engineering firms

As I said yesterday, the true topic of the BSA BIM Roundtable meeting was how engineers are using BIM. Representatives spoke from several engineering firms about their use of BIM and how it is impacting their business.

Some of the interesting points that came out of their presentations were:

• They like to receive the architectural model as early as possible, so that they can coordinate the structural design with the architectural design
• Some are taking advantage of a 2-way connection between Revit and analysis programs (specifically RAM)
• BIM is not changing their end deliverable; they still are submitting a set of drawings
  

The firms disagreed on how it was impacting their scope/schedule:

• Most said that BIM is pushing everything "to the left" - detailed design is required much earlier. That also impacts their fee; during schematic design, it used to be 15% of their total fee. Now, its up to 25% or 30%.
• Another firm thinks that it will be pushing the design phases out "to the right" because engineers will have to start doing the type of coordination that is done by the contractor in traditional practices.

I thought that was probably the most interesting point made; although, I don't know how realistic it is. I think that coordination needs to be done by the firm(s) that is actually building it. Recently, we brought a subcontractor in to work on a model with us; he looked at it and basically told us that he wouldn't be building it anything like that.

We anticipated that and will be doing a lot of remodeling during MEP coordination, which is why I don't see how an engineer could coordinate the trades without the input of the subcontractor who is actually building it.

talking BIM @ the BSA

This morning, I attended my first BSA BIM Roundtable meeting. The topic was how engineers are using BIM, but the discussion strayed from that significantly.

At one point, the issue of the model came up. "Who owns the model?" "Where does the model live?" "Does the model exist?" At one point, Jeff Millet (of KlingStubbins) made a great point, "The issue of the model is irrelevant because we work in a drawing-based environment." This changed our discussion slightly; we started talking about using BIM now versus using BIM in the future. Obvious, opinions varied across the board.

At one point during this discussion, I brought up something that Tocci discusses internally; something I thought the architects would like: the concept that eventually BIM could allow each discipline/project participant to do what they want to do: architects can design (and not worry about creating drawing sets), builders can build, engineers can analyze, etc.

Well, most of them didn't really like that. Several commented that they take pride in their drawing sets, etc. etc. I understand that most of their fees come from creating drawing sets, but maybe in the future that fee structure will change. Perhaps owners will value design concept more.

I still believe that BIM can facilitate an environment where each person does what they enjoy doing. It may not be happening right now, but I think it is important to think about things like that now. After all, if everyone only thought about how to use BIM in the current environment, we would never progress.

another survey (this time for educators)

The BIMForum's Academic Subforum is doing some research to better understand where implementation is. This kind of research is very important to understand what needs to be done to reach the "BIM saturation point".

If you are a AEC educator, I urge you to complete this short survey (whether or not you are teaching BIM). Click for link. Thanks in advance for your participation.

For results to date, click here.

A short survey for practitioners will be issued soon.

2007 VDC/BIM Use Survey

If you are currently using BIM on project (or even if you are not), please click here to take CURT's VDC/BIM survey.
















For the results of the 2006 VDC/BIM survey, click here.

I strongly urge everyone to take this survey - it will help all of us have a better idea of BIM implementation across the industry. If you are using BIM, it will take you 15-20 minutes to go through the whole thing. If you are not, it might take you 5 minutes. Thanks in advance!

the IFC saga continues

Update from before.

So, I received a copy of ADT 2007. I installed it. I open the architectural file for the project in ADT. I download and install the IFC Utility (I think..).

Then what?

2D conversion troubles

It's been some time since I intelligently discussed (complained about?) 2d conversion efforts.

We are currently having models created for both of the Starwood hotels in Lexington (although we aren't having the architectural for aloft modeled - the architect took care of that!). Several weeks ago, an issue came up regarding a discrepancy in architectural floors plans: the ground floor gave one dimension for a certain length of exterior wall; the 2nd - 4th floors gave a different one (in total, there was a difference of 4").

The Building Information Modeler assigned to oversee the 2d conversion process advised the consultant to use the length of wall on the ground floor for all of the other floors.

Today, that came back to burn us! The architect told us to use the dimension from the 2nd - 4th. We passed on the information to the consultant, who told us that they would have to modify the architectural, structural, HVAC, plumbing & electrical model.

We are currently figuring out how to handle this issue. It will be resolved, but I'm not sure exactly how. All I know is that it is very frustrating. If the architect had (effectively) used an object-oriented software to create the construction documents, we wouldn't have this problem.

