Raining Olympic Champions

I hope it stops raining before the Olympics. After all the effort put in by the country (and Atkins!) it is important that UK plc gets its moment in the sun.

These games will be the greenest ever – or as it was put at the snappily named ‘Green Building Council’s London 2012 Lessons Learnt Grand Finale’, perhaps we should say the least non-sustainable games in modern history.

So there will be a strong sense of irony if these become the first games disrupted by climate change.

New Scientist (7 July 2012) returned to its task of clearly showing that climate change is real and here. ‘Freak weather is fast becoming normal’, evidenced by not only this terrible UK summer, but the US’s ‘Summer in March’ with one weather station breaking its record by 17 degrees Centigrade (yep – not Fahrenheit).

One key issue it addressed was how “our weather is getting wilder – more variable as well as steadily hotter.” Decade by decade the land temperatures over the northern hemisphere (see graph below) show the bell curve both shifting and widening as the planet warms. Whilst the average has moved up by around 0.8 degrees Centigrade the bottom temperatures have remained similar, but the top of the range is up by almost two!

So how’s that going to look when the centre of the bell curve is 4 degrees higher? By pumping 30 Giga-tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere annually we are conducting the world’s biggest science experiment. And since we are pretty sure of the answer, and it is not good, why are we carrying on?

New Scientist finishes off with our new favourite weather phrase – the ‘Lazy Jet Stream’ that has so far wrecked our summer. Firm predictions of its movements seem difficult – apparently partly because the meshing on our climate change models is still relatively coarse at around 2km. Think about that next time you are meshing a flat slab for analysis!

Still the BBC seems to think the Jet Stream is going back north next week. After reading this article I fear that may be more hope than science.

Fingers crossed then! I hope it stops raining before the Olympics.

Thoughts after too much code

Reproduced from my Atkins blog article of 09.03.12

I have just spent a few hours going through aspects of BS1192 with some of our key CAD and BIM people. This code will be central to our data management as we make a success of adopting BIM across all our Infrastructure projects – it is not just for buildings!

Three side thoughts I need to remember to take forward (hence being jotted here):

1. What review and when: Central to BS1192 is the idea of moving data through a process of WIP (Work In Progress), Shared and Issued. What are the differences between the levels of check, review and authorise as data moves up these two steps. Does WIP to shared have a lower level of review that Shared to Issued for instance. How does this fit into the process required by our BMS (and reiterated in the upcoming Design Principles)?
2. How do we slickly review our BIM data? At the moment we are stuck in 2D, with engineers looking at the drawn output. Perhaps this is appropriate when the client wants a 2D deliverable. However can we start making the leap to reviewing 3D dwfs and marking these up using tools from Autodesk? I need to make some experiments as this is probably the way for effective 'high level' reviews before drawings start to get spat out.
3. Finally, how do we communicate the status of data when items in one model have different levels of completeness and firmness? One key thing to remember is that we can’t replace the effectiveness of team members actually talking to each other, but are there ways we can tag objects within a model so users are clear of their status. Ray Purvis says he has a cunning plan........

Autodesk BIM Conference 2011 – Crossing the chasm

Reproduced from my Atkins blog article of 22.11.2011
I just spent a valuable day at Autodesk’s UK BIM conference in London. The event had its focus clearly on ‘not Why, but How’ and had been aimed at senior managers rather than users. There were a huge number of grey suits and no one demonstrated software, so I think they succeeded in gaining their audience. Key presentations included:

1. The conference was opened by Phil Bernstein, VP of Industry Strategy & Relations at Autodesk and, interestingly, the guy who made the decision for them to buy Revit. He contrasted progress either side of the Atlantic towards BIM as:

· UK - solid theoretical progress with papers being written by industry leaders supported by government, but meanwhile slow uptake ‘on the ground’ with small and sustained groups of enthusiasts being watched by the industry to see what they will do, and...
· US – lots happening but no organising principles being developed to tie industry together as BIM develops further.

