BIMBO's clothes off - new meaning

The story continues.  We had now rolled out all this BIM stuff and were jumping around in joy. I think we had started to celebrate too soon!  Another email appeared from the masters, with polite verbs and adjectives of praise and concluding with “    it was time for you to take your clothes off and sell your stuff”.  They meant the BIM stuff, I think!

So here goes as to how the Bimbo Man started to earn his beer tokens.  It did not degrade to walking the streets or dropping my pants for favours, but to the contrary it was a simple strategy that paid off.  We had realised that we had an increase in efficiency in the design phase of some 35-40% - this is man hours.

There were, are and will be two distinct groups of clients.  Those who want things done yesterday! Those whose favourite line is, “What? How much?”  Both the groups were and are blind to the BIM stuff.

What we sold to the first group was speed, not the drug, but delivery ahead of time.  To the second group, we sold the concept of fixed heavily discounted price with an overage for quick delivery.  Both were risky strategies but worked as there was no opportunity given to complacency.  Where the contractor was the client or partner, the speed of response was the selling point.  RFI (Request For Information) became web based and interactive and free lessons as to how to view the model and interact with it became part of daily tool box talks.

BIMBO gets a headache

The Biggest Headache for us was the Cost and Technology Requirements.

For most people this is a moving target, but you need someone on board that is smart and understands the demand, access, reliability and security requirements.  Each organisation will have their requirements depending on their size and work load.  The prerequisite is that you have an excellent network and an excellent outward link (internet connection(s)). A good server, backing up to a SAN (cloud).  If you are starting off, keep it simple.  Spend on a robust network which has low maintenance requirements.

Remember, you are building models now and not drawing lines, so the software package that you pick should suit your budget and you should be comfortable with.  There are several discussion and threads out there with the pros and cons of various packages.  Don’t get duped by the software vendors! Test everything for yourself.

The Pearl - Consider, leasing instead of buying both software and hardware, remember, things go past their sell by date very quickly!  There are a lot of companies providing leasing service now.

If you don’t need it, don’t get it.  There will be costs and there will be costly mistakes.  All I can comment here, as the bulk of the costs are soaked up in the technology strategy and the choices you make. 

BIMBO plays SIMS

BIM Timetable and resource. The management suggested that the time given would be one year.  To make it meaningful, I suggested that this should be done on a real project.  To eliminate risk, the visionaries suggested that the project would be run as a conventional 2D CAD and BIM in parallel.  The Pearl - This was the best decision that was made and gave us bench marks and base line for comparisons.

For those interested, there were 4 persons working on the 2D CAD version and the Bimbo team had 2 people.  Both the 2D CAD and the BIM took 5 months to deliver to the contractor, with one difference; for the model, we also prepared the “How to” procedures in this time frame.  The real test came next.  We had 5 RFIs in the first month.  It took 12 days to answer the RFIs using the 2D CAD system and 4 hours using BIM.  It is very difficult to put a time frame, but this is one way to get things right.  Don’t take short cuts and produce a half-baked process.  This needs to be robust.

Bimbo had to be a reality soon and at the start there were only 3 people who had become proficient, or truthfully, just knew their way around the software package.  In between doing day jobs, running a BIM project for the first time and writing procedure and learning, there was no time for teaching.  We needed a teacher.

I digress again; - heads in hands, sitting in the pub one evening after work, drooling over a laptop trying to figure out how to …. And Jo, our coffee lady walked in, after juvenile banter, she asked what were we doing? Oh 3D modelling stuff for the company and the presentation you were at last week.  She replied “I do this all the time,” looking at the screen, “and I have built several houses”!  Jo grinned, “…this is the same a SIMs; I built a house yesterday, but it caught fire and the social services took the kids way”.  Rolled with laughter for the next 20 minutes.  As a joke, I said go ahead and build me a house from scratch using this.  Gave her the laptop, sat back and supped beer.  In an hour we had a building with basic components hanging together without any direction or teaching and it was much better than some of the CAD idiots produced in the office.  On quizzing her, she described, her sequence almost perfectly as if a building was being constructed – like a duck to water.  We had found our teacher. Jo’s mum took over the coffee duty and Jo became part of the Bimbo team, our first and only new recruit in this process.

