Googlizing the AEC Industry

IPD-BIM and SMART Culture Launches AEC Industry to New Levels

I recently posted an article "Googlizing the AEC Industry" on our NoSilos.com site outlining the basis of a new series of live seminar and workshop events to be held in 2014 and 2015. In keeping with our goal of breaking down silos of information and operation within companies and project, we are offering a full two-year training effort called "The Smart Built Culture" to transform those who attend this series. There will be other webinar and free website information and presentations to inform our readership about these resources and presentations so, even if you can't make the live events, you will be able to get some of the benefits of our research and experience over the past ten years in this emerging business model.

BIM mandates ... Is Snake Oil not far behind?

Many of you know I'm a very strong proponent of Building Information Modeling for many reasons, but when I start seeing government mandates for public works projects I have to take pause. Why? Well frankly after being involved with several GSA projects here in the US for remodeling, repurposing and new construction, I've not seen the GSA leverage the reality of BIM in their life-cycle use and maintenance.

What happened? I thought what we were doing was going to make a long term difference in the cost of operations for our government, but as I dug deeper, I found the operations folks didn't have the appropriate tools to take advantage of the products we delivered to them. Further, they didn't know if they would ever get the tools to leverage our work for their benefit.

Formula 1, Babies and Buildings A String of Connected Possibilities

A recent Ted Talk Peter van Manen of Mclaren electronics visits the possibilities of taking the thousands of data points of a Formula 1 car and applying them to to a pediatric intensive care ward. I applaud the inventiveness of the folks at Mclaren for taking a system which helps the most competitive motor sportscars perform at the highest level, to increase the survival of babies in their most fragile time of life.

As I listened to the presentation by Mr. van Manen I was intrigued to think if we monitored buildings with the same level of density as a Formula 1 or Indy car what would we learn about the interdependencies of the systems of the buildings we create. While racing teams build a new car for each season and then continually  refine the car with new parts over the racing season, buildings aren't tuned to the same level of razor edged performance. But how could buildings benefit from the clouds of information such systems create and how could they be built to allow for more constant upgrading to increase performance?

While the real-time streams help teams during the race, the real benefit to the teams is the pattern analysis of different systems interacting and the stories they tell about the performance of the vehicle. Patterns of interaction which warn of impending failure. Today there is a distinct possibility of converting buildings from acting like consuming appliances to being a cooperating, interdependent network of producers of power and electricity. But to accomplish this task will require a nervous system at the level used in the Formula 1 auto racing business.

So while we are using the continuous monitoring of and using real-time analysis of the data to forecast future performance of both machines and mankind, we might also be thinking of applying the same ideas to buildings to raise their performance levels, extend their lives and provide greater comfort and safety all at the same time.

See related article about Google Contacts


This is a continuing chapter in the interrelationships of discovery and application of technology and the built environment. The suggested connections and links between seemingly different applications can open new possibilities as a String of knowledge to make our lives better. 

Top Five Most Read Articles at this blog.

 Seems people over the past year were really interested in the lean topics but just as interesting three of the most popular articles came from pretty early on and all three were tied to BIM in some way. But one of my favorites about the Design Age is still there in the top five.

Feel free to chime in about your favorite. Oh, and if there's something you would like to hear about more let me know that too. 

And thanks to everyone for your readership and support. 

Andrew

Remember, "Collaboration is the glue of success."

4d Printing + BIM

Seems the folks at MIT are at it again. This time with Prof/ Skyler Tibbets working with mediums created on 3d printers, but which have the difference of being able to change their physical geometry when activated by an outside environmental change such as vibration, movement or presence of water for starters. It's been tagged as 4d printing. Seems the printing process is only the beginning of the process and depending on the engineering of the printed compound, change of state or organization is the intended outcome.

Some of these compounds change their shape from a simple linear form to more complex shapes. In some cases independent parts combine with others to form a new shape. All very intriguing. watch a couple of Vimeo vids [here].

Seems Prof Tibbets and Autodesk have an association to create authoring tools to help designers create these little gadgets. I find this interesting development, especially in the light of current professional conditions where designers have hard enough time designing railings and curtainwalls, now we are working on items they can design a dynamic changing artifact. Amazing, yet intriguing.