Phil felt BIM in the UK was an good example of ‘Chasm Theory’ (Geoffrey Moore) with adoption having happened for the Techies and Visionaries, but still being in the chasm just before take up by the Pragmatists, Conservatives and finally Sceptics. In the last 12 months the force that is finally driving the UK across the chasm is the Government Construction Strategy which aims to realise improvements in construction, productivity and the environment with BIM as the key enabler.

 2. Next up was Paul Morrell, who is leading implementation of this strategy. As Paul put it this is the transition from builder’s bum to builder’s BIM (I worked with Paul in the 90s and the jokes haven’t got better!).

Paul sees the requirement for industry to move to Level 2 BIM by 2016 as not being a ‘Big Bang’ requiring major change. The focus for his team is very much on determining what future Plans of Work will require as part of the Data Drops at key stages for client review. What information is needed for all teams’ models to talk to each other? Only ask for what you will use and what gets taken out of the model is a key focus for deliverables.

No one so far found a coherent case against BIM once they have started using it. Every business is undergoing a journey and his message was (and I quote) “INTEGRATE YOU BASTARDS!”

Paul’s message was followed up in the afternoon by David Philp of the Cabinet Office. His view was that the UK’s approach is now at the point where ‘the US will start to learn from us’, a view supported by the fact that Paul Morrell is just back from consulting in Washington how the US government can rein in multiple BIM initiatives by various departments. David saw that early adoption of Asset Information Modelling and COBie 2.4 potentially gives the UK future export opportunities as ‘our way’ becomes a default world standard. Makes you proud!

3. There were two very good presentations from HoK, who are rightly seen as industry leaders. In the second Andrew Barraclough noted that their implementation had been based around a firmwide view with no exceptions.

Shared internal guidelines and standards were created and a ‘tipping point’ of what success would look like set, with 65% of technical staff using BIM software daily (now just being achieved in their leading offices – some are much further behind). It was important to choose the first projects wisely to ensure success, and designers needed to be on board, moving away from tools such as SketchUp, to avoid Revit being seen as only a delivery tool.

4. James Middling’s description of progress at Motts closely fits where Atkins is going.

Motts is currently in the business of joining up ‘islands of excellence’ driven by a strong message from the top. Senior management have developed a clear view of how BIM will support their existing business plans, thought of how they can make it happen, and then appointed Champions to push this change ‘top down’.

Meanwhile local centres of learning, seeds and superusers are being developed around the globe to provide ‘bottom up’ pressure. They have an interesting ‘virtuous triangle’ joining up experienced 2D technicians undergoing conversion, new graduates and senior professionals who all can feed off each other’s experience, enthusiasm and skills.

James’ key message was ‘it won’t happen without the top down pressure’. He saw the main blocker to adoption as the ‘blancmange layer’ – his unfortunate name for the PMs and PDs who have all be keeping us in business for the past few years through their pragmatism and labours. Getting them to take what they see as a risk to delivery is a key issue, but all people pushing BIM adoption need to work on the message and their support at this level as these guys will eventually be the key supporters.

Other fun facts and thoughts:

5. Phil Bernstein mentioned that the US military consumes 1% of the world’s energy and one third of that is in their building stock. They see huge savings to be made through improving energy and facility management through BIM.

6. To date Autodesk have spend $600million on Revit and are just hitting break even. Scary though this number is, in reality they have managed to replace the cash cow that is AutoCAD financed off only part of the cash flow it generates. Here’s to the next 15 years for Autodesk I guess!

7. Chris Millard from Balfour Beatty: How come UPS can tell us exactly where our parcels are in the world but we don’t know where we store stuff on site?

8. David Miller, who leads a Revit based architectural practice presented how they have grown from 4 to 20 people in four years of recession. It was impressive to see what clear direction and a small empowered group can do. At the coffee break all us ‘big boys’ were discussing ‘wouldn’t it be nice to do it that way’. Interestingly it was strange to see how late BIM execution plans appeared in their development timeline as everyone sees them as a key implementation document for collaboration.

9. Jamie Johnson of Brydan Wood noted the financial advantages of tying BIM development into a company’s R&D tax credit scheme.

