Great article! I was just having this conversation with a principal yesterday. I was telling him how Revit would help him make more money. He was telling me he doesn't have the cash flow right now for the software or training. I'll be so happy when the construction recession is over in Florida!
http://www.augi.com/publications/hotnews.asp?page=1787
It is June 8, 2008, and I am sitting in the dentist's chair waiting for my dentist to begin his exploration of my existing dental work. No matter how much I take care of my teeth and gums, no matter how hard I try to stay away from sugary sweets, there could not have been a way to foresee the damage that was done last night by biting into an unpopped popcorn kernel. Perhaps it was the manner in which I consumed the popcorn last night that prevented me from knowing what was actually in my mouth.
Maybe my wife has a point when she says that she is afraid of putting her hand in the popcorn bowl for fear that I might devour it while I chow down in rapid motion. Maybe in some cases the hand being faster than the eye can cause some serious damage. Now, as my gums begin to feel somewhat numb, my Dentist begins ramping up his drill and starts drilling for oil. As he moves around my gum line with the precision of a dart player, I prepare to face the wrath of my stupidity.
As soon as the drill presses into my damaged tooth I become consumed with a very uneasy feeling. In order to combat my fear, I begin to strangle the handles of the dental chair with such force that I believe my hands' imprints will be there for some time. And then it happened. As if someone forced me to bite down on a cold piece of tinfoil, the Dentist's drill hit a nerve, causing my hands and feet to shoot into the air and knock over the tray holding the dental equipment.
But did the dentist stop drilling? Did he sense my pain? As if this was a common occurrence within his office, he continued to work his drill and leave me to the shots of pain hammering the inside of my mouth. And with every thrust of pain, I begin to fade, heading toward what appears to be a state of unconsciousness. And I slip into a Revit moment�
It is May 2, 2008, and I am standing in front of a conference room containing 120 architects who had signed up to attend my session entitled "Building Information Modeling: How It Is Changing the Architectural Way of Doing Business." Architects are an interesting group of individuals and if you haven't had the privilege of being in the company of four or more architects, you really should find some and simply hang with them. They live in a world where being beaten down in fee for service is not only a common way of life, it is an accepted behavior. Despite having the power to change it, architects never seem to do so.
When a client demands that their fee be reduced, instead of standing firm in their position, architects seem to buckle under the pressure associated with "losing the client," therefore setting precedence in how the client/architect future relationship will be established. What boggles my mind is that architects in Ontario have in their favour "The Architect�s Act," which is legislation that that enforces the use of an architect for specific building uses and sizes where, without the use of an architect, these buildings could not be designed or built.
Instead of our profession standing firm as a unified group and having the power to promote a "take it or leave kind of attitude" when it comes to negotiating fees for service, architects cower to the fear of losing the job to another architect�one who would be more than happy to backstab his professional colleague by doing the job for less. And these, dear readers, are the attendees of my BIM session.
With their beaten�down morale, they have come to hear about what is behind "all of the buzz" on the street regarding BIM. Being relatively new to the Canadian architectural profession, BIM is slowly increasing in popularity. Out of the total 180 people in attendance during my two sessions, only five people belonged to companies that are attempting to use BIM. Out of these five companies, according to the information gathered during my session, none were using BIM all the way through the construction documentation stage. It appeared that BIM was being used only during the up�front portion of a project in order to show the client "pretty pictures."
So as I presented my session, it quickly became evident to me who my audience was. Not only were they part of a profession that appears to be beaten down by their clients and, more sadly, by their own peers, they were also a group of professionals who were about to be exposed to a new methodology. And depending on their corporate financial position, it is a methodology that they might not be able to implement due to the initial costs in doing so.
My seminar touched upon these five topics, in general.
- Understanding BIM: What Is It Really?
- Understanding How To Leverage BIM To Gain Market Share
- Understanding BIM Collaboration Between The Total Project Team: Structural / Mechanical / Electrical
- BIM in 4D � Timing and The Construction Process Shown in Phases Within The Document Set
- BIM in 5D - Scheduling and Costing Within BIM
As I made my way through topic one, the questions I received through the session suggested that BIM and 3D were strongly tied together. My attendees understanding of BIM was based on the notion that BIM's main value to our profession was that it was able to provide beautiful renderings in 3D view that can be shown to a client. Should the client like what was presented, the architect could then export the work out of BIM to legacy software where the project could be further developed.
Unfortunately, like the dentist hitting my nerve, I also touched on a few sensitive areas when I indicated that a project should not be taken out of BIM but instead, information should be brought into BIM. I would never have known that this one statement would unintentionally expose one's level of knowledge of BIM by trying to provide my experience in implementing the BIM process. The simple fact remains: the power of BIM lies in its ability to tie everything together via the information model. By taking the model and exporting its data out of its environment, the tie�in is lost. Regardless of whether the need for manual drafting exists, the process change of having staff develop line drawing details can be done using legacy 2D software and then imported into the Revit project file through the use of Drafting Views. This would then, in its minimalist level, allow for the Drafting Views to be associated with Section Views and Call Out Views. Exporting information developed within any BIM environment is a real "no no."