I hope some of you chime in with comments on where you think this will go.

The Discovery of Managing Fire and Our New Technologies

Can our new emerging technologies of BIM, Cloud Computing, Pervasive Social Media and "always on" communication compare to the importance of early mankind's discovery of how to manage fire?

Some months ago I posted a discussion point on the Integrated Project Delivery R & D discussion board on Linkedin on the topic of BIM metrics and what we could or should be measuring. This was in direct relationship to a blog post here around the same time. As a post it has laid dormant for quite some time. Here is a response I wrote to one of the recent comments on LinkedIn relative to the blog post. This comment goes directly to the points of our new company NoSilos.com and the kind of work I, and my colleagues believe needs to be done in many industries tied to the Built Environment, namely change our minds from one of continuing the pervasive compartmentalization of ideas and data and openly look for ways to bridge gulfs we have taken decades or even centuries to create. It is difficult work. It calls for people to forsake many ideas they have thought are the center of their professional lives and accept our new economic reality has no room for division and hoarding and requires collaboration and sharing to be effective business operators.

I hope you enjoy the response and will leave comments and your thoughts on these ideas. I believe it is imperative we openly discuss these issues if we are to remain relevant to the people we hope to serve and continue to make a livelihood at our chosen profession.

Brian,
I think you are beginning to see and appreciate the silo's we at NoSilos.com work tirelessly to break down. For many reasons, economics being a major consideration, we have decided not to pursue work in the public sector as a primary effort. It's not that we wouldn't take a commission for the right project or set of circumstances, rather too many procedural barriers exist on both a financial and department levels to allow for much of our work to have any real effect. Too much protectionism of position and power is present to allow for real dismantling of these silos in public sectors at this time. 

Often, I think we would find there are many unexpected opportunities in this sector to take advantage of, but there's no evidence of the desire to change and take advantage of those opportunities. As to the different perspectives of how the change is effected in different levels of organizations based on size, service sector or maturity is important to be aware of in this business of BIM adoption.

You are astute to realize that while a central BIM repository in some format could be beneficial to the long-tail operation, maintenance, and equity preservation of a building or other asset, the people you need to bring together have never thought they would or could participate in a meaningful way. Our new consultancy practice is all about discovering how these kinds of new relationships can be fostered, included and implemented over long periods of time to maximize the real value of any Built Environment Asset. And I'm not limiting this to building, roads, bridges and waterworks or power plants, but including educational facilities, heavy industry and any natural extraction assets in the Oil, Mining, Forestry, and Agriculture domains as well. Not all of them need or can use a BIM solution, but they all require an enhanced communication method and collaborative / multidisciplinary focus to meet the challenges of our new economy.

BIM is only one small tool in the arsenal of technology tools needed to harvest the value of an extended value chain in the Built Environment. But technology by itself isn't a solution, rather a set of tools to shape and manage a new universe of reality possible because of the new technology.

Just as the discovery of how to manage fire became a revolutionary and transformative  technology to early mankind, so BIM and other highly communicative technologies will have impact over time on the Built Environment. We are now at the point we know that fire can be contained and managed. Now how do we harness that new found technology into meaningful and valuable results. 

Remember always that "Collaboration is the Glue of Success." sm

This is a continuing discussion about the Strings of Connections and Links around the changes needed to be considered in the Built Environment.

Google Glass, Augmented Reality and Always-On

I just came across a follow on blog post by Josh Web who is one of those guys looking at what is going on and extending it to what might go on in the future. Some of you know I've been interested in the melding of visual and data driven technologies to provide a richer environment to work and live within. I first started thinking about this back in the late 1990's when I ran across a couple of guys in Dallas who were trying to get some augmented reality off the ground for HVAC field techs. They were really ahead of their time. Cell networks were just getting past the old analog services and Dallas has always been one of those testing markets for new doo-dads and services.

