Developing a Plan

• Profitability;

•

• Quality of the work produced (see Chapter 7);

•

• Openness to new business opportunities.

3.3 Developing a Plan

With firms increasingly relying on BIM to stay in business, many do test runs on one or two projects before rolling them out for the entire firm. This approach provides the time to learn the new process and tailor it to the needs of the firm and has the added benefits of helping to identify unanticipated changes and perfect new techniques.

Implementing BIM requires commitment, planning, testing, and time to de-velop best practices and integrate the process. Setting goals, and defining a budget and schedule keeps the transition focused. Once the decision has been made to implement BIM, choosing the right BIM tools and developing an implementation plan are the next steps. Asking peers, reading reviews, and trying demo versions can help to narrow the selection from the array of BIM CAD programs available.

What level of BIM does your firm want to use? All firms interviewed for this book looked for the program to be able to supply 3-D visualizations, including section, elevation, and 3-D views for use directly from the virtual model and from which to create renderings. For some firms, data extraction was initially limited to door and window schedules—information that is traditionally part of deliver-able drawing sets. Other firms such as Thompson’s stock plan business (Chapter 17) had more specialized needs to extract a bill of materials (BOM). Specialist firms such as health care expert RBB (Chapter 12) design and document extremely complex building systems and FF&E (furniture, fixtures, and equipment). They de-veloped customized solutions of software that was linked to their extensive health care network. Identifying what program features your firm expects to use will help you develop a wish list of what you need the program to deliver.

3.3.1 Choosing a Program

Choosing a BIM program is obviously important because that is the primary tool your firm will be using to make money. However, narrowing the choices from the many programs can be difficult. Asking colleagues, soliciting employee recommen-dations, and reading reviews is a good way to start.

Technical support for the program should be a deciding factor in terms of what the program can do for your firm. Larger firms have in-house specialty staff who

3.3 Developing a Plan 23 can solve most everyday issues and only rely on the software company for more complex issues and to help develop customization.

Midsize and smaller firms supplement their in-house users’ abilities with out-side consultants when they cannot afford an in-house expert. They also rely on the user forums each software company sets up. These can be an important resource for firms of all sizes to learn from one another.

Another source of help in choosing a program is the local user base. Many pro-grams have developed local user groups. Firms can develop a group of go-to peers to consult directly when needed. The smaller the firm, the more important these relationships can be, as tech support from the software company varies widely in both quality and cost.

3.3.2 Testing the Program

After narrowing the choices, some firms prefer to test two or more programs on typical projects before making a final decision. RBB (see Chapter 12) initially tried two programs, Revit and ArchiCAD, on comparable projects. The two pro-grams were chosen from in-house staff recommendations. After testing, they chose ArchiCAD, but a work slowdown due to the economy delayed implementation.

When they were ready 2 years later they felt Revit better met their needs. Not all firms have the in-house technical staff to implement and evaluate a test case in this way. More typical are the firms who choose a program and go with it. Architect Miguel Krippahl (Chapter 16) knew what he wanted from a program, and selected ArchiCAD in part because of the extensive local user base. Customization of pro-grams to local standards (e.g., there is a Portuguese version that Krippahl uses) can also help to determine the choice of program.

3.3.3 Staff Training

Most software comes with rudimentary training guides. Today these are supple-mented with free YouTube how-to videos. These demonstrations can still be in-structive and can be revisited as needed. Larger firms such as RBB develop in-house training plans as well as customized uses for their programs to produce the high-quality deliverables for which they are known. They also have a network-accessible standards guide. Staff training is done by in-house technical experts. Training is ongoing as the programs evolve.

Medium and smaller firms who don’t have in-house expertise rely on outside experts to assist them with training new staff, incorporating changes in the pro-grams, and refining how they have customized the program for their work. For staff, learning a new program is similar to learning a new skill such as typing or playing an instrument; first, you develop technique and then develop speed.

Going too quickly without maintaining technique can lead to sloppy habits, result-ing in lower quality work.

None of the firms interviewed for this book had a strict schedule for program implementation. Each firm stressed the ability to be flexible and make allowances and adjustments, learning as they advanced through projects. Test projects each had additional time built into the project schedule. This could be a month or longer depending on the size and complexitiy of the project as well as the abilities of the

24 Implementing BIM individuals assigned to them. All chose to assign their most CAD-savvy personnel to the first projects. After initial training in the program, the projects were begun.

