The construction industry has not been using building information modeling (BIM) to its fullest potential, BIM experts told attendees of last week’s Symposium on Technology in Design and Construction, an event for which WPL Publishing served as a sponsor.
“The reason why there is waste, the reason why there is no repurposing of BIM data, is because the main people using it don’t have any idea how to use it,” said Sandy Damasco, who is leading Lend Lease’s BIM efforts. “They’re not skillful in Revit. They’re not skillful in AutoCAD. They know scheduling. They know cost estimating relative to what they’ve been taught. They don’t trust what’s in the model. They don’t know what’s in the model.”
Damasco’s presentation, entitled “Operational BIMplementation,” covered the ops side of BIM, the apprehension of use, the necessary workflow changes, data preparation, future BIM project team make-up, and the extension of simplified BIM tools to project teams.
“The bottom line is there are many different applications out there that allow interoperability to happen, but you first have to understand what you’re looking at,” Damasco said. “You have to understand what people like to use, what tool they best operate in, and then create a workflow so that interoperability does not become an issue.”
Damasco offered some encouraging comments about the future outlook of BIM. “As the industry starts adopting BIM more and more and not looking at it as just a fancy technology, it becomes part of the operational workflows.”
There is a “huge opportunity for us in construction to take a look at the way that we can eliminate the waste,” Limbach Facility Services LLC Senior Vice President Kevin Labreque told symposium attendees during a presentation entitled “Eliminating Waste in BIM Deployment.” “Typically when we talk about how we can streamline, make things more efficient, we focus on the actual activities -- the act of design, the act of drawing, installation in the field -- when in reality, it’s the interface, the handoffs between individuals, … between companies that contain all of that waste, and that’s where we should be looking to pull it out.”
Labreque later stressed that “technology is great. There is a whole suite of tools that we use internally that the industry uses, but behind every single one of the tools is a person sitting behind a mouse, is a person interacting in a BIM big room, …, and it’s the integration of all those people, and the small pieces and parts into a cohesive whole that makes it work….”
The symposium also included the following other presentations:
- “Technology Implementation Overview for Northwestern Memorial Hospital Outpatient Care Pavilion”: Kevin Bredeson, Pepper Construction, and John Jurewicz, MPM Faculty/Lend Lease.
- “Convergence -- Leveraging Disruptive Technologies in Construction”: Stacy Scopano, Trimble.
- “Pain in the Clash”: Dan Klancnik, Walsh Construction.
- “Total Cost of Ownership”: Neil Parker, EcoDomus Inc.
- “Shifts in Project Management Methodology Due to BIM”: John Moebes, Crate & Barrel.
- “Success Comes Early -- BIM Usage and Project Success is Determined Early in the Project Process”: Jim McKenzie, Stanford University, BIM Centric Consulting.
- “Democratizing BIM”: Jordan Brandt, Horizontal System.
- “Oracle’s Project Lifecycle Execution Solutions”: Andy Verone and Craig Larson, Oracle.
- “Operating a Successful ICT Organization in Today’s Chaotic World”: Steve Thomas, Lend Lease.
- “Integration, BIM and Lean Methods on Healthcare Projects in California -- Lessons Learned and Benefits”: Paul Teicholz, Stanford University, and Atul Khanzode, DPR Construction.
To purchase WPL’s recording of the symposium, visithttp://stores.homestead.com/ConstructionOnline/Detail.bok?no=267.