Climate Change: What we do know – and what we don’t.

Reproduced from my Atkins blog article of 18.11.2011

​“The big thing we are working on now the global warming hoax. It’s all voodoo, nonsense hokum, a hoax.”
Michele Bachmann, candidate for the Republican nomination for US President, 2008.

There were two great articles in New Scientist on 22 and 29 October, tackling what we know about climate change, and the rise of science rejectionism (my word). If you get your science from the Daily Mail or Fox News you often are told that climate change is not understood and thus should be doubted. As New Scientist notes:

Know: Greenhouse gases are warming the planet.

Don’t know: How far greenhouse gas levels will rise.
Know: Other pollutants are cooling the planet.
Don’t Know: How great our cooling effects are.
Know: The planet is going to get a lot hotter.
Don’t know: Exactly how much hotter things will get.
Don’t know: How the climate will change in specific regions.
Know: Sea level is going to rise many metres.
Don’t know: How quickly sea level will rise.
Don’t know: How serious a threat global warming is to life.
Know: There will be more floods and droughts.
Don’t know: Whether there will be more hurricanes and the like.
Don’t know: If and when tipping points will be reached.

We don’t actually understand gravity either. It could be a particle, or a wave, but favourite is that is a distortion in multi-dimensional space time.

Despite not understanding it the advice remains ‘don’t jump off tall buildings’.

The list of ‘Know/Don’t Know’ above makes it clear we need to act to reduce our impact on the climate. We can’t stop it but we can mitigate.

Personal actions I have taken to get ahead of the inevitable changes to the economy:

• I sold my house from 1870 (an energy nightmare) and have bought a flat from 2003 (much more efficient and hence will keep its value better).
• When I reinvested the balance in property to let I turned down options near sea level as once public opinion realises the inevitable they will instantly become worthless.

Have you considered what will your property be worth when the inevitability of climate change is accepted by all?

Scan&Solve for Rhino

Reproduced from my Atkins blog of 15.09.2011
As anyone who has been bored by me on the subject will know, my favourite program for the past decade has been Rhino. For accurate engineering 3D modelling I think it can’t be beat! Add in the great renders you can get from Flamingo and who could want more.

When I was invited to a webinar on Scan&Solve, a new analytical plug-in for Rhino the idea was so strange I had to have a listen. Analysis programs have been improving their graphics for years. But a graphics program improving its analysis? Weird.

Scan&Solve wasn’t written only for Rhino and may be adapted to work for other 3D modelling software. It works on solids, not assemblies, and is able to work on any Rhino object that can give volume data.

To be honest though, I am not impressed. The guys presenting it evidently come out of an academic background and are doing some pretty interesting stuff – but I am not sure if it is useful to us, and there are other programs that probably do it better. Currently it is limited to single materials with few releases and not that huge models. Add in the strange use of ‘Danger Level’ instead of terms like utilisation and the hopes of composite materials ‘like reinforced concrete’ being dealt with and I came away not at all sure if they knew where they were heading and what the business model is for their future. ‘We’re working on it’ was the answer to many questions.

Not for structural engineers. Maybe (only maybe) for mechanicals? I think most of the others on the webinar were architects and product designers who seemed to be excited by being able to do analysis on their models but, from their questions, they didn’t really know what they needed to know (see previous post!). Perhaps the main thing engineers need to know about Scan&Solve is that there are architects out there who may think they can do it all now without us!

The two things I did like perhaps might get used from the free version at home on some future competition. Firstly it can show the deformed shape and then export that as a mesh model. This has been done before but here it drops neatly back into Rhino and could be used interestingly. Secondly it can ‘bake’ the coloured contour plots for results back into the Rhino model. They actually showed 3D printed models with some very funky colour schemes based on the results.

Which reminds me to get the 3D printing project going sometime soon!

If you want to see a recording of the webinar it is at this link. One instead of Eastenders perhaps.

The Curse of Knowledge - Is Ignorance Bliss?

