The BIM Manager's Handbook, Part 4

Building Up a BIM Support Infrastructure

Dominik Holzer

• Publisher: Wiley
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781118987841
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Technology & Engineering
• Subtopic: Construction & Architectural Engineering
• Index: Technology & Engineering

ePart 4: Building up a BIM Support Infrastructure: Addressing the 'back of house' aspect of BIM Management, this ePart outlines how to go about developing a range of in-house BIM standards and guidelines. It highlights how BIM Managers go about establishing a training programme for staff and the setting up and management of an organisation's BIM content library. It covers the support needed to move BIM information into the field and further into facilities and asset management. It emphasises the importance of internal messaging, and articulating how to nurture a culture of peer-to peer support and advancement of skills by individual staff members. Looking beyond a single firm's or organisation's requirements, the ePart positions BIM support infrastructure in the wider context of key global BIM policies and guidelines. Obook ISBN: 9781118987896; ePub ISBN: 9781118987919; ePDF ISBN: 9781118987834; published August 2015

BUILDING UP A BIM SUPPORT INFRASTRUCTURE

---

Developing a support infrastructure that enables others to implement BIM is at the very core of the BIM Manager's role. Though a solid grasp of technology provides an essential vehicle for actualization, the framework can only be established through a well-formulated strategy for change. Ultimately, a well-articulated BIM support infrastructure has the potential to go beyond the merely operational and empower those who work with BIM to excel at what they do.

Helping others to adopt BIM is a multifaceted task. Next to technology savviness, it requires in-depth knowledge about a broad range of standards, policies, procedures, and workarounds. Consolidating this knowledge into easily digestible guidelines, tutorials, and other forms of support material and propagating this material among colleagues is a BIM Manager's art to master. This ePart explains how BIM Managers develop BIM Standards and other guidelines, structure their BIM Libraries, set up and advance BIM Execution Plans, flesh out BIM Capability Statements, and put together a well-considered BIM training program. This section also explores how BIM Managers grow their in-house BIM support infrastructure and disseminate their knowledge to facilitate peer-to-peer support.

Figure 4–1 Caspian Waterfront, Baku Azerbaijan.

© Benoy

---

Propagating BIM

The first ePart about Best Practice BIM explained why it is most probable that over time BIM will become an integral part of project delivery. There will be less and less need to differentiate between those delivering projects and those supporting them using BIM. In order to reach this goal, BIM Managers have an obligation to advance their colleagues' BIM skills and to assist them in boosting productivity within their organization using BIM. When doing so, they do not need to start from scratch. A number of industry groups around the world have developed support material to engage with this task. These include the United Kingdom's RIBA Digital Plan of Work together with the NBS BIM toolkit, the Singapore BCA's BIM Guide and buildingSMART Finland's COBIM (Common BIM Requirement 2012)—just to name a few. BIM Managers have a responsibility to act as a conduit for top-down information/requirements to be aligned with in-house modeling and coordination processes by staff.

In order to get their support right and to achieve higher productivity, BIM Managers monitor and review national policies and specifications, guidance documents, contract forms, latest tool releases, market movements, and much more. Based on those inputs, BIM Managers bring these outside influences into context with an organization's desired BIM capability and establish pathways for change. Lee Wyles, Project Technology Manager at BDP—one of the United Kingdom's leading multidisciplinary consultancy firms—explains it this way: “We started implementing a mandate to regulate workflows and we provide clear roadmaps of how Design Technology and BIM are to be implemented.”

The dream scenario of any BIM Manager is to facilitate well-oiled machinery whereby team members collaborate in BIM requiring little to no outside assistance. It lies within the responsibility of the BIM Manager to help others to increase their skills and, in those cases where BIM requires specialist input, supporting their day-to-day actions with “back of house” support material and standards that optimize their workflow. In doing so, BIM Managers allow those delivering projects to focus on their core deliverables rather than what can be considered as an auxiliary activity/process. It is therefore the BIM Manager who needs to understand how to either help others, or to help them help themselves.

By nature, a great number of employees in architecture, engineering, or construction firms will try to pass on BIM-related activities to the BIM Manager. How can BIM Managers avoid being misused as ad hoc project support without advancing skills among their colleagues? BIM Managers have to strike the right balance between giving support and allowing others to learn and advance their own skills. When it comes to technology, BIM Managers are more often than not distinct specialists among a group of generalists who focus on design, engineering, project delivery, and so forth. These individuals—most likely the great majority—cannot be expected to invest their time in order to be on top of the latest BIM developments.

What counts for most at the end of the day is support that has an immediate and positive impact on their project work. Therein lies the problem. The most direct way is always a one-on-one conversation with a colleague who is in need of help. This approach is nevertheless not sustainable in the long run, and BIM Managers need to look for different ways to disseminate and “democratize” their knowledge. One means of achieving this is by helping nurture a group of individuals with above-average BIM skills. These “Model Managers”—BIM architects, engineers, or project BIM Leaders—become the middlemen between the big-picture BIM Strategy and work undertaken by individual contributors. Another crucial tack is the generation of in-house support material.

Figure 4–2 Examples of BIM support documents.

© Dominik Holzer/AEC Connect

The medium for proliferating support material is often a combination of printed documents, online resources, libraries, and templates produced by the BIM Manager and his/her team. One of the biggest mistakes made by BIM Managers is to assume that great support documents equal great support. In fact, common BIM operators rarely read these documents. They are simply too busy doing their work and they just want a solution that works for them. BIM Managers therefore have a responsibility to complement their writing of support material with continuous promotion of their content. They have opportunities for doing so with the inception of a new staff member, during project startup meetings, during regular project reviews, via regular internal BIM/Technology newsletters, and during educational sessions with Model Managers and Upper Management.

Hence, BIM Managers need great communication skills to share bite-size bits of information in a fashion that produces the best practical results at a project level and beyond. In some cases users simply need to know that specific standards or guidelines exist, so they can refer to (and adhere to) them while working on a project. In those cases users need to know how to look up the information they are after. Other support material such as templates or BIM Library components get used on projects so BIM operators need to be able to find and access them in the most effective way. Some support material such as BIM Execution Plan templates are most relevant for project leaders who are responsible for initiating a project. They need to, though, be referred to and updated throughout the various stages of a project. The dissemination of knowledge also depends on the context—the size and type of firm.

What are the key bits and pieces of information that need to be understood by an organization when it comes to BIM? The following section lists a number of support areas that require special attention by BIM Managers. In the past, BIM Managers tackled support for these areas predominantly one by one. It becomes apparent though that they form part of an integrated whole. BIM requirements by clients have an influence on how in-house BIM Standards should be set up. These standards relate to one's capability and resources, which in return affect what's in the BIM Execution Plan. Some BIM support material remains rather static and unchanged throughout a project's lifecycle; other support needs to be adjusted continuously. BIM Managers need to balance out what can be known about the way BIM gets utilized, and what still needs to be established during the various p...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Titlepage
• Copyright
• Building Up a BIM Support Infrastructure
• EULA