(stop!) overselling BIM

We have been giving presentations on BIM at Tocci for quite some time now.

Recently, we have actively decided that we need to stop overselling BIM & stop making promises we aren't 100% we can keep. I think it's a good decision; although, we haven't really made any specific promises in the past, just general 'talking up' of BIM. It's tough because we're so excited about it (both internally as a company and externally as an industry), but it's definitely something we all need to be aware of.

Lately, when I attend BIM presentations, that is one of the things that drives me crazy. I don't want anyone to build BIM up so much that it cannot meet expectations. In the end, that will only make it harder to integrate BIM into the industry.

So, please: If you're presenting about BIM to anyone, don't oversell. Speak realistically, bringing up the good, the bad and the ugly.

organizing Revit objects

We recently decided that we needed a way to manage our Revit families.

My first thought: Excel.

My second thought: How am I going to list all of those families & their parameters in Excel?

I e-mailed a few people at Autodesk. They sent me a copy of their content in spreadsheet form. Perfect. I opened it. Imagine 1109 rows that look like this:




















Not quite what I was looking for, but thanks Autodesk!

I waited a few more days and started logging families in Excel, figuring that I needed to get started. ("If I log 20 families a day, I'll be done in 60 days...")

Today, I got an e-mail from Ken Stowe, of Autodesk. Subject line: have you seen this?

"This" was a link to a post in Matt Rumbelow's blog. Matt's post is about Content Highway (beta), or "itunes for Revit family files" (as he calls it). Content Highway is amazing - exactly what I needed! Within the (free..for now) program, you sort your object library (or a portion of your object library) by Revit category, CSI, Unformat, Supplier or Folder. You can modify parameters. You can view a thumbnail of the objects while viewing a matrix of all of the objects.

I am still playing around with it, making sure that it is going to work for us. But I'm pretty sure that it is. It has to be. I need it.

Click to download.

IFC

The Problem: I have an ABS/ADT model (which is created using constructs..?) that was created for us externally. (Don't ask me why it is in ABS instead of Revit). I am unfamiliar with the way ABS is set up. So, I want to play with it in Revit. But I cannot figure out how to export it to IFC. I installed a trial of IFC-Utility 2x for ADT. I still can't figure anything out. Very frustrating.

The Solution: ???

Anyone know anything about this?

inundated with acronyms

This afternoon, the BIM team met with several Operations staff members; our plan is to slowly shift some BIM responsibilities from Planning to Operations.

During our meeting, we referenced some of our BIM models (BmOM, BmSDC & BmVSS) and some of our processes (VsL2 & CeOM). We explained our new coding system for Vc products. We also discussed some of our new query forms (DCR^TM and NCR^TM instead of RFI).

Needless to say, they were overwhelmed.

When I look at most BIM resources and documents, I get it. I can easily read (or translate?) a sentence that references XML, RFA, NDC, NCR and IAI. I'm fluent in BIM (I can say this honestly because I actually dream in BIM sometimes). The downside of this is that I often forget to translate for others. Clearly, something that I (along with other fluent BIMers) need to work on.

Next week, I will be presenting some of our BIM process to the entire company. My number one speaking goal (besides reducing the number of times I say "um") will be to clearly translate the language. Afterall, I don't want to scare them away.

Christopher Alexander

On Thursday evening, I flew down to Baltimore.

During my flight, I was seated next to a very chatty gentleman. We talked for a few minutes at the beginning on the flight (i.e., asked polite questions about occupations, reasons for travel, etc.), but I tried to ignore him after that - I was reading a great New Yorker article on Amory Lovin of RMI.

He didn't quite catch the hint, so I finally gave up & listened to him talk about his views on a few things (including females entering engineering fields, balancing work & family, and traveling for work). I should point out that I hadn't really gone into detail about my job; I've found the best thing to do is say that I work in construction management.

I was only half listening to him when he said, "Have you ever heard of object-oriented building software?" That caught my attention.

He proceeded to tell me about an author he has recently gotten into, Christopher Alexander.


















Alexander has been writing theoretical books on architecture and software since the 1970s. In them, he "invented" the concept of object-oriented architectural software.

I have yet to read any of his books, but I'm intrigued.

Army Corps of Engineers & BIM

As was brought to my attention (thanks JTJ/JLT),

It's not terribly new, but it's cool to see the military using the stuff.

Click