Episode 2 - BIM for Owners

Episode 2: Looks at BIM from the perspective of the Owner, the individual or company seeking to fund and build a new facility.  What is it that they need to be aware of, and understand, when thinking of undertaking a capital project using a BIM process?

Speaker Geraldine Rayner, Summit BIM Data Matters

Transcript

Hello and welcome back to our summit BIM podcast. Data matters. Continuing our series about BIM Building information modeling or Building Information Management. In this episode, I'm going to focus on BIM from the perspective of an owner. I guess the first question to address is what do we mean by owner? In this context, the owner is the individual, group or organization that is asking for, defining and most importantly, paying for a proposed facility, one that they may be planning to retain and maintain throughout its lifecycle.

This podcast will focus on what an owner needs to be aware of and to understand when thinking about undertaking a capital project using a BIM process. First of all, let us address the elephant in the room, Money. Undertaking a structured BIM process is an upfront cost. However, it offers you as an owner many potential benefits, including a reduced number of change orders and a higher quality building conforming to the approved design and delivered with luck on time and on budget. In addition, if you are retaining the facility for the lifecycle, you have all the information you need in an easy to manage format. Data not paper at handover, not months and months later. In essence, you need to spend in order to save. BIM needs to be a line item in your business plan for the proposed facility.

Why as an owner, do you need to understand what a building process is? Great question. You as the entity defining and asking for a facility are the responsible party. You generate the RFP. You define what outcomes you want. You set a budget, define the facility program as well as the final handover deliverable, whether it be paper driven or data driven.

As such, you need to be aware of your role in driving this change. When using a data driven BIM process, there are things to consider and put in place to enable the process and the flow of data from party to party and ensure that it can be relied upon. The goal is to be able to reuse rather than have to recreate information.

In other words, we want to be able to build upon the information iteratively. In essence, over the course of the design and construction phases of the project, we want to build a robust, future proof data set that can be used to drive other processes during the lifecycle of the facility. Sounds too good to be true. Well, with planning and organization it is true.

However, without proper management, the teams will default to a paper-based process because it's familiar and everybody knows what's expected of them. So, some things to consider. Firstly, change management. This is without doubt the hardest issue to manage. As human beings, we are reluctant to change how we do something when we already have years of experience doing it some other way.

This leads to additional stress within teams until the new becomes familiar and the norm. As I mentioned in the first podcast. Most of the mid to large design and construction firms are utilizing BIM technology to benefit their workflows. However, their output is still strongly aligned with the paper process, i.e. the generation of 2D drawings, the paper or digital paper, i.e. PDF format.

As an owner, your challenge is to provide a BIM specification that clearly states what your organization needs from the data and the process that you want the teams to follow. As with the design and construction process, this needs to be managed and teams held accountable for the deliverable, you have asked for. Who is going to be responsible for managing this process?

Will it be an internal or external consultant? Sadly, we have frequently seen the process collapse because the teams fail to follow the requirements in the BIM specification and the project management team did not have the experience to understand the consequences of noncompliance or the have the wherewithal within the contract to ensure compliance. This leads to the data being unable to support downstream goals and uses.

Various excuses, we frequently here are: 

·        We didn't understand what had been asked for. 

·        This will mean additional work. 

·        This will take us longer to achieve. 

·        The contract only requires 2D drawing output. 

·        This is not what we do. 

·        The contractor will resolve these problems, etc. etc.

The reasons are many and varied and often exacerbated by the industry norm of selecting the lowest bidder.

How do you, as the owner / project manager, make the teams do what has been specified? Is it the carrot or the stick approach? What recourse do you have as an owner to ensure compliance? If there is a clearly defined requirement in a BIM specification, things are easier to manage. As mentioned previously, simply specifying BIM is equivalent to simply asking for a building.

In addition, when it comes to sharing and blurring the boundaries between typical scopes of service, some contract forms make the management of this issue easier to control than others. The ISO 19650 framework requires that teams submit a preliminary BIM execution plan with their RFP response, ensuring that everyone is on the same page. There's no confusion over scopes and deliverables prior to signing any contracts.

