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Revit Architecture 2014
Challenging Revit: Let’s face it, it’s ALL BIM
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hen I was asked to write this article I thought of a huge list of possible topics and it was really challenging to come up with a theme that could tie them all together. We have many great things and not-so-great things going on in our industry. (Quite frankly, I am fed up with “BIM this” and “BIM that” and the sooner it becomes “the way we do things” and is fully integrated, the better. But I digress…) One thing that has always struck me is that two of the key benefits of BIM are “on time” and “on budget.” So, by implication, it is the norm for a project to be late and over budget! When did it become acceptable for an industry that offers a service to a client to not be able to guarantee to that client that they will have their product when they asked for it and for a sum agreed upon between professionals? So if there is one item to keep coming back to, it’s cost. Should that cost be money, time, “value,” “the project,” or human lives? My background is in architecture and design. I now work more on the delivery side and even when working on the design side 10
by: Shaun Farrell
www.augi.com
I realise one key factor is that design can be a nice clean digital environment that is easy to control and define, but construction sites are not! That is a huge divide between the design and delivery of a project. One person works in nice, air-conditioned office space at a computer or meeting table and the other is knee deep in mud in all types of weather! There is a distinct mismatch in the potential for one to understand the needs of the other. That goes in both directions. So how do we address this? I prefer to define BIM as Building Information Management. (It also lets me get away with saying “BIM Model”). We are in the business of managing information, so one of the key flows is between “as designed” and “as constructed.” A common term in the industry is “as built.” The debate comes as to what “as built” really means and who does it. Is it “as designed” or “as manufactured” or “as installed” or is it “as is currently operating”? Well “as designed” is a no brainer—that is not “as built.” “As manufactured” is useful for comparing against “as designed” and can be used to improve coordination and accuracy of the data and subsequent costing, but it is still not “as built.” “As installed” is closer to “as built,” but there are many systems December 2013