So, I've been wondering when we can get BIM, geocoding and virtual reality to work together and what that might mean to the AEC and Built Environment worlds. Wifi enabled cell phones can get down to pretty small increments for locational accuracy when four transceiver locations can pinpoint the WiFi device inside of 2 feet or less. How about using this kind of technology for mining, roadway construction, bridge construction, pipeline alignment and construction. All these types of projects would benefit from some form or combination of augmented reality merged with design and fabrication virtual models. The folks at Trimble Navigation already are embarked on the remote control of roadway construction machinery and open pit mining, but there is a lot more to be done.

Take a quick look at the slide presentation by Josh below and then let me know what you think about where we might be going with these idea in a couple of years.
Enjoy!

The Top Five Questions to Assure Survival in the AEC Business

Phil Bernstein, FAIA of Autodesk has an interesting article posted today on the Architecture daily news feed. http://goo.gl/yML4A.

Phil, gives you five questions to ask yourself. Strangely enough, these are almost the same five questions I've been challenging firms to ask themselves for the past 10 years. Phil, thanks for giving them the press time they deserve.

The Top Five Questions to Assure Survival in the AEC business
1. Where are you going to be in five years?

Penn State BIM Execution Plan Review

I have to apologize to you, one of my loyal readers for taking so long to get back to the review of the Penn State BIM Execution Plans v 2.0. I'll get to the FM Planning Guide in a couple of weeks.

If you used this product before, you will find just about everything just as you left it, but there are better controls for what goes in and how you manage the elements. If this is new to you, then spend 30 minutes with the documentation and you will find a real gem. I still don't really like the use of a spreadsheet to deliver the working content, but it is easy and approachable for everyone. Most people will find it easy to use and modify if you have just a bit more than the basics in modifying and creating spreadsheets.

I would love to see this as a data-driven java or php app that could be implemented on a Unix LAMP or MSIE web server instead of the spreadsheets. There isn't very much in the sheets that makes a spreadsheet handy other than the all-pervasive tabular format of the process. Being tabular in presentation reduces it to a hierarchical data format which a MySQL data schema would handle very well. Modifying the elements would only be changing the variables and pseudo table headings and names, the linkages would likely stay all the same. If delivered in this format, then we would have a true collaborative environment where more than one person could reliably work on the project information anytime and from anywhere they were given permission. For one of you inventive and courageous programmers out there here's a ready-made project for you.

I really like the initial project information, documentation of goals, rating of the ability of the team members to perform tasks and the associated risks. It does make for the ability to make rational decisions about who will be making decisions about what and who will need help to get through the project without creating undue hazard to the rest of the team.

Communications between the teams, naming conventions for files, components, levels/layers, workgroups, even libraries of components can be defined here so everyone knows where and what can be used. I like the ability to give web addresses or file locations for these elements. If there is a wiki used to hold much of this information, then the url's to the correct pages and tags can be documented here.

Since it is delivered now as a spreadsheet, you can use as much or little of the framework which suits your project. If you have other sources for execution plans such as the one from Indiana, Texas or the Feds, then you can add those as additional sheets or rows within the framework as is needed.

In all, the authors have done a great job of creating a thorough and flexible framework for anyone just getting started or an old hand at BIM authoring a leg-up to better manage an increasingly complex job which has grown to be a central document contributing to the success of any integrated or collaborative BIM project.

In the thumb's up rating scale of 5 I'll have to give it a 5 for thoroughness and content and a 3 on delivery because it doesn't go far enough in my opinion to encourage collaborative participation.

BIM Metrics

The following is an email I wrote to a LinkdIn contact Tim Cole of Causeway Software. Tim had asked me about what I thought about how the Levels of Detail effect the kind of data which can be collected as Key Performance Metrics around BIM models. This is my second reply in the discussion between Tim and I and I thought others might be interested in this particular segment. The issue I'm dealing with is at the the heart of metrics in any form, and that's the data collected and for what purpose that data is intended. My contention that the kind of data some folks want to collect is a direct reflection on the authoring software and purpose of the project's original intention. So here goes. I hope you enjoy the read. And as always remember, "Collaboration is the Glue of Success."