Reproduced from my Atkins blog of 24.08.2011

New Scientist magazine has just confirmed something I’ve suspected for a while.

Aged twelve I was an avid fan of the ‘Goodies Book of Criminal Records’. Tim Brooke-Taylor’s election claim was that ‘given I know nothing I can approach everything with an open mind’. This truth has strangely stuck with me.

Similarly, Rajeev Rameth and I have often mused that the most dangerous type of engineer was the one who ‘didn’t know what he didn’t know’. They would blindly design the most ridiculous of structures in complete confidence whilst those seemingly full of self-doubt could be relied on to make logical progress towards a safe solution.

Richard Fisher in New Scientist (30 July) discusses ‘The curse of knowledge’ which can hamper performance in many fields. It was first spotted in second-hand car salesmen. The sellers who knew the cars best – all the plus points and all the flaws – assumed that their customers also did, and priced accordingly. In doing so they misjudged the market and often got lower prices than the ones ignorant of all the details.

Since then psychologists have found similar problems in other disciplines. “It’s an oxymoron, but ignorance can be a virtue in education”. To teach effectively you need to be able to see things from the naïve perspective of the pupil – and the more you know the harder that becomes.

One of the key points New Scientist made was that “experts should say ‘don’t know’ in their own field of expertise more often” and this matches closely to my own conclusions. When faced by a design problem it is vital that you understand the split of things you don’t know and what you do – and then test why you have those preconceptions about the latter. Don’t allow your ego to pretend you know the answers.

Increasingly often I find it useful to pull teams right back to basics. Why are we doing this? Do we really know what we are doing? Who actually knows what we need to know? By doing this the team should become absolutely clear on what the true basis of design is. Later when new requirements, pressures and ideas arise they are in a much stronger position to steer the project through these changes.

They also probably have a rosier, more positive view of the future as they plunge into the future challenges than the all knowing expert. As David Dunning of Cornell University notes “there are usually two stages to any given task: planning and execution. Whilst you are more likely to be successful if you think through the first stage a fully realistic picture during the second could be a hindrance, not a help.”

Donald Rumsfeld evidently wasn’t far off the truth (for once): “There are known knowns. There are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns -- the ones we don't know we don't know.”

To succeed we should all doubt ourselves more!

Or should we?

Repeat after me: ‘I don’t know’.

The rest of the Excitech AEC BIM Forum 2011

Reproduced from my Atkins blog of 08.07.2011

So what was talked about during the rest of the Excitech AEC BIM Forum? The three key themes were ‘The BIM needs of contractors’, ‘BIM implementation, process and trends’ and ‘Managing Revit project data’.

1. Capturing lessons learned: this will be a key activity as we move through 3D CAD into true BIM. How was it for all the parties involved? Were Client expectations met? What were the timescales and benefits? Where were the delays? Was the BIM process effective and was clash-free construction achieved? Often we have all not been great at capturing, reflecting on and sharing lessons.

2. Key reading: I must get hold of “The Business Value of BIM in Europe” – everyone was using this as a key source. ’The Government Construction Strategy’ and ‘The Government Construction Client Report’ are also important, but are much more likely to aid insomniacs.

3. Design Process: Whilst CAD just replaced the old pen and ink tools we used, BIM changes the underlying design processes and we need to structure its use in order ensure we gain what it can give. Rapid Energy Modelling is an example of how structured data will allow new opportunities. I must find out who in Atkins is doing this now.

4. Beyond Revit: It is vital to keep aware of all the other applications that Revit plugs into. It is this interconnectedness that moves from 3D CAD to BIM. Revit alone will not deliver your BIM needs and a clear ‘Application Workflow’ must be set up.

5. Know why and what: Key frustrations to avoid are a) not being clear why models are being constructed and b) constructing them at the wrong level of detail. A project BEP and an understanding of the design process will avoid these.