After we found a tutor, we set out a training program of teaching, testing graduating the 2D CAD boys and girls.  We have continued teaching and have discovered new ways of doing things even today.

BIMBO does Armani

The New Thinking Concept : Getting away from convention. Cesar’s description – “removing inhibitions” - As a practice we were delivering drawings and documents to our clients. Our deliverables.  Now we were going to deliver a model as our deliverable.  This was great, but we faced a problem.  We had two distinct camps, those who knew how to construct and those who thought they knew. Although subtle, this made a huge difference. It took some time to figure out a solution, but the bottom line was that we borrowed a psychometric test of field work aptitude from a Health Charity and gave it to everyone.  It was a surprising result; the first group - those people who were hands on and had worked on sites adapted a lot quicker.  The second group - the people with soft clean hands who had never worked on a site or seen the materials actually applied and true academics would become very resilient to the new thinking.  There was a coup developing.  The Pearl - The solution was to get every one of those in the second group out on sites as soon as possible to get an appreciation of how things are put together in the real world.  This was the best thing ever done for this group.

I digress; there were some fun moments, which I must share.  One of our architect, who was always immaculate and was nicknamed Armani.  Now Armani took great pride in producing his drawings and documents and his desk was so well organised it would make the British Library look untidy.  Armani, as part of the clean soft hands brigade, went to a site where he saw some of his drawings on the floor.  These drawings had seen reasonable abuse, typical of a site.  On seeing this drawing he summoned the foreman.  The foreman listened, shrugged his shoulders, shook his head in despair, picked up the drawing and rolled it into a neat cohiba, gave the Armani the birdy with this rolled baton, shoved it into his back pocket and carried on with his business.  This wasn’t the last we heard!  An email followed from Armani, to our MD, “The heathens of construction need to respect people’s work and this sort of behaviour was not tolerated…[ 100s of words later]…. an apology was due from the contractor.”  Now our MD, following due process, naturally, forwarded this to the principal contractor.  The principal contractor, in response apologised, and sent a gift to the upset architect.  The gift was an Armani Tie – LOL.  Armani soon left, as he thought he didn’t fit in to the insanity that was being played.  Back to business or insanity as some would say.

This new thinking concept also changed the sequence in which things were done and how they were done.  We needed a new process.  The thinking behind this process was lifted straight from the aerospace and automotive industries.  There were two types of designs requirements; form design (what it looks like) and functional design (and how it works) – self-explanatory.  While BIM is important in form design cycle, it is the key to functional design.  The process we created was for the latter.  We created “cells”, for a better word within the process.  These cells carried out specific function within any design project.  The first group of cells was the material and component.  The second group was assemblies. The third group was systems and the fourth was integration.  Today, we have 3 groups, [1] Elemental Design & Engineering, [2] System Design & Engineering and [3] Integration Design & Engineering.  Whether you are building an office block or a railway station or even a single dwelling, the hierarchical process is followed to the letter.

The BIMBO Man does Gangnam Style

The BIMBO man is all grown up now; and aside from the bad habits, the BIMBO man had picked up some good habits too.

Why did Gangnam Style go viral, because it is simple, fun and inclusive.  To make things happen, the message needs to be simple, fun and inclusive.

For disruptive technology such as Building Information Modelling (BIM) to be adopted, it required the buy-in by every man and his wife, and his dog too.

BIM a damn boring subject which is glittered with efficiencies had to become simple, fun and inclusive.

