PRODUCT FOCUS
Navisworks Manage 2016
by: Jean Goyat and Kaushal Diwan
Silence Is Silver, Communication Is Golden
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he construction industry (more than any other industry) involves many players with different experiences, personalities, and skill sets... which is great! But there’s a flip side—how do you ensure consistency of cost, schedule, quality, and even safety with so many colors and flavors? How do you maximize productivity across various trades, various projects, and various countries even? Contrary to a production line in a manufacturing plant, which produces similar products over and over again in a controlled environment, a building project is most often unique in terms of design, location, and people involved. Getting alignment across the entire team becomes the #1 priority for BIM managers, using 3D models as communication tools to quickly illustrate the intricacies and complexities of a given project. And that’s the key: communication. Disclose, share, inform, publicize, suggest, announce. I know what you are thinking—this sounds like more emails... Absolutely not! The tools are out there, and they can do amazing stuff! Let’s discuss a few examples. 28
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Building an Integrated 3D Model The 3D model (or what is mostly used nowadays for coordination as a collection of 3D files) is already a step up from 2D design documents simply by adding another dimension. 4D, 5D, 6D all the way to 8D models build upon the same concept to add time, cost, and lifecycle management all the way to accident prevention data, pulling the type of information conveyed in multiple different directions. The added features open new avenues to specific types of analysis. But how about this: instead of continually trying to add more dimensions to a complex tool, why not focus on spreading out its use to the wider audience and integrating the model more consciously into our daily work processes? The idea is to improve the number of people interacting with the model on a regular basis instead of relying on a few experts focusing on very specific dimensions to digest the information contained in the black box that is the 3D model. In practice, this would mean identifying the most common work processes and aggregating them into the model. June 2016