Tim,
I'm not sure how I came up with the five levels, but they are similar to the US AIA level of detail document. I've modified that level to suit what my experience has taught me and what I've seen more advanced Owners such as General Motors, Ford, Motorolla and Intel use as their increasing tiers of service they ask for. For man of us in the US the first level of use is just assumed to be a 3d model. I know you can have a flat drawing that has data attributes on it, but it really is not a virtual building model, it is just a flat drawing with data attributes. Yes I do know you can do 3d Acad with 3d blocks and attributes, and that could be constructed as a BIM model, but it is pretty crude and rudimentary. Acad never was intended to hold a lot of data attributes, it is a drafting program. Using it in the extended form is a bit cumbersome. Then there's Catia. A premiere 3d mechanical modeling tool Frank Gehry has spent millions on to make it into a building modeling tool. And a very good one, but at a tremendous cost to own and operate.

Then we get to the built for purpose software like Revit, Archicad, Tekla and Datacad. These tools were built to handle data and intended to model space and construction from the beginning. Revit's history comes out of a mechanical modeling history but the guys quickly found that a mechanical parametric modeler just didn't work well to construct buildings, so they started all over and used a completely different mathematical base for the definition of parts. There is only one other program I know of designed like Revit since the 1980's and Tekla owns that original source code now. Tekla and Revit share some common ancestry in the algorithms they use to define elements but Revit has taken that definition and internalized the data store to be almost entirely inside the model. That, I think, is the one weakness of Revit, but eventually they will change this and make most of the data external and accessible to 3rd parties as the projects grow in size and complexity.

The takeaway here is that purpose-built software intends to create a virtual building from the outset and not be a drafting or documentation tool. That is the biggest difference in the two camps or classes of software on the market today. Here in the US most of the users don't think of any 2d documents as BIM. Maybe intelligent drawings, but certainly not a virtual building. So for us starting at Level 1 as a 3d virtual building, although it may be just a very general idea of the design and construction, or maybe no construction technology has been thought of at all. It really just conveys a design intent and not much more. You know that these models are quick and dirty and there are a lot of 3d modeling tools that can be used to get this kind of result, but it's not a BIM model if there isn't any Information component in it to help w/ completing the design. This stage is where Onuma really works well. Their space and utilization tools are really nice for building models at this level. They allow you to use something like Sketchup and then marry that spatial model to data by importing the 3d into Onuma and apply lots of data attributes to the spatial construction. There is a lot of value there to FM and Capital planning folks that don't really care about the construction detail.

The work I've been doing for the last 10 years has been focused on how to leverage the incredible resources of a virtual building process into the overall delivery methods we use. I've found that no matter what level of detail you use in a model there is a much more important story going on along side it which we leave completely out of the picture and that gap creates a lot of confusion and cost. Marrying those conversations with the model in a central storage repository so anyone connected to the project can understand why decisions were made would be a tremendous leap forward. There are so many levels where this 'conversation dialog map' could answer all kinds of questions about what is going on. Paired with a knowledge store of allied information keyed as a semantic network of relationships is what I think is needed to help BIM deliver the meta information which is really where the real value is during the building's lifetime. This goes way beyond the concept of levels of design and gets back more closely to the original questions about BIM metrics.

With a data store as described above you would know about how decisions were made, what the design assumptions and goals were, how they were intended to me met and how they were actually met in the end product. These are the metrics which are most important to Owners, not what level of detail we used in a model. The results of thoughts which turned into action, this is what building owners and investors are interested in. What was the return on investment for a design implemented over time? Did the extra money spent, really result in better service and a longer material service life?  Right now we aren't measuring this kind of performance. In fact, we aren't even actively determining if USGBC certified and rated buildings really perform over time as they were intended. There are some pilot projects going on, but a limited response for now. So do Owners really get any benefit out of a 'green' building? That to me is an important metric which few people are doing any significant work on now.

In the end, all metrics are driven by data. Data that can be reliably gathered and analyzed in a standard format (read an extension of accounting rules). Until the profession matures enough to settle on some data-driven processes, this question of metrics will be one of many words, conferences and papers and a few people who bravely go out and try something, anything to see what works. Those brave few will be the ones that set the pace for the rest of the professions years afterwards.

Andrew Abernathy

 This post is a continuing String of  articles as on the effects of Building Information Modeling and Virtual Design Construction on the Built Environment. As such there are Connections between the worlds of  design, software, economics, finance and Facilities Management.

