I have made it to the big time. I was published in the up coming May/June issue of the Design Intelligence magazine, the magazine for the Design Futures Council. Here is the link to the article. http://di.net/articles/archive/game_on_aec/ I would love some feedback about the article. Please let me know what you think. Thanks.
01
Mar
2012
Ohio Construction Reform Academy
I am attending the Ohio Construction Reform Academy today at Cincinnati State. Ohio Construction Reform can into being with the passing of House Bill 153 in June of 2011. It allows for CM at Risk, Multi-Prime, and Design Build projects in the State of Ohio on public projects. The academy is a seminar that is being offered around Ohio that will teach and educate the building industry on what the rules are and how they will change the face of public facilities construction in Ohio. Here is a link to the documentation from the all day seminar. http://ocr.ohio.gov/OCRAcademy.aspx
09
Feb
2012
DesignIntelligence Article
I have been trying to catch up on some of my reading and got a chance to read an article online at http://www.di.net/articles/archive/restructuring_bim_success/. The article discusses how firms are moving from CAD based work flows into a BIM process and how those firms are doing it successfully. One of the paragraphs that I wanted to share because we constantly try to battle against this mindset on our own projects.
“Many of the workflows that have typically been employed for CAD are now considered inefficient. One that masks its own inefficiency is the throw-extra-staff-at-it workflow. That’s not a production failure; it’s a management failure. And if that approach is used on BIM projects, the inefficiency becomes a glaring indicator that effective management processes weren’t followed. Throwing extra staff at BIM production without the new team members understanding the project can be dicey; the result can be an enormous amount of time spent fixing avoidable mistakes. If there are struggles or failures on BIM projects, they need to be captured and used to benefit future projects, not simply hidden away and ignored.”Something to consider for those projects and project teams that are looking at how to maximize their results in converting to a BIM process.
08
Feb
2012
A Brief Conversation on BIM Standards
I would like to discuss a conversation through email the other day about the creation of BIM Standards between an Engineer and a Product Manufacturer. The name of the group and the names of the two participants will remain anonymous to protect my sources. The conversation was centered around the creation of a BIM Best Practices for an industry group that was looking to unify a group of manufacturers to produce information in a standard method for their AEC/O communities. Here are the highlights of the conversation:
Engineer… “…As mentioned before this is an open form and anyone wanting to attend the meeting is invited, but we are not expected to perform a formal presentation. Please call or respond to this email if anyone has any questions or needs further explanation. Thank you all for your participation and help making a great BIM best practices document. On a side note yesterday we also discussed the document in regards to Revit. Please add this to the agenda for next month’s meeting. We need to discuss the document in regards to BIM and not a specific brand. Our current document is referenced a lot around Revit. I would like to discuss other brands such as ArchiCAD, Bentley systems, etc or any other BIM systems we can bring to the table….” Product Manufacturer… “…acknowledges other software programs and we are not necessarily endorsing Autodesk and/or Revit but feel that, at this point in time, this software is being used my a majority of the personnel that we are addressing. I feel we need to cater to the masses and address the minority on a case by case basis. I believe the estimates I have seen/heard(maybe I am making this up because I don’t remember where i saw this?) is upwards of 90% of the consultants doing 3-D production for construction projects are using an Autodesk/AutodCad product. As a rep from a manufacturer we have invested in Cad, Visio, and now Revit models. It will be a tough pill to swallow if we need introduce yet another software program Library…”This highlights a lot of the types of discussions that are on going in the product manufactures’s world as they try to figure out how to deliver information and content to the AEC/O community in a BIM world. I found this to be very interesting and enlightening on many levels. First, it shows that product manufactures are aware, if not already plugged into, what their client base is asking for. They are listening finally to our cries for better more information rich content to use in our models. It also shows that they understand where the industry sits today with our adoption numbers. Finally it shows that they are starting to make the business case on their own of why manufactures need to produce Revit content for their clients. Any discussion that moves the industry to adapt quicker is a good discussion, and manufacturer are starting to be apart of those discussions and not just an observer.