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.