BIM Without Collaboration Doesn't Measure Up

A couple of weeks ago Ted Garrison of New Construction Strategies interviewed me on one of my favorite topics, collaboration in context of the use of Building Information Modeling. Here's the quick synopsis Ted used when he posted the interview. Just click on the link below to listen. 

“BIM isn’t about drawing lines, it’s about building buildings virtually;” declares Andrew Abernathy. As a principle in Collaboration Consultant, Abernathy provides expertise on project management collaboration. Listen to him explain how BIM can improve your projects.

Listen Now

This  post is a part of a String of posts part of a conversation about design and virtual design and construction and BIM

BIM and XPM: A Made Marriage - Part 4

So far in the previous parts One, Two and Three of this series I've introduced you to an alternative work management method using eXtreme Project Management theory (XPM). XPM is a variant of the Agile light-weight management movement. The roots of this management theory caught hold in the software world and has moved into other business domains. If you want to change your management to fit more closely with collaborative efforts and use BIM in your practice, then you need to give XPM a very close look. It has a lot of advantages to offer and gives a lot more control to the people actually doing the

Design Age - Part 3

In this installment of the series on the Design Age I'm going to describe further the Traditional and Emerging problem solving methods. The previous parts one and two I dealt with the definition of the issue surrounding the new Design Age and the issues of solution complexity and scarcity of resources to deal with these seemingly insurmountable problems. These are truly the "wicked" problems of our day.

For some of you reading this have probably thought 'why deal with this issue at all?' Just look around at any of the forum posts on any of the general design centered or AEC centered forums and you will see a host of questions clustered around several large topics such as Integrated Product Design or Building Information Modeling (BIM) and how to use this new class of software and process as it applies to design, construction and building maintenance. How does the supply chain become involved and a host of other issues? These questions have been bandied back and forth for over five or six years and no single answer seems to solve the issue. No single tool or process seems to completely define a singular solution. How can it when the problem is so large and has so many variables to work with?

This is not to say any one of the current partial solutions available as a process, methodology or software tool is wrong or is not effective, it is rather an issue of series of partial solutions as suggestions or viewpoints as to a method to address only a portion of the larger problem. For this reason, such a singularly large and complex problem cannot be solved by a singular problem solver. We hope and dream for such a solution, but the chances of it happening are just too small when we look at the interrelated variables connected to the problem.

Traditional Solvers, Those of the Scientific Method Persuasion
So let's look further on the basis of the two problem solving methods we have available to us today. One is the traditional singular subject matter expert using the scientific method. A master of the problem domain, with significant experience and practical knowledge across a wide area of issues. Even to the point of being a da vinci.

• Existing and well known paradigm is comfortable.
• Works well for technologically and data-driven solutions and methods

Best used when you have

• Controlled environment
• Controlled Scope
• Singularly understood goal
• Single language and meaning

A single person acts as the originator and choke-point for all solutions. This is the model of the lone designer, scientist in the lab and painter in the lonely room. Now don't get me wrong. For centuries this method has worked well for many of the problems we used it on. The Scientific Method has led us to some remarkable discoveries and bettered the lives of billions of people over the world. But this method intentionally limits the problem viewpoint to a controllable set of variables. Results are often partial and the best research scientists often admit in their findings that their results are only partial and at best, are only indications of a possible event or finding due to this artificial limiting of variables. When I see these disclaimers in research work I often think maybe their work needed a bit broader view and more input from other, often unlikely sources would have served them well. But this kind of scholarly work leaves no such opportunities if the traditional scientific method is to be followed.

Non-Traditional Solvers, Those of the 'Wicked' Persuasion
Enter the complex or "wicked"problem, where the  problem demands a network of designers and subject matter experts, often from a multitude of information domains. When a problem is posed to a group such as this, many times the supposed issue is only a symptom of a deeper issue not even realized in the original problem statement. Now there is an issue of redefining the problem through the lenses of the various information domains and the melding of multiple languages into a singular understanding. Often a new language idiom is defined so all the members can clearly communicate. Even the social dynamic of new alliances across differing information domains complicates the discussion of issues and possible solutions. This really gets messy for a while until some form of equilibrium is reached.

