For those of us in the AEC industry, the Building Information Modeling (BIM) revolution was both empowering and painful. As companies have leveraged the technology, it has fundamentally changed [the] work process and business practices, leaving us with the questions of what is next.
What’s happening now?
Aaron Maller, BIM manager for the Beck Group in Atlanta is well known in BIM circles as an expert contributor in the forums. "We are seeing improvement of capability in conceptual design—especially as it relates to generating free forms and undulations in building design. Architectural styles change in a way that reflects the technology of the time. [Frank] Gehry has always done wild forms, and has been able to do that with his software, but more mainstream architecture groups are now leveraging tools like Rhino, Grasshopper, Design Script and Dynamo. The challenge will be sharing that ‘design data’ with folks downstream, and how many folks downstream can make those computational designs cost-effective to build. Traditional delivery models fall short on this, and that’s where the frontrunners are delving in to design direct-to-fabrication."
Richard Semmes, president of SmartBIM LLC, also in the Atlanta area—a firm that works on both the manufacturer and AEC side to provide content, tools and analytics—finds that firms are moving beyond adoption to maximizing the effectiveness of the tools. "The fundamental question is—how does BIM enable you to do your job better?" asks Semmes. "It is always a matter of ROI. Traditional evaluation methods for ROI may not apply here. On the AEC side, how does making more informed design decisions impact your bottom line? On the manufacturing side, marketing your products in a way that designers can readily find and easily use them in their BIM workflow is a vital part of today’s digital go-to-market strategies. We see that clients who are strong visionaries aren’t looking back. They understand where the real power is."
Markku Allison, AIA, founder of Scan Consulting in Washington, D.C., observes, “There is ever-increasing owner interest in the value of information. Many construction owners have significant Construction Operations Building Information Exchange [COBie] initiatives to accrue benefits to their capital investments through better management of data. COBie is a way to allow the facilities teams to manage their assets over time, and to make that effective, the information to be gathered is ideally identified in the early stages of design.”
How do you prepare for what‘s next?
BIM is blurring the boundaries as the current state of deployment allows people to push their work both upstream and downstream, according to Allison. "If you adopt BIM and push it to its limits, you will push against business and cultural boundaries [that] will allow you to modify them," he says. "One of the best things you can do to advance your use is to become mindful of the friction points that emerge over the course of your work, then identify and shape strategies to reduce or remove the points of friction. We tend to be pretty limited in our perceptions of our roles and capabilities of adding value. BIM can serve as a catalyst to break down our own perceptions of silos."
Semmes argues that AECs need to be looking ahead to what they are doing from a content perspective. "There is a propensity within the community [to] create best practices around known content. Those are good methods, but we also need to pay attention to how to translate reusable content to purchasable items," he says. "That is one of the key concepts SmartBIM is working on—to allow the creators to define the key characteristics using well-known tools and content and then use those key parameters to find the real-world products that will be available within the timeframe of the project." And he adds, "Content definition needs to change as it moves amongst the players in the lifecycle of design, build, ownership, and maintenance."
How active are manufacturers in developing object libraries? And what role might they play moving forward?
Manufacturers are doing exactly what the industry is asking of them, according to Maller. "One of the biggest disservices is by the software vendors to the manufacturers. The manufacturers are forced to follow the parameters of the software managers so they aren’t penalized rather than getting in touch with the user-base to find out how it’s really best to build content. Over the past five years, there has been some ugly content, which has caused the unfortunate side effect of some large AEC firms having to say 'nothing comes in from outside.' That is changing, as some content providers get wise to best practices."
Semmes adds this perspective: "We see a range of maturity among the manufacturers. There is a broad range of need based on product type. It used to be that if you had the 3D geometry, you were set, but as BIM tools get more sophisticated the ability to understand more dimensions of the problem is driving the creation of more sophisticated objects. The leading manufacturers are working hard to deliver objects that showcase their products’ differentiators to beat the competition. Differentiated modeling for a plumbing fixture manufacturer is completely different than a flooring manufacturer. Simply hiring the low cost 3D model creator no longer sets your products apart."
Are there any innovations in how objects are kept fresh in a system?
"Some of this has been pioneered in other spaces," Semmes proposes. "Other manufacturing industries have been leading the way to connect their back-end systems. Rather than sending files back and forth or manual entry, content standards and application programming interfaces [APIs] need to continue to evolve to automate information integration at a system level."
Maller asserts, "There are content-finders and systems that will allow you to reach out and crowd-source for building products while you are working in BIM. Those innovations are directly at odds with someone like myself who has a responsibility for the quality of the deliverables. They are interesting because they allow you to get information quickly, but if your job is QC and standardization—those are scary tools."
"It used to be that if you had the 3D geometry, you were set. But as BIM tools get more sophisticated, the ability to understand more dimensions of the problem is driving the creation of more sophisticated objects."
—RICHARD SEMMES President of SmartBIM LLC. Atlanta, GA.
Where are the challenges (and opportunities)?
"Right now the biggest issue is accessibility," reveals Maller. “Even in our office where we are integrated with construction and design, the legal deliverable is still traditional paper. There are still issues about how data gets to a construction site. People talk about the hardware, but an iPad with 200 PDFs is still just electronic paper. We have to look at what data has value and find better ways to provide access to that data, where it counts: the jobsites."
"At the end of the day, users need an intuitive way to interact with the data and find what they need quickly," Semmes says. "We are working with other companies to provide product APIs that easily get the users the content they need. We want a very natural language for discovering the products that help the users meet their needs."
Allison notes, "While a majority of firms have purchased BIM software and use it to some degree in their practices, the overall skill level across the industry remains relatively low. The less experience with the tool, the more concerns with things like liability and ownership—Old World problems. Another challenge is that when many adopt BIM they learn the package that they purchased, setting their skill at that level. But the tools are evolving rapidly—which makes it difficult to keep up from a talent perspective."
And Allison clarifies another aspect to the talent challenge: "BIM delivers maximum value in a collaborative setting. Collaboration is a cultural issue—not a technology issue, and I don’t think it will be solved generationally. Our cultural response, whether Boomer, Xer or Millennial, is to solve the problem. Collaboration requires stepping back, reflecting, gathering people, and shaping a direction. Going slow to go fast. We are only just now able to quantify the value of these things, and I think the next really big wave in business will revolve around these soft skills."
