Monday, 10 December 2012

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.

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