A whole new set of methods and techniques and skill sets are needed in this context. The soft 'people skills' now become as important, no more important than the technical knowledge and experience of each participant. For, if the group cannot put aside at least most of their egocentric universes nothing will be produced. A collective consensus is the goal here, not a democratic majority. Acceptance of the possibility of a predetermined outcome by consent, many times by only a plurality is the direction of the collective solution. Just as with the Scientific Method, there will be unintended consequences since not all variables surrounding the problem are accounted for. But this time there is an acceptance that those unknowns exist and will create some unknown result. And the realization that this is not the only answer possible, it is just an answer out of the millions or billions of possible answers, all with a different set of outcomes, some anticipated and others unanticipated.

It is a mess, but it is an informed mess. A mess of decisions made in light of the best information known at the time by a group of invested stakeholders. Stakeholders that are seeking the best answer they can find, given the filtering lenses of their experiences, information and resulting consensus. Horst Rittel said that this is almost an insane act to involve yourself in this process knowing there is no definitive solution and out of the infinite possible solutions your collective will pick one and it might not, in fact most likely will not, produce the result you intended.

Social planners, urban designers, transportation planners, even physicians and physicists all live with this set of paradoxical positions. Yet, if we are to move forward, some brave souls have to dive in, inform themselves, look at a problem from every possible viewpoint and then make a decision as to what they will do. Hoping that some of that what they anticipate to happen does happen, even new events which reveal new possibilities for better solutions.

The Meshing of A Mess
In the built environment domain and the narrow AEC/OOFM world, we have a seemingly unending set of variables from the domains of finance, physics, economics, spatial aesthetic, material sciences, biology, chemistry and even the human impact to name only a few, to consider. How do these mesh together? How to we find the important points of most impact and positive change? How do we resolve the questions of what values we hold most dear? Where do we find the most value? Even what is expressed as value when the constraints we have held in the past as defining boundaries are being wiped away on a daily basis?

These are the questions as professionals in this business we are called upon to answer. Up to this point I think the indictments against us as being the most inefficient and wasteful are the least of our worries. the damage we have done over the past five decades is largely from our own indecision, infighting and inaction. This has to change soon.

We know we are the largest contributors of waste in our economy and environment. We have demonstrated to be the most resistive to change of any other economic sector. To our credit we have recently begun to awake to these challenges. We don't have 10 or 20 years to solve these difficult issues. We need to be willing to open our eyes to new approaches to problem solving and beg, borrow and steal every possible tool at our disposal and combine those assets into a new solution engine that has not been seen before. I say put aside all our past preconceptions of how or why we did something and start with a clean slate and build a new way of improving our Built Environment. Why? Because we have some of the most difficult and yet impactfull problems to solve. The benefits are enormous while the risks are just as large. Not to act will only continue the same devastating results of the past.

So look beyond your traditional sphere of influence and business. Look to see what others are doing to make themselves more efficient and steal from them. Remake the idea to fit your needs and then do it all over again in ever broadening circles. The power of doubling will take effect and soon the influence of your original action will be the basis of a whole new wave of innovation and change, creating benefit for both the producer and the consumer in ways you never thought or intended.

On to Part 4, the last part for now.

Google sells SketchUp to Trimble

Yesterday, 4/26/12 John Bacus, Product Manager for SketchUp announced the sale of SketchUp to Trimble and Trimble also announced the acquisition. What will this mean to the AEC and others who are avid or even passive user of SketchUp? As usual only time will tell.

Penn State BIM Execution Plan v 2.0 | FM v 1.0 Released

To add more fuel to the fire, or better, put a blanket on the blaze, PSU has also issued their first version of a BIM guideline for Facility Owners. I'll be looking at that as well. While I'm not an active FM person, I have worked in the sector for a few years and understand what would make a reasonable guideline and structure for a BIM model. I'll get back to you with my first impressions on that new guideline as well. Here's the home page for the Owners and FM guide <click here>

It's good news that PSU has continued to support the profession with these two new documents. Their past work was great, if not heroic, and I expect these new guide documents to be up the same quality as their predecessors.