The BIM execution plan will record their understanding of the goals and uses, as well as the strategies that they plan to use to achieve them. This makes it much easier to manage as a lot of the earlier excuses are no longer valid. With any new process, there is a learning curve, and there are two main issues that owners embarking on their first few BIM projects should be aware of.

Firstly, the technology or software. as an owner requiring a BIM process you don't need to be a software expert. The choice of the tools that the teams use is up to them. What is vital is that the goals, the output from the tools that have been chosen, meet your requirements. Can the software deliver what you have asked for, including a record model?

Have the teams demonstrated in their draft BIM execution plan that they are using tools that are appropriate, and that will generate the robust data set that you, the owner, need? Secondly, does your internal team understand the difference between a paper and data driven process? Do the project managers know what they should expect? Do they know how to check that the models and their inherent data set are meeting the requirements?

Or are they merely utilizing a 2D drawing output as the quality control check? Have they been trained on what to expect and understand how the process is different? Chances are there has been minimal, if any, training around change management related to the difference between a paper and a data driven process. In addition, have all the different stakeholder groups within your organization bought into and contributed to the development of your goals and uses for the data.

Have those in capital planning who build the business case for the project, understood the cost implications of requiring a BIM process? Do the project managers understand the change in process and how it will impact their workflow? Has the facility management team defined what it is that they need at the end of this process? Is there a BIM specification in place and if not, what is the plan to develop one?

Remember, BIM is a process and not simply software. 

So back to the elephant in the room, money! Does the organization understand that you have to spend to save with this process? Typically, with organizations there is a gap between capital planning and facility management stakeholder teams, the latter does not tend to be heavily involved in the capital planning process.

In a BIM process, they need to be. In essence, the costs for improvements in efficiency, quality, and long-term benefits for the lifecycle phase are paid for during the capital delivery side of the project. The downstream benefits to FMO of ensuring access for maintenance and replacement needs to be checked and tested during design and construction, not at handover.

How does your organization manage this? It needs to be tabled and discussed so that all internal parties understand where the risks and benefits of the process occur. Basically, who is going to pay? 

So what do organizations need to do? 

Firstly, reach out, get some help, ideally from someone with the required expert knowledge to help you get organized and structure an ‘Identify’ process that will be the foundation of your goals and uses for the data.  The expertise that you are looking for is around being an expert in the data driven process, not simply knowledge regarding how to use software. Undertaking this ‘identify’ process is a fundamental exercise that the BIM requirements will be structured around. As we all know, a building with poor foundations does not do well in the long term. 

So, what is the ‘Identify’ process?  Typically, through workshops, questionnaires or meetings, it works to identify and understand what it is that the various stakeholder groups within an organization need. What are their pain points, what do they want to improve, and most importantly, what is their level of understanding relative to a BIM process? Without understanding what a BIM process involves, it's very hard for stakeholders to contribute in a meaningful way to the conversation.

They need to first understand what this new process is, so that they can consider where it might help them. What is it that you are really asking them to identify? Once they understand the potential, you can start to gather the input you need to understand their needs. You can work to establish what the hierarchy should be for including and implementing these requirements.

Using the MoSCoW Prioritization, an acronym that stands for must have, should have, could have, and will not have, the desired goals, and uses can be categorized and organized into a structure and then used to support the development of a roadmap for implementation of a BIM process within the organization. Generating and maintaining data costs money. So, it's vital to understand the cost and benefit of what is being asked for.

In addition, how mature is the capability of the industry in your area to meet your goals and uses? Some could have requirements may significantly impact the cost of the project where some may have minimal impact. Understanding how this difficulty cost index impacts the MoSCoW hierarchy is critical to generating a realistic plan. 