Staff were trained to the level they would use the program. For most this is full-featured training. For managerial and nonarchitectural staff, training might be only to enable them to find and observe project progress and review notations.

3.3.4 Training Benchmarks

When implementing new programs, there are two benchmarks:

1. The first is how long it will take for the staff to achieve the same level of work within the time previously allowed to complete a task.

2. The second is to find the point at which the increase in speed using the pro-gram stops without losing the quality level of the work. This becomes the new benchmark for producing work.

The second benchmark establishes the firm’s new point of reference to use when creating proposals and doing business projections. It is what the profitiability of the firm will depend on.

To get a realistic assessment of a time frame to implement your own BIM process, you can consult with the software representatives and independent ex-perts. RBB had transitioned several times over the years from one CAD program to another and had in-house CAD experts whose expertise helped devise a reason-ably accurate plan for the recent transition to Revit. BIM is a process of mastering BIM tools, and from talking with numerous companies, many cited 6 months as a realistic time frame to reach the first benchmark. This will vary depending on the size and complexity of projects and the capabilities of staff. Developing good techniques and documenting best practices during this implementation stage will be beneficial in meeting your firm’s quality standards and goals.

3.3.5 Firm Commitment

One of the most important factors for a successful implementation of BIM is man-agement’s commitment and support. Without it, the staff and the entire implemen-tation effort will fracture. To achieve success, management should fully understand the scope of the change and how it will affect individuals as well as the company.

Their leadership during the transition should be supportive and help to keep every-one focused on their goal. The firm should not only provide adequate training for everyone with the new tools they will be using, but also be flexible with the transi-tion plan to incorporate unexpected delays or unrealized added benefits. Manage-ment will also need to recognize that some staff will transition at different rates than others.

3.3.6 Staffing: Computer-Literate Generation

We are still in a period where some of today’s workforce did not grow up with computers and struggle with technology.

3.3 Developing a Plan 25 For now, the building industry faces the dilemma that some of the workforce have years of invaluable experience and knowledge but lack the ease of integrating digital technology into their work. To address this problem, firms such as Mota-Engil (Chapter 20) and RBB have expanded their mentoring programs to work in a dual way. By pairing younger employees with older staff, the younger group benefits by learning from the older groups’ years of industry experience and knowl-edge, and the older employees benefit by learning the digital facets of their work from their younger colleagues.

The architect Frank Gehry, in a 2005 PBS American Masters documentary, talks about not being CAD-literate. But he built up an entire firm of people to do the CAD work for him, and in 2002, he founded Gehry Technologies, which was spun off from the main firm to develop new tools for the building industry.

Both Kevin Boots of RBB and Craig Baudin of Fender Katsalidis (Chapter 13) foresee that in another generation CAD illiteracy will be effectively eliminated.

3.3.7 The BIM Manager

When CAD was first introduced, firms created the position of CAD manager, an expert in how to use CAD programs. With the introduction of BIM there is now a BIM manager. This can be one person who performs that role for all projects, or one person who takes on those duties for that project.

The BIM manager’s roles and responsibilities can include:

•

• Proficiency with BIM tools used by the office, including CAD and rules-based checking and analysis programs;

•

• Developing and maintaining project data exchange protocols for the entire project team, including the owner and consultants;

•

• Being skilled at teaching and training staff members in the use of BIM tools;

•

• Ability to use creative problem solving to develop custom solutions to problems;

•

• Ability to customize and tailor the use of programs for the firm’s needs;

•

• Understanding of office standards and workflow;

•

• Being skilled at adapting BIM tools to implement and maintain office stan-dards and quality controls.

The BIM manager oversees data management and project databases. This is a different role than a CAD manager, who optimizes the implementation of a partic-ular program. In smaller firms this may be the same person, but regardless of size, each project should have a BIM manager. The BIM manager tests data exchange and sets protocols as necessary for firm standards and for each project. The latter is necessary because firms rarely do work with the same team for each project. With every project team using its software of choice, establishing data exchange proto-cols is critical to ensuring the smooth flow of data on each project.

26 Implementing BIM