On September 30^th our CEO, John Tocci, attended and spoke at the UK Contractors Group (UKGC) London BIM Conference hosted by Autodesk, Inc. The conference brought together a prestigious panel of British industry leaders from RIBA, CIBSE, ICE and UKCG: leading architects, engineers, academics and government officials from the UK…and Tocci as the contractor’s perspective.

As the conference progressed it was clear that in the UK there are some stellar architects really utilizing BIM, but they are the dramatic minority. Their BIM work is sadly largely unknown because it is almost never used downstream in the construction process. When John spoke he issued a challenge: “If you do not adopt BIM within 3 years you will be irrelevant.” This call to action was echoed in the keynote address by Paul Morrell, the UK’s Chief Construction Advisor. He said that the British government will be requiring BIM on all their projects going forward, it just remains to be seen what the time table is and who will control the process. John wrote a lively summary of the whole trip, which can be found here in three parts:

Part I

Part II

Part III

The BIMForum is a multilateral professional focus group for Building Information Modeling (BIM) and Virtual Design and Construction (VDC) and is the fastest growing, most diverse industry group on the subject. Tocci’s CEO, John Tocci, helped found the BIMForum in 2005 and remains the chairman to this day.  The BIMForum meets three times a year at various locations around the US to discuss topics relevant to BIM research, adoption, implementation, ROI and market demands.

The 2010 Fall conference was held on October 14th and 15th in Atlanta, GA. The theme was “The Evidence on BIM,” a discussion about whether real-world evidence substantiates the claims that BIM leads to measurably higher performance in design, construction, operation and maintenance.

John Tocci, Laura Handler and Pierce Reynoldson attended and came back recharged about the potential of BIM to fuel faultless project execution and extraordinary owner satisfaction.

The most compelling part of the conference was on Friday the 15th, when five owner groups presented how they are implementing BIM throughout millions of square feet of their existing and new projects.  Attendees left knowing that any owner hesitating at this point will find themselves playing serious ‘catch-up’ later and any CM or designer playing with BIM rather than diving headlong into full implementation will find themselves relegated to the has-been category in as few as twenty-four months. One of the owners on the panel had this to say:

“I can only speak for myself, but I was very proud to be part of this event. We, as owners, made it clear we are involved in BIM and hope they (A/E, consultants, contractors) will be ready once we start to demand BIM on our future projects, with detailed expectations and deliverables. Our job now is to educate other owners.”

Birgitta Foster, Sandia National Laboratories

Here is a comprehensive review of the BIMForum Atlanta meeting from one of the attendees:

James Vandezande at All Things BIM

Last week our CEO, John Tocci attended and spoke at the London BIM Conference hosted by Autodesk, Inc.  Here is his first person account of the trip (this is the last of three parts, click here to read part I and part II):

PART III

At a conference where the attendees don’t pay (like this one) you always expect significant fade in the afternoon attendance.  Much to the credit of Adam Matthews from Autodesk and their typical high-class preparation, they avoided that.  We had almost full attendance again after lunch.  The afternoon session was comprised of a panel discussion with a bunch of academics and professional society leaders and a deeper dive into architecture and contracting.  The panel was a little on the dull side, but the architect, Richard Wise from Ryder Architects, was great!  He rescued us from irrelevance by showing practical examples of using axon’s and semi-renderings in their construction doc’s to make design intent clear.  It was lovely. He showed animations of elementary schools with foot traffic simulations to study how the kids will travel from space to space –to design a markedly better school.   The morning owner-speaker had shown a statistic for a typical 1000 student school—with how many kids (out of the thousand) suffered with depression (close to a hundred), how many had OCD, how may had attention disorder, how many had disrupted backgrounds and behavior issues. It was staggering and sobering. So when Richard showed how they used BIM to design lighter, airier schools with more communal and organic spaces, it really landed (at least on me).  He ended.  They clapped.  I got up.  It was clear (to me) that they hadn’t clapped enough though.  So I began by asking everyone to stand up and after a second exhortation they stood, nervously.  I asked everyone to join in a round of applause for Richard because that was truly remarkable and that’s what BIM is really all about—building fabulous spaces that make life and lives better. Richard was still on stage because we were set up to do a panel Q&A session after my talk. I went over and said to him (we were both still mic’d): “I love you man.  I want to work with you.” He replied “I want to work with you too!”  And we hugged.  It was a good moment.

My talk then focused on the details I had to leave out from the morning presentation.  A unique part of this afternoon session was a request from Adam to talk about the specific, tangible advantages of BIM for Tocci and also the intangible benefits.  I led off this intangible list with a photo of the VDC Department and explained that BIM is bringing excitement back to construction and helping us attract the best and brightest young professionals in the country.  And when they come they bring crazy stuff and shake things up. The office/field divide is falling as we bring in superintendents  to model and advise modelers – working side by side.  Collocation is pulling down the walls between designers and constructors… and subcontractors.  Another intangible benefit?  Q5, and the chance to help others implement and continue our R&D efforts for future projects and serve clients beyond our hard-build geographic boundaries.