Like my Dentist, I begin drilling through each topic to explore the opportunities that BIM offers. And like my experience in the Dentist's chair, I too begin to drill too close to people's comfort zones. This never became more evident than when I approached the second and third topics focusing on leveraging BIM to gain market share and tying the total project team together. Throughout this discussion, the few questions that I fielded once again showed me the skepticism my audience felt toward how BIM should be implemented.
Instead of viewing BIM as a process of maturation, BIM is being viewed as a single� source task. Instead of looking at BIM as a way to begin a project and maturing the project throughout the cycle of Design Development, Construction Documentation, Procurement and through the Life Cycle of the building itself, those who were using BIM were using it only during the initial design stages.
By showing the audience the power of BIM's representational images for the use of marketing a company's work, I also showed how these images were not an isolated instance, but a real live representation of a model that can be manipulated, changed, and matured throughout the project schedule. In doing so, the point that I was attempting to make was that BIM should be viewed as an on�going process which enables a project to maintain its integrity.
All changes made while in BIM can be viewed throughout the entire model and should be viewed as such. BIM is the only process that enables all changes to be viewed throughout all individual views as they are only snapshots of individual areas of the building model as a whole. The views and images capable of being developed to show the client, therefore, begins to move away from the mere representational aspect of images and closer to showing a client what is actually being built.
To take it to the next level, what is being shown to the client in terms of building representation, or actualization, can therefore include all of the building systems associated with the building science aspect of a project. Items such as structural systems and mechanical systems not only can be shown in presentation format, but can also be understood to be coordinated with each other to ensure that their existence in a project is void of collision issues and interference concerns.
BIM, therefore, should be viewed as a total project solution. From conceptual design through to the end of procurement, BIM can be used not only to show the fluffy images that are needed to successfully win projects or gain approval of new design concepts, but it also is critical to ensuring that the building design matures properly and in coordination with the sums of the individual parts to complete the project as a whole. BIM promotes project team unity and can be used, frankly, for a very forward�thinking and progressive architect to platform into the idea of providing a full in�house service of architecture and engineering.
Developing all of a building's aspects in BIM is critical to the accuracy of a building's maturation process. Why not then provide a higher level of assurance by developing the engineering of the building under the very watchful and coordinated eye of the architect? Hmmm� food for thought.
As I move forward into the fourth and fifth items on my agenda (which I will cover in a separate article) it becomes ever so clear that those in attendance are becoming more and more uncomfortable with what is being presented to them. What at first was expected to be a session on "software" quickly turned into a deeper session on process change. BIM is synonymous with process change. To use BIM to its fullest advantage means that an architect would have to subscribe to changing the way they have carried out their business over the past 25 years.
BIM is more than simply subscribing to a software seat license. BIM causes all sorts of havoc in the workplace, starting with the cost of the software itself, to the cost of upgrading computer hardware to meet the minimal requirements to use the software, to the cost of training and the cost of loss of productive staff time during training.
Migrating to BIM is not an easy thing to do. Implementing BIM, once the migration has been committed to, is also not easy. So it is fair to say then, on behalf of those in attendance in my session, that the idea of going to BIM is as painful as sitting in the dentist's chair while he prods and pokes and drills in my mouth. The mere thought of being told by someone holding a seminar on BIM that BIM is the way of the future and that those who do not migrate to BIM�sooner rather than later�run the risk of being left behind in the dust and perhaps losing a client who comes knocking on their door to develop projects using BIM.
As a matter of fact, and in response to my reflection of architects being beaten down in their fees, BIM actually provides a tool that promotes a higher fee. Think about it. If we as a profession can provide our clientele with a process that would decrease a project schedule, decrease the cost of construction due to coordination clarity, and provide our client with information presented in a format never before achievable, how much would one be willing to pay for that level of service? My guess would be quite a bit once the client experiences BIM's value. Now if only we can somehow address the undercutting going on in our own back yard, perhaps the architects world over can gain back the level of respectability they deserve.
And with that, my dentist successfully hits yet another nerve and I jumped not only out of my seat (again), but also out of my Revit moment.
(Discuss this Article! in the HotNews Discussion Forums.)
Submitted by Paul F. Loreto, President of Loreto Design Consulting, an Autodesk Authorized Contractor Revit Consulting Company and Director of Paul F. Loreto Architect, Inc, a seven�person, full�service architectural firm in London, Ontario, Canada. Paul has been an Autodesk Authorized Contractor since 2002 and has provided 40 Autodesk Revit training, implementation, and mentoring sessions throughout North America independently and on behalf of Autodesk Inc. Paul taught Revit classes at Autodesk University in 2003, 2004, and 2006 and is currently providing Revit consultation through his company, Loreto Design Consultants. You can contact him at pfloreto@pflainc.com and visit his website at www.pflainc.com
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