Readers, I downloaded the Penn State BIM Execution plan v2.0 this afternoon. I've used the previous version, in part several times for planning and organization along with other sources to create customized plans for projects several times. I'll be looking at this new version and give you my thoughts next week. If you haven't already seen the release here's the home page for the new release. <click here>

BIM and XPM: A Made Marriage - Part 3

Part 1 and Part 2 of this series introduced you to a new light-weight management method based on Agile and XPM planning methods. In Parts 1 & 2 I told you I would tell you how we used this theory so in this installment I'll make good on the promise.

We started out trying a piece of web-based tracking software which is open source. We abandoned it for a couple of reasons, the biggest reasons being a serious bug in the software and a lot of terminology specific to software development. As a second attempt we backed off and started over with a stack of 3 x 5 cards to represent the elements of the plan from Releases right through to the Tasks / Tests. Later on the team wanted to use an online solution and we agreed on a simple online forum as a platform. It meant a little more manual work than the previous online software, but we found it worked just as well and was simple to use and it didn't have all that foreign lingo of software development. We were free to make up our own language. I'll also say at this point we also tried spread sheets as an alternate to the web forum, but that was just too unwieldy and didn't have good multiuser support. Spreadsheets really are built for single authors. We did find the spreadsheet was OK as an alternative to the 3x5 cards for planning.

We created several different structures in our forums but the following became our standard of practice.

A list of categories called Active Projects, Completed Projects, General Discussions, and Food for Thought. We used General Discussions for topics that weren't germane to the production of any single job, but something someone wanted to pass along as a supporting thought or reference for the general practice. Food for Thought was used only for discussions that directly related to the management practices and how they might be improved or extended.

Next under each forum category we had the projects themselves. Under these we had children forums for Planned Work, Current Work and Completed Work That looked something like this.

So you can see a very simple mechanism implemented in a simple to use software tool like a forum, gave us the majority of the functionality needed to organize our work. It was easy to move the elements of the discussions as well as the discussions around as their information matured.

It only took us a very short amount of time to teach anyone in the office how to set up and maintain this organization method so we used the junior team members to do this task. That way they got used to the tool and how it was used every day.

The Language of the Forum
Next we had to create a lexicon and grammar to organize the information at each level. We tried a lot of different solutions with varying results. We finally gave each project team some latitude on their choices due to the preferences of team leadership and the complexity of the project. We had a range of organization that had little if any sorting string thought to some that could organize the views by selecting string or substring values along with numbering schemes that produced views with only a very selective result. For instance some teams chose to use a title string that looked like the following organization
[completion] | release | Iteration | story | task | [Responsible] | title and looked like....

[y/n]2.3.15.100[] Model interior sound partitions

If someone only wanted to see incomplete release 2 tasks they would look for a string like "[n]2.*". Or all the incomplete story 15 tasks with "[n]*15.*" If someone wanted to see all the work they had taken charge of they could look for "*[aa]" if their initials were "aa". So you can see there is a lot of flexibility in an open string and search tool to quickly create searches to display results. Our forum also had a listing view to show all the past activity as new or changed information in the forum, which made it easy to watch the work being completed without having to do a lot of searching.

We also included information in the body of the task / test entry like when it was due as a calendar date [11/15/11] and any reference documents back to the Project Notebook or other web resources before the task description. Work completed was created as a reply to the forum entry and signed / dated along with the hours used to complete the task and test. Both the Task and Test portions had to be completed before the work was marked completed. 

The wiki project notebook
The companion to our forums was a wiki organization which we implemented using Mediawiki. The wiki held both the higher order project information like clients, contacts, project budget and schedule information as well as specific information regarding selections for materials, assemblies and all the other design requirements information. In addition we used template pages that organized much of this higher level information so all a manager or other assigned team member had to do was select one of the template documents, duplicate it in their project and then fill in the blanks as needed. This normalized both the information and the organization pattern for this kind of information and gave each element a url page location which could be used in the forum to point back to when needed. So the wiki became the project notebook and it was uniformly accessible by anyone at anytime from anywhere they could get a web connection.

