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.