failed to mature with time.

The stance depends on whom one asks, for the definition and likely age of the phenomenon.

Disillusioned veteran BIM-ers from one side will have their set of views. Professionals of various ages that freshly found a promising-looking niche will have another set.  Between them is a range of highly dissimilar answers to the same question.

Regardless of whether BIM is considered to be new or old, nowadays neither small nor large companies dispute that it is being ‘practised’ globally, on private as well as public projects, across the entire building-creating industry.

Even within geographical regions that are considered to be slow-adopters, there is detectable BIM activity amongst the industry stakeholders. Entities of various sizes and various industry roles are jumping anew into BIM waters. This is because of either a mandated requirement, or a company choice to innovate. Those charged with managing the process of BIM implementation within these organisations will often look for other, more BIM-mature regions for clues and advice.

And there lies a potential trap.

The everyday meaning of ‘maturity’ refers to a stage of development achieved on a fairly well defined scale. Taking human development as an example, this is based on hundreds of years of observation and medical research where, while tolerances do exist, the extreme-ends of maturity levels are reasonably well known and agreed on.

More recently in IT, the maturity of tools, approaches and systems is often classified on a more open-ended scale of progress. A ‘mature technology’ in that context may not mean the absolute pinnacle of development for the particular field, but purely something that is more advanced than its predecessor, or a contemporary example of lesser values.

This little subtlety in interpretation of a particular ‘qualification method’ is rarely a problem within the IT industry as most participants are used to working within an ever-changing field that will unlikely reach its full potential in the near future.

On the other hand, the AEC industry is much more conservative when it comes to its tools, systems and approaches and it is not unusual for ‘best practices’ to have survived for hundreds of years, be that in the areas of ‘real building’ or in communication systems supporting the construction processes.

So, when something is classified as being of a ‘Mature BIM’ character, for most participants of the AEC industry this means having reached the level that is the ‘best that there is in BIM’. Just being a bit more advanced in adopting BIM than say an organization that is still considering taking it on, is not enough.

The impacts of this practice can be dangerous for those taking ‘maturity’ as an absolute, and dangerous for the overall future of the industry as well.

Both will suffer from possibly setting the bar of aimed BIM performance too low, based on the adopted experience of ‘mature’ practitioners, without allowing the benefit of the doubt that these experiences, while valuable, cannot be called ‘best practices’, due to the comparatively low numbers of participants, short relative timeframes and lack of measurable and robust results.

The new recruits of the BIM approach will constrain themselves to what others had done and in turn the entire industry will be reluctant to go where no one had gone before.

So, if ‘mature BIM’ is not really a ‘fully mature BIM’ but a BIM that is maybe only a bit more advanced than another BIM, how can the various levels of BIM practised by various industry stakeholders be measured?

They can’t and shouldn’t.

While I personally have developed a set of reliable tools that will enable me to distinguish between a real BIM-mer and a pretend one, be that an individual, a company or an entire region, I rarely share these tools with others.

Instead, I encourage them to face the fact that selecting the right people for making BIM work within their organisation is not an easy exercise.  Checklists and ‘boxes to tick’ will be of little help.

Similarly, to successfully hire a BIM services provider will require much more than reviewing their portfolio and listening to their PR spins.

Apart from suffering from a sense of righteousness, that will in time be seen to be false, reckless emulating of others’ BIM experiences, often in spite of one’s own misgivings of their value and ‘maturity’, can also lead to long term serious and detrimental material and legal consequences.

I also argue that no individual, company or region should embark on any type of BIM implementation without truly understanding and believing in the reason ‘why’ they were wanting to be doing BIM, in the first place.

This goes for an individual starting to learn a modelling package, a company setting out to develop their own BIM standards, or a Government deciding to mandate wholesale BIM deliverables and processes.

PDFs and BIM: A trilogy of posts investigating what the PDF format’s role may be in strategies transitioning the industry to BIM? First part: PDFs within current AEC – Important yet neglected?

PDF as a digital file-format is generally frowned upon by those in charge of creation and management of project information within the AEC industry.