So, what is your plan? How do you find and identify the expert help that you need, or do you feel you have that expertise in-house? Understanding that change management is the single biggest problem, how do you ignite interest across the organization, so that it is prepared to invest in the upfront costs? According to Forbes, the most dangerous phrase in any business is ‘we've always done it this way,’ i.e. basically it doesn't matter what you say this is what we're going to continue to do. Without addressing this attitude and supporting the staff through the required change, you are doomed to be less than completely successful.  Under pressure, we almost always default to what we know, rather than struggle with a new process that is yet to become familiar. In addition to this, an individuals position within an organization is often tied to their expertise around how processes currently work, and there is a fear of losing that position, as younger individuals tend to adapt faster to new technology and changes.  

The support of the staff around the issue of change management must be addressed, and experts brought in to help structure the transition and support the staff. 

It is strongly recommended that when embarking on developing your business requirements, you engage an expert.  Remember, we are not talking about learning how to use a new piece of software, but developing a set of requirements, policy processes and protocols that support the goals and uses for your organization.  Goals that will mitigate risk and improve value for the design, construction, and operation of capital projects. 

The term BIM consultant has as many interpretations and definitions as BIM itself. ISO 19650 refers to an Information Manager. However, it is worth emphasizing that you are looking for a firm or individual that specializes in data management and support for the digital data driven workflow from initial business plan through lifecycle, not a software expert. 

When embarking on your BIM journey, hopefully with an expert guiding you and your team, the first thing to focus on is the phrase ‘Consider the end at the beginning’. It's vital to understand the end goals for the data and then work backwards, layering on other goals for the design and construction phases. 

So, what do we mean by goals? What are we actually talking about? The best way to think of goals is in terms of what you want to accomplish. What do you hope to achieve from following a BIM process?

Basically, why are you doing this? The next step is to organize these goals into groupings or categories, those that you want to achieve on your first project, i.e. the low hanging fruit. Those that will take longer, require greater change management, as well as a degree of maturity within the industry, and those that are longer term as they are more challenging for any number of reasons.

The short term goals. What are they? In essence, these can be thought of as goals that are relatively easy and within the ability of the design and construction industry to deliver.

Based on the current industry trends and from the perspective of the owner, the group that is paying for this facility. The following are likely to be the top goals, ones that consistently appear on the owners list. 

Reduction and change orders. Virtual coordination as a required process is a prerequisite to attaining this goal. The resolution of coordination issues while they are digital leads to a reduction in rework and a subsequent improvement in quality.

So, the design as designed is what ends up being built on time and on budget. These are closely interlinked and more likely to be achieved if a virtual coordination process is followed, as it removes some of the uncertainty and supports the use of fabrication models, leading to improved quality and reduced time on site. 

Improved visualization. This not only helps the trades and reduces misunderstandings on the site but helps the owner stakeholder groups to better understand the design through fly throughs or virtual walkthroughs.  It is also more effective in engaging decision makers who are not trained to transition 2D drawings into 3D reality.   

From a life cycle perspective. A digital handover is a very valuable benefit. This means a complete digital representation of the facility, including installed asset information linked to the design intent model data, all available at handover, not months and months later.

Access to this information during construction supports the facility team in developing preventative maintenance plans well before handover. Being able to achieve this goal of a digital handover involves a couple of other benefits, one being data re-use, the ability to reuse the design intent data to help support the facility team for the entire lifecycle. Second, with the design intent model being updated to reflect changes that occur during the construction process. The handover record model actually represents what has been built. 

Estimating quantity / takeoff, this tends to be considered as a medium-term goal, as to achieve it during the design phase, the design team is required to adhere to a higher degree of consistency and structure in the way they model. However, this is a process that is relatively common during construction and is linked to the other goal of scheduling.

Linking schedules with models and quantities, supports a number of benefits that support construction processes, including on time delivery. 

Long term goals are mostly aligned to environmental analysis. The ability to utilize the inherent BIM data rather than starting again from scratchm using the latest IFC, which is Industry Foundation classes, data format and exchange protocols, will help support this goal and result in data being reused rather than recreated.

The ultimate goal may be a true digital twin, where model data and operational data are working together to facilitate the operation of a facility. Predicting maintenance needs due to performance criteria, or adjusting heating or cooling based on usage of a space, by linking the system to scheduling software. 