The conference keynote speech was given by Paul Morrell.  Paul works for the UK government and is in charge of ALL government spending on construction. He gave a fantastic presentation with extraordinary use of comic jabs and hilarious understatement. But beneath it all was a dead-earnest mission of supporting the current (new) government’s edict for cost control and waste elimination and budget cuts—doing more with less.  He fully intends to make BIM a requirement for all government work and will be meeting with the Finance Minister and other cabinet level officials to make it happen.  While he was speaking I suggested to Phil that we kidnap him and bring him back to the US. I was able to spend some time during the pre-dinner reception chatting with Paul; he has asked if we’d be willing to return in about 5 or 6 months to meet with him and them to support this objective. Very cool stuff!

There was a lovely dinner with 25 select people and great BIM conversation until I couldn’t talk anymore. We dragged ourselves to the underground and took the train back to the hotel (which was without hot water the entire three days we were there) and crashed asleep.

Last week our CEO, John Tocci attended and spoke at the London BIM Conference hosted by Autodesk, Inc.  Here is his first person account of the trip (this is the second of three parts, click here to read part I):

PART II

The morning presentation opened with an excellent presentation by Phil Bernstein who laid out the problems and the potential solutions with BIM and transformative contract methods.  This was followed with 15-20 minute vignettes by an owner, architect, engineer and contractor (moi).   They were all good. The owner cut to the chase and told the audience to stop asking stupid questions like “who owns the model?”. He showed examples from his experience of leading a major elementary and middle school reconstruction program into the benefits of BIM with a few enlightened architects but apparently no matching contractors.  The architect discussed their conversion to Revit and the savings they’ve realized with design efficiencies and production of traditional documents. The engineer, from Mott MacDonald, the leading multidisciplinary engineer in the universe and planets yet to be discovered, was similar.  He was very frank about the liability issues and talked about working with collaborators to drain the pool and then minimize how many people drown in the shallow end.  (Interesting analogy.)   Then it was my turn.  This was a good crowd they immediately got the subtle humor we use in our presentations.  Many people came to the stage during the coffee/lunch break and had loads of questions.  It was obvious that folks here are ready for this message. I spent part of the lunch break re-tooling the afternoon presentation based on some questions and comments.

To be continued…Part III

Last week our CEO, John Tocci attended and spoke at the London BIM Conference hosted by Autodesk, Inc.  Here is his first person account of the trip (to be presented in three parts):

PART I

“We arrived in London on Wednesday September 29th around 8PM, and were greeted by the classic British weather: rain, fog and chilly temperatures.  But London kept the lights on for us as we took a traditional black taxi ride from Saint Pancras Station to our hotel, only to find out that they were having gas problems and there wasn’t any hot water, oh well.  I had spent most of the 6 hour flight from Boston working on my PowerPoint for the conference the next day and when we got to the hotel I resumed working on it for another 4 hours until I got it mostly together and narrowed down.  By this time it was 12:30 PM and the bar and café would be shutting down by 1 AM so Lila [John Tocci’s lovely wife of  35 years] and I headed downstairs for a drink and a sandwich.  I had to meet the ADSK staff at the facility at 7 am to walk through logistics for my presentation and the morning breakfast meeting.

The plan was to speak three times: once at a CEO breakfast meeting with leaders of several leading UK construction companies, architectural firms and a few owners; once at the morning presentation and lastly at the afternoon presentation.  The breakfast meeting was about 25 people. This was a good group – several leading architects who asked probing questions and construction firms of excellent caliber. I was introduced and asked to talk about the impact of BIM on our business and the story of BIM in the US.  Rather than stand up to make a formal presentation I asked to remain seated at the center of the long breakfast table so we could have a discussion rather than a speech.  Folks responded well and it allowed interruption with questions and good fellowship around the issues.  Phil Bernstein, V.P at Autodesk sat to my left and was very helpful (as always) in supporting the message and adding practical anecdotes of our experiences on the Autodesk Trapelo Road Project and elsewhere.   I shared our travels from lonely to social to intimate BIM and people responded with both interest and challenging questions regarding ROI, liability issues, and cost questions.  I gave folks real metrics and it seemed like the first time they had ever heard hard numbers on the cost to convert 2D doc’s (several actively taking notes at that point) and other benefit statistics.

The discussion was robust and active until we ran out of time.  It’s always best to leave before you’re outa gas eh?  We were hustled out of the breakfast meeting room into main hall.  This conference was originally expected to attract 150 attendees.  As responses came in they planned for 250.  By Monday they had 400 and started a waiting list with over 50 people.  Obviously the UK is starting to understand the importance of this topic as it gains deep traction in the US.

To be continued…Part II and Part III