It is being treated as something one puts up with until something better comes along. 

This approach is somewhat surprising considering that in most contemporary construction contracts PDF’s as the digital representations of drawings have often higher standing than model files or even DWGs.

In the still widely practised 2D information flow, where simultaneously PDF/DWG files get exchanged by project participants, the PDF’s do get used by those not CAD literate, but all further work on coordinating or assessing the data (for example creating a BOQ) is usually done on the DWG files. The technical people that are in need of using PDF’s within their CAD environments tend to turn them into DXFs (often ending up with zillions of fuzzy sub-elements), JPEGS or to lay them under their digital drawings.

In principle there is nothing wrong with these practices, what is questionable, why there are no better technical readers/managers for PDFs to make them more accessible by those less interested in going full CAD?

The non-direct originators of the information (say, main- and subcontractors) together globally handle billions of PDF’s daily, for the purpose of validating, coordinating, measuring, specialist-detailing, logistics planning etc.

One would presume a chunky market to be there for developers of PDF focused tools.

Sure, there are programs on offer with ‘advanced’ viewing facilities for PDF files, measuring, notating even a bit of layering and cross-comparing but few tends to go much beyond what Adobe’s Reader provides. Could the problem be in lack of interest from Adobe to step up its offering for the AEC or are there some other reasons behind the scenes?

Some sophisticated Cloud Document Management systems claim to have solved the issue by focusing on the even bigger issue with PDFs that is managing the quantities they tend to be coming in. Their philosophy builds on the idea that, forget viewing and analysing if you cannot locate the correct file from thousands and thousands of others in the project directories. This is a very valid point as the quantities drawings and consequently PDFs are produced at are totally out of synch with what is reasonable or manageable. Unfortunately these DocManSystems do not go far enough into the content of the PDF’s, sticking mostly to treating them as only digital representations of the PAPER drawing.

Yes, one can search and sort large numbers of files by name, author, revision, discipline or whatever on their platforms but these type of metadata and the searching engines are of limited use for, say façade-subcontractors that need to quickly locate ALL relevant (but ONLY) relevant sheets from the electronic piles-of-files.

Those arguing that the common document structures DO give specialist users easy gates to locate data applicable to them may do some research on claims raised by/against parties missing out on vital project information through hasty filtering of data or indeed rebutted claims because contracts force all participants to have ‘all of the documentation read in entirety’.

In the past, I have written about ArchiCAD’s (Graphisoft) excellent ability to handle PDF’s, both in quantity and quality – the second applying to the quality of work offered to the users.

Two points to illustrate this claim (based on Version 16 – 2 years outdated ArchiCAD and used on a clunky computer):

Numbers: One can import literally hundreds of PDFs into one file with little impact on performance. These can be placed in plans/elevations/sections making them an excellent base for either 2D or 3D based work.

Spatial: by being able to place PDFs in vertical views as well as plans, instant references are at hand to check validity of drawings and cross reference between views.

Then, there is the ‘trace and reference’ command to assist with colours, opacity and the magic slider for interrogation purposes!

Even though I’m happy to be singing praises to ArchiCAD on this particular topic, the point I wish to make is not how this is the only or even best software to use to spatially assess large numbers of PDFs.

There may be many others; there could easily be much better ones out in the field handling PDFs. Also, it is only a part solution to the problem as there still is a large component of manual labour needed to sort and select the files one want to import into a ArchiCAD.

There are some important questions emerging:

Why is there no more discussion on this topic amongst experts?

Why are there no more efforts made to guide PDF users through thousands of drawings by the originators? (drawing list that themselves go over many pages are little use);

Why can’t we get the numbers of drawings significantly reduced and cut out a lot of useless padding?

Is the answer on these questions in the simple and sad fact that PDF’s are viewed as ’backwards parts’ of the digital AEC revolution that will disappear soon enough as we all rush towards the promised BIM Nirvana?

Or is it because few take the time to really understand what happens to the construction data in the real world, away from fancy BIM Taskforce Groups and BIM Implementation Strategies and fully appreciate the strategic place this format holds within both current and likely future workflows?