Image source: http://bimforum.org/about/
By Federico Negro
Last week I had the pleasure of presenting our work on the construction of the Louisiana State Museum and Sports Hall of Fame by Trahan Architects at the Associated General Contractors of America (AGC) BIM Forum in Chicago. The event is meant to “facilitate and accelerate the adoption of building information modeling (BIM) in the AEC industry [and] lead by example and synchronize with counterparts in all sectors of the industry to jointly develop best practice for virtual design and construction (VDC).” I also got a copy of Chuck Eastman’s new edition of his BIM Handbook which served as entertainment during the trip and which I’ll refer to later in this post.
It was my first time at the forum. Here is what I learned about the adoption of BIM by the industry and how it is understood.
1. There are still three types of people when it comes to BIM: those who do it, those who talk about doing it, and those who willingly remain unaware while hoping it will just pass by.
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Like most transformational processes, BIM has its share of opponents. It also has its share of cheerleaders. Many design technology conferences these days have a healthy dose of BIM cheerleader presentations, or so-called BIM marketing. What I liked about the AGC’s BIM Forum was the fact that it was topical in nature, which forced presenters to get specific and address real issues, improving the signal-to-noise ratio. It also does a great job of ‘reaching across the aisle’ by including all members of the building process. James Timberlake, a founding partner of Kieran Timberlake and an architect, gave the keynote address.
The conference, which is held three times per year in different cities across the US, directly addresses issues associated with the shift toward BIM-based management and delivery. This year’s topic was “Where does design end and construction begin?” The topic alone sets this conference apart as it strives to go beyond the question still being asked at other conferences: Why should we use BIM?
To that end, one of the more interesting presentations at the forum was a skit performed by Phil Bernstein (who keeps a great blog, by the way) and Jan Reinhardt. The skit, aptly named “BIM among enemies”, played out the process of model sharing under a traditional project delivery contract structure.
The narrative walked the audience through the different stages of design and construction, starting with pre-construction. The most successful part of the skit was the actors’ ability to place equal blame on the three major parties for missteps during construction coordination. The owner was blamed for not clearly outlining deliverable requirements for both parties. Just ‘requiring BIM’ was not enough. The architect protected his position stating that he was only required to use BIM and not to deliver BIM. He saw holding the model as leverage, but did not want to take on risk associated with its use. The builder told his subs that a BIM model would be provided, but didn’t have access to it. Once he did get it, he either couldn’t use it or realized the model didn’t quite meet the standards he required for use in construction (see point #2 below). This in turn caused many problems with his subs in coordination and cost overruns. Needless to say, both parties quickly fell into a confrontational stance, a common outcome in such a situation.
The level of collaboration and communication required amongst the architect and builder, a relationship that lacks a contractual agreement in traditional models, is the main subject of the skit. How we address this is a different conversation, but having a venue to discuss these issues is critical. I encourage BIM Forum to promote more of this type of material.
2. People still misunderstand the concept of ‘purpose built models’.
Too much emphasis has been given to the belief that to do BIM one must keep a single model in a single environment that fulfills all tasks required by a design. This concept is misleading. Each stakeholder has a purpose – a deliverable – in mind when building models. There are different preferred tools and workflows in each of the disciplines. There are also incredibly detailed standards for internal quality assurance inside many firms. Aggregating disparate models into a whole is quite a different concept to that of multiple parties concurrently reading and writing onto a single file.
That said, it is in the best interest of the project to identify someone whose job it is to aggregate all parties’ models into a coherent whole, with its own data structure, attribute sets, etc. Who, then, is responsible for this must be clarified in all projects, though it usually falls on the construction manager (CM) or a neutral BIM coordinator. Mainly, parties need to understand that what they produce will be shared, and it will become part of a larger assembly.
The single-model misconception is probably a by-product of the perceived marriage of BIM and IPD (Integrated Project Delivery). Though IPD is a very interesting and promising collaboration structure, it still represents a minority of projects in the building industry. Design-Bid-Build (DBB), Design-Build and CM at Risk are by far still the most common models in the U.S. (DBB accounted for 90% of public projects and 40% of private projects in 2002#). The success of any IPD project probably lies in the inclusive collaboration structure where all parties work together from the onset of design, with the technology playing the role of enabler. Many of the projects I’ve worked on could have greatly benefited from the expertise of builders and fabricators during the design process, but the benefits of BIM do not necessarily require these new contract structures.