6. The Client’s part: Paul Shilcock from TFL felt it was the Client’s duty to get involved, to know what it wants and finally to make active use of the BIM product (“use it or lose it”). Most of Atkins’ BIM work is currently for our own needs, but the learning curve will continue when our Clients want BIM data as a design deliverable

Final thought: Shaun and Kyla Farrell (no relation) from Zaha Hadid gave great and clear presentations on how they deliver their complex geometrical buildings through a full BIM process. Although some of their comments do not apply to the ‘normal’ rectilinear world I was again impressed how the team at ZH can communicate so much complexity effectively.

Download the presentations at this link

BIM-plementation – Do you have a BEP?

Reproduced from my Atkins blog of  01.07.2011
The key new question that all Project Directors and Design Managers need to ask before they sign up for that new project is:

“Is there a BIM Execution Plan?”

In the recent ‘CAD era’ everyone we worked with, internally and externally, knew a CAD strategy could be sorted out as the project got up and running. Several decades of development meant the industry knew its way around the standards and protocols

Welcome the ‘BIM era’! It’s all going to be more confusing for a few years.

Atkins' Ray Purvis, Anne Kemp and I attended the annual Excitech BIM Forum on Thursday 30 June. The need for BIM Execution Plans (BEPs) right at the start of a job was being clearly heard around the room. The BEP might come from the Client, or it might come from Design Team, but if there isn’t one you are heading for trouble.

Atkins has been at the forefront of developing BIM standards for the industry. The AEC (UK) BIM Standard was the work of our Global BIM Excellence Group and they are developing our own proforma BEP.

According to Excitech’s presentation typically a BEP will define:

· Project initiation

· The modelling plan
· The analysis plan
· The collaboration plan
· The technology plan

It’s not rocket science, but if you don’t have one agreed across the whole Client’s team sharing information is going to cause frustrations and delay.

For our project in Jeddah Atkins are implementing Revit modelling on a scale we haven’t done before - pan-office, pan-region. Jeddah is a key step on our journey from 3D-CAD towards BIM – there is no turning back after this! The ongoing dialogue across our CAD community (evolving into our BIM community) has been key for collaboration for a project where there is not a client sponsored BEP.

Networking at the Excitech forum we heard that BIM interfaces between some other consultants are not going quite so smoothly. Good to see Atkins ahead of the game.

So Mr Project Director, next time you are about to land your next multi-consultant mega-project, pause and ask the Client if he has a BEP in place. And if he hasn’t, sell him one.

You’ll regret it if you don’t!

Crushingly simple – the START approach from OTBconcrete

Reproduced from my Atkins blog of 30.06.2011.
Isn’t it great when something that has been quietly bugging you for years finally gets sorted out in your head?

Back in 1989 I worked on site in Newcastle using tunnel formwork to pour hotel bedrooms - the Copthorne Closegate Hotel, now you ask. The keys to the rapid reuse of this expensively hired formwork were heating of the newly poured slabs and walls using propane burners and ‘match cured’ cubes resting on top of the slab. These were crushed twelve hours after the pour and proved that we had the strength we needed for depropping.

Looking back it was all rather basic and not helped by a particularly dopey contractor (who went bust later in the project, so I’m probably safe to say that). But at least we thought it was conservative. However it has always nagged at me that there must be a more scientific way accurately establish the rate of strength gain on site.

Christer Isgren from OBTconcrete gave a lunchtime presentation to the Building Structures team in Epsom last week and spoke about their START system for monitoring the early strength gain of insitu concrete. They work closely with RC frame contractors who are looking to accelerate their programmes through rapid turn-around of formwork or early prestressing.

This is probably all old hat for the nuclear and dam boys, used to big pours, who need to control early age temperatures and cracking, but it looked like rocket science to this building engineer!

But the great thing is that, at heart, it is blindingly simple once you look past all the temperature sensors and wiring around the pour:

1. It is all based around knowing exactly how your concrete performs at 20degC. They crush lots of cubes at the start of the job for every type of concrete used – cement supplier, cement replacements, additives.....all must match.

2. ‘Setting’ is actually a chemical reaction and it relies on water. Thus when the concrete is at zero the reaction stops as the water is frozen.

