Bimbo Making it easy

Making it easy in not referring to 5 Jagermeister, some swagger, glittering vajazzles, and facilitating one’s inhibitions on a night out.  Now no one is suggesting getting hammered and having a riot, but is here to explain things simply.  This analogy is sympathetic to achieving the desired intent.

The Jagermeisters refer to loosening communication lines; the swagger is referred to the confidence, the vajazzles refer to maintaining the fun and interest and the rest is the desired intent.

Now making it easy is not the easiest thing to do.  The world and individuals work and think at different speeds and external forces shower you with disruptive intent.  This is where the story of interfacing in the BIM (Building Information modelling) world unfolds.

Some years ago we got the privilege of working with a forward thinking client and his consultant who had suggested that all the models during the development would be interfaced using IFC.  Coming from a can do camp, nothing is a problem.  Admittedly, in the first instance the old guess work genie suggested that IFC could include “I” to be intelligent or interface and “F” to be file or format, but to my surprise it turned out to be something called Industry Foundation Class.

It was like parents naming their offspring India, Apple and Brooklyn.  Here the parents are, Mr & Mrs BuildingSmart, they did the same.  The naming as stuck and life goes on.  Mummy and daddy BuildingSmart are not shy of their fertility or too many Jagermeister – LOL, but IFC now has siblings, IFD and IDM.  It seems that the vajazzle still hasn't lost its luster!

Now trying to explain this to less “data & software” gifted people what IFC was not the easiest.  So in lay speak, it was explained to all members of the organisation in single a presentation.  The analogy used was that of an address book.  The address book containing all the details of all the contacts and it can be opened by Outlook, Google contacts, the iphones, etc, etc and new contacts can be added by any one device and it will be in the same address book.  “Oh I see”, was one the masters of the organisation responding.

So the IFC becomes the address book, the modelled data in BIM becomes the contacts and being able to open it in Outlook, Google Contacts, icloud etc, etc are the different applications that access the contacts.  Simples...

Making it easy is a good idea generally.

Bimbo and the Red Light District

Having sold the soul to the devil –clients in this case; the work starts to take a different guise.  The red beacon starts to flash.  Not the ones in streets of Amsterdam, but the red light pulsating over the sleazy houses in the legal and insurance districts.

In the year dot, neither the legal nor the insurer’s fraternities knew what the BIM stuff was.  Even today these fraternities are still pretty much in the dark.  Working collaboratively is the essence of BIM.  These fraternities have to start developing new structures and solutions and foremost need to disassociate themselves from pimping risk and the transfer of risk.

Vis major (Act of God) aside (or force majeure in legal speak), as part of project management, we introduced within the collaboration policy the concept of “Delineation of Risk” (DOR) – not the Nintendo game! – LOL.  Simply, the collaborators have to identify the risks and act upon these with mitigation measures throughout the project.  It is an iterative process, so when structured into the collaboration policy, one project at a time, the transfer or the intent of transfer of risk is reduced and demonstrated by simple measurement.

It is done in other industries, from bio medics; to the oil and gas; to the aerospace and even banking, so porting the procedures into the AEC was simple.

One may argue that risk assessments are done all the time in the AEC, in particular for Health and Safety requirements, but this is only one component of risk.  When applied to the full design and construction process, but with the measurand embedded in the workflow starts to show effective risk management making the project risk adverse. So the DOR measurand makes the risk and the intent of transfer self-regulating – not so bad.

To reduce the industries cost burden, is it possible to have a shift in the antediluvian and avaricious insurance practices within the AEC – I wonder.