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:
· 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.
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.