3. The brilliantly simple bit is that the speed of ‘setting’ is basically linearly proportional to the temperature above zero. So if the concrete were at 10degC for four days it would have the same strength as a two day cube. If it had been at 40degC it would be the same as an eight day cube.

Of course it is more complicated than that actually, but that is enough for me to know what is going on.

The START system monitors the temperature of the concrete both on the surface and inside. It accurately measures that early period (perhaps several days) when the heat of hydration pops the temperatures up to 40degC or more. During this period the insitu concrete’s strength is actually ahead of the cube in its warm bath, and it is this period that START allows the contractor to exploit.

Christer’s background is from Sweden and Skanska, and it was interesting to hear how they had to ‘relearn’ many things in the UK due to our regular use of PFA and GGBS. He also discussed the important differences between, and impacts of, the many retarders, accelerators, etc. out there on the market.

Of course, as a building design consultant all this is ‘interesting’ but will be the responsibility of the contractor to sort out, not me.

However, I have stopped that 22 year old doubt nagging at me. No longer wilI I feel the need to I ask for the whole building to have a warm bath for 28 days.

'Big Data' - Autodesk take over (and index) the world

Reproduced from my Atkins blog of 27.06.2011
I attended Thursday 24 June 2011’s session for Autodesk’s major account holders, held at their offices in Farnborough. A team from California took Atkins, Arup, WSP, Bam, Laing-O’Rourke, etc. through ‘BIM 360’ for a couple of hours – their thoughts on the way Autodesk’s products will evolve to handle all project data from conception through to completion, handover, maintenance and decommissioning.

Ideas ranged from near-, through mid- to long-term predictions. Some of the key points that leapt out for me were:

1. Most recent attention has focused on the BIM model and data that can be directly related to it (schedules, specifications, analysis models, etc). Increasingly Autodesk are thinking about the cloud of other stuff that our projects generate – correspondence, photos, calculations…. How will all that become a useful reference for the future?
2. The session talked a lot about Vault, Autodesk’s offering for organising and sharing all this data within a team. I had not heard of this before. One aim has been to allow team members to feel that they are still working on Windows drives or SharePoint in the same way they have done before. Behind the scenes versioning, audit trails and records are happening – they have almost found it a problem that people have not known they are using Vault (good or bad?).
3. When sharing data further afield Buzzsaw is their application. It was interesting to hear the Autodesk team talking through the relationships between Revit, Navisworks, Vault, Buzzsaw, etc. They recognise they have had too many products out there but evidently feel they now have a coherent story to tell.
4. The order of priority when aiming for best practice data management is 1) People, 2) Process and lastly Technology. All too often we focus on the last two first and then wonder why teams don’t eagerly adopt what is given to them. Over half of Autodesk’s income now comes from consultancy and this will rise further - interesting parallels with Microsoft and IBM!
5. All this talk of structuring data really emphasises the need for us to evolve Information Managers – a kind of twenty-first century Drawing Office Clerk. Since the focus has been on the BIM model to date the CAD manager has been playing v.1 of this role, but this is not going to be appropriate as we begin to talk about broader data relationships. Evidently a new kind of professional may need to emerge.
6. Anything allowing mobile access to data is currently a ‘killer app’ and these are being hungrily downloaded from Autodesk’s servers by site based teams. In order to remove the need for these apps to download complete files they create location driven ‘bubbles’ of data showing what is relevant to where you are. Future versions will give maintenance teams access to all drawings and specs at their location straight out of the BIM model.
7. Always nice to pickup the latest language from Silicon Valley. Some parts of Vault have been trialled as ‘Freemium’ versions given away with other software in order gain early feedback. The description of overconfident data managers sitting back and ‘stroking the cat’ had the Americans choking on their mineral water.
8. Finally cloud based processing now seems to be arriving. I’ve not yet seen anyone sending rendering or analysis off to the cloud but I’m sure I’ll see it within the year. Perhaps it will be a way to beef up to ‘oomph’ of mobile devices such as Ipads way beyond their own hardware specs.