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.

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 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?

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

Design Age - Part 4

After this installment I'm likely going to take a rest on the issues of complex design. If this is the first time you found the string, please go back and read the Introduction in Part 1 and the following installments in Part 2 and Part 3. They will give you the background needed to really understand the full impact of this most recent Part 4.

The Dilemma of the Crowd

or most problem solvers there is a paradigm we have been following for as long as we can remember. It's the trail of the lone discoverer. The 'me against nature, the world and all the other idiots who couldn't be bothered to figure this issue out' complex. But there is this strange phenomenon happening more and more often. The longer I spend time on this problem, the more and more angles and alleys it reveals. What I thought was going to be a simple solution to a problem I thought was clear, the more cloudy and tantelizingly obscure the issue becomes. I begin to talk to some close friends and colleagues about parts of the problem, not wanting to reveal everything at once, to get their take on the issue. Over time I reveal more and more of my discoveries and pretty soon, without my really understanding what is happening, I find they are talking about the same issue with their friends and I find out about this by accident. Now the idea is presented to me in a way I hadn't even considered and by asking a few question, I find out it's like the party game 'telephone.'
What I hear from this other person is only vaguely like my original idea, but it has some interestingly new twist of understanding I hadn't considered.

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

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>

The Future of Architecture: Is there one?

In Architecture Daily a recent article entitled "After the Meltdown: Where does Architecture go from here?" author Vanessa Quirk takes a look at the imbalance of teaching, training and experience in the profession of architecture and the resulting consequences related to the continuing viability of the profession. As a practitioner of over 20 years, I have often wondered how many of my peers survived the practice economically. I chose to leave the profession and use the training in another economic domain and found it prepared me extremely well for just about any endeavor I wanted to turn to.

Now as I look at the landscape of architectural practice I despair and rejoice in the same breath, because the process is so broken. ....

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

BIM and XPM: A Made Marriage - Part 1

Prelude...
Since writing this article back in April, It is ranked #2 for the number of all-time hits on this blog. I'd like to encourage you to read all four parts. The hook is I reveal how all this works in the later parts. These lightweight management theories will radically transform your business and professional practice. If you want to see more $$ at the end of the year and create a better working environment, then I strongly advise reading all of the series. aa June '12
 
Introduction
BIM and XPM were made for each other. BIM authoring tools of just about all forms are characterized by elements or families which have some kind of data construct attached to the graphic elements. The graphic elements can be driven by parametric data or not. Not surprisingly, the elements are organized in large categories which roughly approximate the organization of the construction material sets needed to erect a building such as foundations, floors, walls, ceilings, furniture, casework, equipment and the like. Views are organized in a way that traditional document sets have been assembled for decades such as plans, elevations, sections and tabular schedules. Since the model is 3d there is also a new view for 3d perspectives, isometrics and other similar views. A very modular and structured way of thinking.

Most importantly from a work management point of view all these elements and views are very atomic and largely independent of each other. They can be created with or without any data or graphic content in them, or at the very least only the barest of information or graphics as place holders waiting for more specific information. The other important