We had a decentralised organisation, with a business centre in one location, the architects, engineers and CAD in another location and the delivery teams distributed over several sites.  This had to be communicated as if it was a single organism and everyone was involved.  One advantage was that the organisation was relatively flat and there was very little hierarchy.  However, this should not deter any kind of organisational structure or even a small practice structure.  The problems and solutions are the same.

The BIMBO man goes to work.  My philosophy here was that if EVERYONE (I do mean everyone – receptionists to the coffee lady to the landlord of the local pub) became a participant, then talking about the subject freely would not be difficult and it would not be limited as technical speak for a few.  From experience, I knew that due to disruptive change, people leave, job titles change, new people arrive and there is resilience to change.

The Pearl - What I had discovered in my previous life, was that if the change is managed carefully, new people are very rarely required and there are people around you that are capable, and if given a purpose will assist in combating the disruption.  My peers had said that new concepts remain fresh for a short period only, and after a while, these are either forgotten or become part of everyday life – so I stuck with this.

Gangnam Style

Thank you Psy

How the BIMBO man was born.

Birth of BIMBO MAN

The BIM Person – this is a story to be told.  It was in the year of our Lord twenty o five or star date 062005, can’t exactly recall, anyway, this was when we all received an email which was defiant and so out there that it took us all by surprise and little time to comprehend.  The leaders of our organisation, wanted to be the first in developing the access to all our clients, big and small, by providing solutions for buildings, infrastructure and more in 3D, they called themselves the visionaries.  The email expressed “… as a company we are now going to buy in to modelling before others in our industry.  We are going to be the first.  We want a champion to head up this vision……bla bla….”.  No one raised their hand, so the champion was volunteered in.

This person needed a title.  It had to be person with responsibility. Since BIM was a new emerging science related to 3D modelling, it was only natural to have this acronym in the title.  The architects of acronyms went to work and a few days later the BIMBO manager was born. BIMBO = Buying Into Modelling Before Others, this eventually changed to Building Information Modelling Before Others, but the title has stuck.  So here goes from the BIMBO man.  Why me? Having come from the aerospace, oil & gas and telecom industries where disruptive change was almost ordinary and moreover the concept of 3D modelling and rapid prototyping of components to form assemblies to create the final product was the norm; the rollout of this new BIM stuff landed in my lap.  Lesson to all – be careful what we put on our CVs.

The vision was handed down – this was now officially called BIMBO.

The Bimbo Man - Potted History

Now some of you have asked where did the Bimbo Man come from and what is he made of; water mostly and traces of whisky; so a light potted history.

Born on the Dark Continent some half a century ago.  Cool early years travelling in the back of my old man’s pickup around the continent in between boring education.  At 10, the wrath of boarding school.  As it was the done thing, at 12 got shipped out of the colonies to almighty England for refined education.  More boarding school.  Ran off for a bit to travel the world, got caught, slapped and back into the boarding regiment.  The A levels and Uni swiftly followed – engineering I am afraid became the career path.

First job in the railway industry, building and delivering track maintenance machines, travelled around Europe.  It was then off to the space industry and ended up in South America with the European space program.  Few years there and then joined a naughty army doing naughty things.  Surprised I am still alive.  Joined the oil industry, south east Asia first and then the North Sea.  Got a few joint patents here, pat on the back.  Somewhere along the way came marriage and kids.  Stability set in, start working in a sort of bank, advising on project funding on infrastructure projects.

Head hunted to the telecoms industry, fibre optic trans-continental cables to ring the globe.  Got a few joint patents here too, pat on the back again.  Some 25,000 km later, a break to go back to school.  This was not a good decision, but a MBA later, back into a sort of bank, this time looking for disruptive technologies and funding these.  Then came the boom.  Head hunted by a sort of insurance company with lots of cash to deliver real estate investments.  On came the travelling boots.  Built, delivered and set up many assets globally.  Enjoyed the industry so stuck with it.

Now work for a really cool multidisciplinary practice in delivering projects to a variety of clients.  The BIMBO MAN what conceived here.  So the history is potted and let the future begin.