Two Posts in the Same Day!?

I know what you're thinking...here we go two months without a post and now, bam two posts in the same day?! Crazy I know.

Moving on. It seems lately that everyone is in the HAVE TO GET WORK mode lately. And of course this is completely understandable and justifiable. I know we have been cranking out proposals and RFQ's right and left, while still managing all of our other projects. But every now and then I find myself at a point that is very rare...I call it the "Between Things...Thing". (While this is not too technical of a term of course, those who follow this blog or know me, also know that I think too much seriousness takes a lot of the fun out of what we do and doesn't really help in the end.)

Some people call the BTT (Between Things Thing) down time, EBAY time, check your 401k time, write on your blog time, update your LinkedIn profile time or time to visit with coworkers and talk about The Office season finale.

For a BIM Department...the BTT (Between Things Thing) is gaps in time between issuing clash detection reports, coordination emails, 4D updates, model builds, redesigns, RFI's and field coordination reports that can be used to increase your efficiencies to continue to complete this work even faster.

Here's the deal, every week my team and I have a meeting (a Lean meeting of course we have to practice what we preach) and I outline the standard/tutorials that need to be completed in the BTT gaps. These can include everything from BIM Project Startup Checklists to Coursework for our guys in the field to use to BIM specification customization. All of these continue to expand our ever growing standards and reference library.

I have included a sample snippit of a standard we distribute to team members who want to review the model clashes and 4D of a project with Navisworks Freedom here

While this current library of standards is growing into quite an impressive document/book, the intent is to begin using it for:

- New hires - both in the field and in the BIM Division to better acquaint themselves with how to do things the right way and limit "over the shoulder time"

- Executives - to orient themselves with our processes and technology

- Marketing - to stay away from "Hollywood BIM" and make sure we are promising what we can deliver

- Ourselves - believe it or not from time to time we forget things and this has served as an excellent reminder on more than one occasion.

BIM Projection Spreadsheet

So I've been a little further behind than I anticipated...anyways to expand on what we were discussing earlier, I have been digging a little deeper lately into more of the project management end of what it means to be a BIM Manager.

To that end I have posted here a spreadsheet in Google Docs that shows how we are linking our weekly time sheets to our monthly projections / expenses. While some of it looks like it got lost in the translation, I think you'll get the general concept.

Probably one of the biggest hurdles we've had in our current implementation is billing against project budgets that are slim to nonexistent. The course of action I've taken to resolve it, is to get involved earlier in the process of estimating/bidding or establishing the GMP on negotiated work to make sure that we have a justifiable and accurate budget in the job so we aren't making PM's unhappy campers.

Currently we are using this type of spreadsheet (though in Oracle) to track our cost histories for each phase of a project to validate future BIM enabled construction projects. While I know a number of companies bill their BIM Department to General Ledger, I've found you still need to know just how much a certain size of project will cost in the overall project framework which ultimately affects that bottom line.

I've made it a point to start discussing with the PM's at the beginning of each month exactly how many total hours we anticipate billing towards their projects. Although at first some of them love to kick and scream a little bit after a while they really appreciate the communication and more importantly the value add to their job.

Some more posts coming soon!

Setting up a New Division

First of all, apologies for not posting for quite a while, you will start to see much more frequent posts now that things are a bit more settled...

Settled you ask?

Well, it's been a whirlwind couple of weeks, however we have officially relocated to the west coast to be closer to my wife's family and we are truly enjoying the beautiful weather, beaches and people. More importantly the new challenge of setting up a new BIM division in the San Diego market!

Stay tuned as I will continue to upload standards, tasks and challenges as I undertake this journey once again and hopefully it will be helpful to the folks who have emailed me about being tasked with setting up a BIM department and making it work! Coming soon: How to measure BIM profitability vs. time lost on an employee and project level...oh yes this will involve spreadsheets.


