Putting off BIM? It's Right in Front of You!

Tendayi Chin, Design Manager at Ateliers De France

Even today there are countless firms and practices who are putting off their inevitable embrace of the new world of BIM. Unfortunately, there are many cases where companies present the appearance of a BIM-oriented approach with bells and whistles but not actually benefit from the paradigm shift. I would like to contend that, we are all already on the train whether we are familiar with ISO 19650 or not. Every time we have grown tired of a tedious process and have developed an ingenious way to tackle the task or when we have archived assets in an ordered way for seamless deployment in future projects, each time we have done such or actioned countless other efficiency solutions, we have taken on board the BIM mindset without even knowing it. So why fight it when it is already in our blood?

The issue for many firms is the initial investment perceived to start a process that is not only sustainable but also promises viable returns.  The cost of multiple AEC licenses and super computers seems daunting even to some of the more established firms out there.  You may be looking at the issue as a separate, almost superfluous additional appendage, that is to say in addition to the software and hardware you may also be thinking about training and hiring BIM specialists to carry out the ‘dirty’ work for you.

To this outlook I scream a resounding NO! Look around you. Your employees or fellow colleagues may be working in 2D at the moment, but I can bet that many of them have all had their brushes with modelling and/or data archiving packages before.  Some of them may have been Rhino or Max specialists in the past and now plod through AutoCAD tasks whilst their transferrable skills wither away.  I believe that every professional when given the space and the encouragement has the ability to perform miracles.

“The issue for many firms is the initial investment perceived to start a process that is not only sustainable but also promises viable returns”

I shall use myself as an example because I just can’t help myself. I started off as an Architectural Technician really not knowing much of what was going on with the largest project I had been on – an office for Facebook.  Countless meetings where Architects would talk for hours and I could barely understand a single word of the nomenclature. But I kept at it and kept pushing myself in the conversation of BIM—when AstraZeneca came to my desk I thought I was ready with my University Revit experience and my YouTube tutorials.  In reality I was horrible, but my employers believed in me, they trusted me and gave me the space to manage two Architects.  We didn’t have AEC licenses at the time,no supercomputers, just a few AutoCAD licenses had to do.  But there is always a way.  No Revit license?  No problem, Navisworks Freedom is free!  Blender is not BIM software but it is programmable and free!  Need to present a tricky coordinated response in 3D?  Easy, obtain a FBX export of the area from the trades and shift it around with literally any modelling package.  With enough practice and modelling discipline you can get FBX models into Revit LT for coordination without much hassle and very low expenditure.  

Barely six months after starting on the project I was able to request for the exact software and hardware I needed to manage the job effectively.  It is not too big headed to say that my requests were a no brainer. I am not necessarily saying that the project journey was resoundingly successful without any doubt, but I would say that long after the Architects had left the project and I was the only one, we were still coming up with ways to shave significant chunks of time off the project and the client just could not stop expanding our scope; because there was trust. Because employees were given the space to grow.  The company did not bring in a new hire which would have probably been alienating to everyone with even a rudimentary understanding of how to approach BIM projects, they did not throw money at an expensive set up from the get go and they did not get the entire design team trained in countless software packages. Today, this design team is an industry leader in BIM,  and it all stemmed from trust.

Regardless of whether you are convinced that now is the time to start running toward the industry trajectory, the reality is today one cannot afford to stay out of it. Trust me when I say moving forward in 2D and having 3D or any proper BIM response run afterwards is probably the worst thing you could possibly do, especially for large projects. I foolishly tried this on the first laboratory when my Revit was not up to scratch and I had not at the time fully understood how to transfer my 3D experience – it was a complete and utter disaster. I guess sometimes a little embarrassment is what is required to shift your nether regions in gear but I can say almost with certainty that had I persisted on such a reckless route, there would have been no accolades at the end.

At the end of the day, what I am asking you to do is ask the question of your own people.  If you are convinced you are surrounded by good people but are still not getting the answers you are hoping for, prod a little harder. Motivate. You’ll be tighter for it, avoid a lot of heart ache and unearth some diamonds you never even knew existed.