I've just returned from a meeting of the Virtual Builders Roundtable in Washington DC. It is an occasional gathering of building industry professionals reporting to each other on their progress, their successes and their failures. These are the people on the cutting edge of technology use and process change in AEC. In my role as Conference Director for the upcoming AEC Science and Technology conference (which starts tomorrow at the Washington Convention Center), I recruited several of my speakers from this group.
The presentations come fast and dense; speakers often revised their remarks on the spot to avoid making a point explained earlier. It seems almost mandatory for the PowerPoint slides to roll by too fast to be read; everyone expects to download them later anyway.
The VBR is organized by practitioners, for practitioners. Two members of the organizing group (it would sound too formal to call it a board), Kathleen Liston and Ken Stowe, are Autodesk employees, but they both earned their street cred as practitioners before they became software developers. The emphasis is as much on challenges faced and lessons learned as it is on technologies implemented and processes changed. At one point, during a short interruption to fix a balky projector, a new variation on the light bulb joke came to me:
Q: How many Virtual Builders does it take to change a PowerPoint presentation?
A: That depends. Is the PowerPoint about technology adoption, process change, or making the business case? It's a different team for each type.
When covering a meeting like this, often writers will go deep with one presentation, allowing it to stand for the whole event. Instead, I'm going to share bits and pieces gleaned from all the sessions.
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Samir Emdanat of GHAFARI Associates says there is potential to save over 20% on the steel delivery schedule and to eliminate construction site scrap by maximizing offsite fabrication and Just-in-Time delivery based on BIM sequencing. On a recent job GHAFARI and the D/B team were able to deliver the project ahead of an already aggressive schedule, with no field overtime, and without field changes. Emdanat recommends an ENR article by Tom Sawyer, “Build it First Digitally,” October 10, 2005.
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Parsons Brinckerhoff started using virtual building techniques 16 years ago, and sees great benefit in it, but there is still an internal minority that resists the technology and the resulting process change. Often PB works on large projects as the construction manager, not the general contractor. All too often, says PB's Judith Kunoff, they have to create a 3D model from 2D construction documentation. But doing so is still more valuable than not having the data in 3D form.
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More than one speaker said they rely on visualization software tool NavisWorks as crucial in bringing together data from a variety of sources for 3D analysis and planning. “I sleep better at night because of NavisWorks,” said Mike Kenig of Holder Construction.
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The general consensus regarding FTP (File Transfer Protocol) as a tool for collaboration seems to be, if you still have FTP hanging around your workflow, take it out back and shoot it. Several speakers praised the use of construction-specific content management systems. (Autodesk claims that Buzzsaw, its Web-based collaboration tool, is now the second-most widely used Application Service Provider (ASP) product, after Salesforce.com.)
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Chris Raftery of Lease Crutcher Lewis spent $58,000 developing a 3D construction model for a large medical center project. The resulting savings in time and materials was $500,000.
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If you use virtual building processes, it becomes a differentiator for your firm, says Samir Emdanat of GHAFARI Associates. Alliances start to form with like-minded firms, helping you get off the “starting from scratch in 3D” treadmill for each project.
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The BIM philosophy at Holder Construction is “Jump In! Get Wet! Splash Around!” says Mike Kenig. When people splash around, some things might get wet that should stay dry. But the realization that it's OK to “enjoy the water” liberates people to become creative with new technology and process change.
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You have to hit the “Three Fears of BIM” head on, says Kenig. Those fears are Legal (“Who do we sue when this doesn't work?”), Change (“Why do we have to do it that way?”), and Betamax (“What if the technology we choose loses in the marketplace?”) The specifics of how you respond will be unique to your organization.
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The Beck Group relies on an in-house development staff for much of its BIM technology; D-Profiler is a home-grown estimating tool. They compared the use of D-Profiler against traditional estimating on one project. The traditional approach would require 240 hours at $100/hour, for a total of $24,000. Using D-Profiler on the same project would require 20 hours at $100/hour, for a total of $2,000.
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“BIM is really about conversations among professionals,” says Daniel Gonzales of Rogers Quinn Construction. It creates an environment that fosters collaboration and mutual trust. Several speaker echoed Gonzales on this point, noting that virtual building works best when all the players get involved early in the process, even before design in finalized.
--RSN