Parkinson's Law, BIM and blobs

"Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion."

In order for BIM to deliver the much advertised revolution in efficiency we need to overcome this fact. As Radio 4 reminded me a few weeks ago, Cyril Northcote Parkinson stated his 'Law' as part of a humorous essay for the Economist in 1955. However, it struck a chord and still holds true for many aspects of life today.

Parkinson referred to contemporary British bureaucratic examples. As the Empire shrank the Colonial Office expanded, reaching its zenith when it was morphed into Foreign Office due to lack of colonies to run. After the First World War the British fleet shrank dramatically, yet the number of Admirals rose in similar dramatic style.

Admirals v ships

Unfortunately this rule continues to be applicable in many other fields - for instance sustainability. In the 70s we all started showering, saving all those baths full of water. However we 'improved' the shower into the power shower and moved to daily washing (or more for teenage daughters!) so as widely reported in 2011 we have now clawed back all the gains we thought we'd made and more! Similarly, modern cars are much more fuel efficient than in previous years, yet whilst I was living abroad I saw on my visits the size of the average UK car grow incrementally, with many more 4x4s and people movers now shuttling said teenage daughters around (not my one this time).

And now we have all these wonderful labour saving devices to replace the drawing board. I worked on the Broadgate at Stockley Park projects back in 1986, two of the first to implement 2D CAD for buildings in the UK. Somehow we all felt we should be being more accurate and some users would proudly show how how they had drawn all the threads on the bolts when they zoomed in - followed by complaints about how often their GDS terminal crashed.

And the poster child for 3D CAD was Frank Ghery, and in particular his Guggenheim in Bilbao. Amazing things can be done with new technology and a high performance team, but a generation of contractors and clients have since had to deal with cost overruns and leaks resulting from less talented 'blob architecture' on his coat-tails - and a generation of cynics about this new-fangled BIM thing were born.

Bilbao roofs

To avoid the BIM revolution failing due to Parkinson's Law we need to keep our eye on the ball, and make sure we don't get lost in the expanding possibilities of the technology. Be clear what we are delivering now, and use BIM to deliver it better. Too often our industry's deliverables been ill-defined, leading to disappointment and rework. My holiday reading at the moment is the RIBA Plan of Work - I need to be precise about what the old version was, and what the 2013 vintage now requires. My attempt to define 'the way our drawings should look' is another attempt to prevent the many possibilities of BIM undermining the actual delivery of its efficiencies. Define what you want to do before moving forwards.

The vast majority of the world's buildings are boring, conventional and delivered by low performance teams*. If we can define and deliver what BIM means for these projects we will answer the questions now being asked of our industry by governments around the world, and realise the cost and energy savings we all need. 

The future is not blob shaped. Mostly it is rectangular and low rise. And hopefully über-efficient.

(* - a low performance team is any team you consider is worse than your own.)