Lucia digs the sand

Top Ten Architecture Modeling Mistakes

We've all heard it before. "The architects models are worthless and unusable." So here's my first crack at a top ten list of things architects need to avoid when modeling that inhibit further progress when dealing with contractors and consultants (i.e. structural, mechanical, electrical, plumbing, GIS and so on)

Top ten modeling mistakes architects make:

1.) Alignment - This is uber important. Especially when using the model for IES, CFD or other analytical tools. Floors connect to walls, parapets extend past roof lines, footings align with slabs or are integral to them. Oh yeah and windows and doors need to be modeled as constructed. Unfortunately a 500 lb aluminum storefront window can't bear on only the substrate and exterior finishes.

2.) No generic modeling. Or at least don't share the models until they have material and intelligence otherwise the models are distributing maybes and kind ofs which don't help any body and in reality can really confuse the team.

3.) Model as constructed. Walls are not 150 ft tall. Floors are not 1700 ft long without joints. Pre-cast panels are just that, panels. Also when concrete floors and deck pans are modeled they need to be modeled to their exact dimensions. Also ceilings have wire supports, which can easily be worked around pipes for the most part, however pipe hangers, duct hangers and other supporting appurtenances need to be modeled. Use best judgement.

4.) Don't use design options. A lot of tools will not recognize the difference between design option 1 or 2 when exported and lump everything together. Separate files work here and in reality work better at an early stage.

5.) Align and orient all structure to grid lines and exact locked and constrained dimensions. This saves on time (moving a grid line as opposed to 100 columns) and makes the modeling inherently more accurate.

6.) If a floor replicates exactly a number of times use groups and copy. You can always ungroup if the program becomes more complex.

7.) Don't model the structure if you have a structural engineer on the team who is doing BIM. The engineer's model is what should be built and tested, not the architects. Link it in, save time and if you need additional structure create a separate workset that you can send to the engineer to update his model.

8.) Limit 2D info. BIM is nice in the fact you can click on a component and it will tell the user what it is and that you can model as needed.

9.) Control your levels and families. Family creation needs to be created as accurately as possible and with flexible sizing options. This is the only time I encourage an architect to use a generic block and then go back later and change it to a worthwhile family object. Also learn how to model families correctly, these are often the biggest propagator for "blank" clashes. Levels need to be limited. When there are too many different objects hosted to too many differing levels it will get very confusing during the analysis phase unless there is some system put in place that makes sense to the team.

10.) Don't send junk. if the model isn't finished, if it's not usable and if it's not coherent it won't be to anyone else.

Thanks to Jeff Woodward from Midwest CAD who came up with this idea and I hope this helps begin a dialog.

Feel free to add on if you can think of anymore, these were just the "biggies" off the top of my head.

Great to hear from so many people!

Thanks for all of the notes, emails, suggestions and atta boys about the book. Please keep the input coming so I can build on this and make the next one even better.

Composite Model Strategy p.2

So here's the second part of the post, the how to. I know most have you have heard of WAN and LAN networks, however, what I'd really like to start talking about is how this works within the framework of a BIM collaboration. For those of you who haven't checked it out, I strongly recommend looking at Riverbed Technologies, who essentially has developed a system of network WAN optimizers that allow for multiple users across multiple networks to access and update a single file minimizing the drag on your local (LAN) machines. Although there is quite a large investment involved in the Riverbed and Steelhead systems it does allow users to collaborate using a single Revit model file across the internet. Also it makes it super convenient to enable its use with mobile devices in the field and encrypts the data to meet pretty tough security protocols.

Another new technology to come to the forefront of late is the BIM server. You can apply to test drive this new plugin here. What's great about this technology is that it allows users to upload and download the latest iterations of BIM files in IFC format from a centralized location. Although this technology is relatively new, it holds the most promise in that it is being developed as a free resource for the industry to plug into and the fact that it has been developed to IFC standards as a baseline makes it a very promising technology.

Image copyright and from www.bimserver.org

Book Comes Out in One Week!

Hey everyone! It's been a second since my last post, but as many of you know this was due in large part to writing my book. This book will be released on Amazon may 7th and should hit bookstores on May 9th.

Please feel free to hit me back with responses, questions, dialog and suggestions as this is the first iteration of the book, I would really like for the future editions to address what the issues are that you and your teams face and continue to develop upon this first edition.

Best!
Brad