A few additional thoughts to consider before deciding what, as an owner, you will or won't ask for.

Make sure you have realistic expectations from the process, based not only on the BIM maturity in your area, but taking into account in-house experience and whether the information you're asking for is actually needed. Remember, it costs money to collect and maintain data, so make sure what you have asked for is of real value. Also, remember, the more you ask for more you have to manage.

If you don't manage the data, it becomes less and less reliable over time and thus of less value. Align what you ask for with your experience as well as the experience of the industry. Finally, it's always a good idea to build a roadmap for your implementation journey and keep it up to date with feedback and lessons learned. This helps everyone keep aligned and on track as part of an owners team.

Whether you're in the capital, planning, a project manager, or with an FMO, it's important that you align your goals and uses across the organization, so that the benefits you wish to achieve flow from beginning to end. 

What do you want to get out of the process? Remember the phrase consider the end at the beginning. Although, during a project, the data flow is from beginning to the end, determination of the end data needs to be established first. The tail wags the dog! 

When building a roadmap, the end goals establish the final outcomes.  As you work backwards towards the design phase, build in all the other goals and uses for the data, along with the required processes and protocols that are to be followed. 

Ensure that you're clear on what the goals and uses are and what the deliverables should be.

Remember to focus initially on the high value goals and then build onto the process as you gain experience.  You are building a plan and a process, and as such, you need to consider the various stakeholder groups or departments of the organization. What do they need and how does that work with the overall goals and uses? Are there conflicting issues? Does one department's need fall into the long-term goals? How will you handle this? 

Most importantly, how will you manage the required change management that must be included as an integral part of this plan? Remember, BIM is not just technology. It's a combination of policy, process technology and change management without all four components being considered, you are highly likely to be less than successful.

So as an owner, how do you get started? You need to start to work with an expert who can work with you and your different stakeholders to define what your goals and uses are. Be very precise and specific about what you want to achieve. This information is typically contained in a BIM requirements specification. I'll be speaking more about this in a later podcast.

Leaving the process to manage itself typically does not end well and tends to result in poor outcomes. It pays to get expert help and remember, not all BIM consultants are the same. Some are technology experts who know how to use Revit to generate 2D drawings. You need a BIM consultant that understands the policy, the process and protocols, the technology, and the change management challenge that you will be facing.

Take time to choose your consultant wisely and remember, the BIM requirements need to be part of your RFP, and developing the requirements takes time. Don't leave the selection of your consultant to when you're drafting the RFP. Plan ahead. Bring in expert help when there is time to work with the stakeholders and build a roadmap. A plan that establishes the goals and uses that leads to the generation of a robust BIM requirements document, a document that is sufficiently robust to be able to hold teams accountable and with as many loopholes as possible, removed.

In addition, give some thought to the pros and cons of the different contract types that could be used. The most effective are those that support open, collaborative workflows, where expert knowledge from trade and construction is brought into the design process, but without excluding the owner in the decision-making process. 

In this podcast, the goal was to provide a high-level introduction to what you, as an owner group, need to be aware of when undertaking a BIM process.

So, a quick recap. Don't forget to get help. 

Identify:  Work out who wants what from within your organization. What are the goals and uses for the data? Prioritize what you are asking for. Generate a roadmap for the roll out of this process. Include a cost for the BIM process in the capital plan and ensure that you define precisely what it is that you’re asking for in the RFP.

Manage. Recognize that this new process requires change. Get help with how to manage the process. You are dealing with data and the requirement are different from merely generating 2D drawings. The data needs to be checked and audited to ensure that the goals and uses can be achieved. 

I hope that you found this podcast informative and enjoyed listening to it.

If so, please subscribe to our YouTube channel, Summit BIM. Our next podcast will explore the issues associated with this process in greater detail, focusing on lessons learned from our experience and what we see happening within the industry. Please feel free to reach out to us at Summit BIM consulting. If you have any questions or would like any additional information.

All the best, bye.