We also had sections in the wiki to assist project work planning teams to easily create stories, and task collections by creating lists of common stories and tasks / test combinations. They could cut / paste the needed information out to make it easier to create the forum entries. 

So there you have the core of our tracking and documentation methods. Nothing fancy, but it works and it is free. There is enough flexibility in the methods to accommodate a lot of differing need so if you need a simple implementation, pare off what you don't need and use the rest. If you have more people and work to manage, you can step up the organizational framework to meet your needs.

Advantages
This level of project documentation made it easy to add new members to the team. They only needed to read the information necessary around the work they were assigned to. If they needed some background on how the model was organized the BIM Execution plan gave them that info housed in the wiki and referred to in the tasks / tests they would work on. Instead of having to brief someone for 20 minutes or more, it took about 5 minutes for a new person to join in and get productive, and that was without a senior team member giving them a briefing. Yes this did take some time, but it kept people focused on their work. Work that was needed was completed in timely manner. Work that was not needed yet didn't get worked on. And tracking the completion of work or where there were issues were easily identified and solved quickly by the team or an outside source when needed. After setting the expectations and training this system was very effective in keeping our projects on track and eliminating waste.

I hope this helps you understand how we organized our work. In Part 4 I'll share the measurement indicators we used to track progress. Until then remember "Collaboration is the glue of success."

Now on to Part 4, the last one

 

This article continues a String of Connections between practice management, BIM and Agile management practices. 

BIM and XPM: A Made Marriage - Part 2

Recap
In Part 1 I introduced the concept of using Agile management techniques in a BIM-centric design / construction practice. After looking at the article I found I made a lot of assumptions and you know what that usually means. I have to apologize for the assumption you would know about Agile, or XPM and how those light-weight management tools would or could work in a design-centric work environment. So to make up for my oversight I thought a quick primer on what the basic parts of an Agile / XPM environment looks like, as we implemented it. One caveat here, if you are familiar with these

"Right" BIM Thinking

Does our thinking need to change in order to do BIM well? How?

What is "right thinking" when it comes to BIM, anyway? How is it different than "right thinking" was 5 or ten years ago? How do you train for it? Can the playing field to accommodate "right BIM thinking" better?

Question by Brian Lighthart in LinkedIn Group BIM Experts

It's Saturday AM and I'm catching up on reading I didn't have time for earlier in the week, so I thought I would pass along this gem I found. I would suggest you read the discussion since, in my humble opinion, this is one of the more insightful questions asked around the general topic of BIM. Those of you who are part of the new rush to use BIM will find this discussion either enlightening or obtuse or even dark. The truth of the matter is Building Information Modeling / Management is a technology still in it's early development. An adolescent at best. All the stakeholders who could benefit haven't weighed in yet. All the potential benefits haven't even been defined, discovered or delivered. And definitely not all the right questions have been asked.

Tablets and other Multimedia Devices - Impact on IT

The Friday Bonus
Gartner Research has posted a new report which deals with the impact of tablets on the enterprise level companies. Due to the increased adoption of multimedia tablet devices like the iPad and Android tablets such as the Samsung Galaxy. It is a rough world out there for IT support groups with an ever-changing set of devices and a new crop of feature sets about every six months. The old 'castle and moat' unified access method is going  by the wayside. A new vision of open and flexible context related access methods are likely the better way to go.

What does this mean for the Built Environment folks. Well the unintended consequences could be rather significant. Cloud access to sensitive information could be one issue. Another is the more open access to project documents, enhancing collaboration and solution development. On the design side, consider the smartConstruction  BIM model that has Qcodes on incoming equipment and inventory that is tied to installation documents embedded in a BIM model. Or delivery instructions to supply house delivery drivers showing the site plan and where they should drop their loads to prevent damage and enhance materials handling on the site. Those are only two ideas, I'm sure there are thousand's more.

BIM and Google Project Glass

A couple of days ago one of the good guys, Carlus Kilgore sent out an update to the Southern Arizona Revit Users Group (SARUG) about a pilot project Google is working on called Augmented Reality. Some of you may have already heard about this and maybe looked at the You Tube Vid Google put up to describe the service. Gizmodo has some more info as well you can check out. So thanks to Carlus for the links and notice