BIM for Project Managers

welcome to this lecture about Building Information modeling for project managers or BIM I'm Ralph Montagu and just to give you a bit of background I'm an architect by profession a director at abducts BIM consultants and for the past 10 years we've been specializing in this area of information management and BIM and been helping project teams and companies and people to embrace this digital way of working we've had a number of roles on various industry groups and hopefully we can share some of that experience with you today this lecture will focus on the broad subject of ICT for project managers which is a course of information and communication technologies more specifically we're going to be talking about information related to the built environment and how we produce and communicate that information or share that information and the technologies that we use to do that which in this case is Building Information modeling which is both the process and technology for digitizing and organizing information for the built environment this comes under and in an ISO standard for information management using them ISO 19 650 which we'll be covering in this lecture the important question is to ask why do project managers need to be engaged with the subject and what do they need information for and of course information is there to help manage expectations objectives costs and processes on projects and try and improve the outcomes to easily identify and understand problems and communicate solutions to those problems to analyze any risks and opportunities that present on projects and deal with those to effectively communicate with the various stakeholders on projects which would help get timely decisions that to avoid any potential delays or late changes and also to help impact on some of the major challenges that we face in the construction industry such as building economics it's true that buildings in the way we do things at the moment or too costly and they too slow to produce and it means that we're not meeting the demand the building performance which obviously affects the environmental cost buildings are responsible for something like 40% of the co2 emissions so we have to improve the way we construct to produce better performing buildings and even to consider how we upgrade our existing building stock and then we're looking at building quality and compliance with regulations and standards and and safety legislation to avoid any personal loss of life or damage and then looking at some of the issues we have in procurement which can be quite administrative heavy and lots of delays and variations and disputes that occur which are not adding any value to the to the building process so with these ideas in mind I want to refer to this quote from Albert Einstein which I think is very good and he basically says that we when we look at these things and solving some of these challenges in the construction industry we need to be looking at them in a new light not using the same thinking that we've used for the past you know 50 hundred years this is where the digital approach and using ICT can help so why is this subject important for project managers this is a picture of Dublin it's the city I live in and what you see in this picture is the built environment the B in boom or Building Information modelling stands for the built environment so it's not just vertical buildings but it's everything you see in that picture it's the roads the bridges the waterways the utility networks everything that supports the way our society functions and it's important to everybody that lives in this city it's where we live it's where we work its way our children go to school so the the built environment is really the fabric of our society and if you have a good performing built environment that supports society yeah that's that's good but it's true to say that we have some challenges even in in Ireland where we might consider ourself a first world country but we are unable to deliver enough housing and other education facilities enough healthcare facilities you know enough infrastructure so even in Ireland we the the built environment is being challenged now behind what you see in this picture of physical infrastructure there is information information that describes how this built environment is to be constructed and information that describes how this built environment needs to be maintained and operated and in fact under health and safety legislation every building you see in that picture is required to have a building record a record of information of how it was constructed and information that describes how it should be safely maintained and operated through its lifecycle so information is really key to how the built environment functions so that brings us on to what we discussing today and that's the information or the I in them what you see in this picture is what's called a safe or and building record or operations and maintenance manual yet at the end of construction the under the health and safety legislation the contractor and the designers are required to hand over to the building owner a copy of all the information that describes how the building was constructed and how it is to be maintained and operated obviously this is a poor example but this just demonstrates how our industry has functioned over many many years using paper-based documentation even though for the last twenty thirty years we've been using computers in doing our work and digital technologies at the point of exchange of information we tend to print that off put it in a binder put it in a box and hand it over or save it as a PDF document and put it on a DVD or put it on a in a folder within the file structure but both those examples really mean that we locking the information in a static format that's difficult to use difficult to query difficult to find almost impossible to keep up to date because it's in a static format so the you know you might question well is this a problem I mean we've we've been building this way for hundreds of years thousands of years you know this particular building that we're looking at was constructed using this type of information and it is currently being maintained and operated so some people might feel that using paper-based documentation isn't a problem I suppose when you look at this picture and you sort of imagine that you might need to find something of importance to interact with this building could be pretty difficult so there's a an excellent study done in 2016 by the Boston Consulting Group who consults to the World Economic Forum and they determined that working with this analog type of information is adding about thirteen to twenty one percent to the cost in design and construction phase of assets and about 10 to 17 percent of the cost every year in the operation operational phase of assets so while it is entirely possible to construct and maintain and operate buildings with paper-based documentation its costly and it's you know so it's slowing things down and it's adding to the the financial costs of building assets so that's really what we're going to be talking about today is looking at this comparison between paper-based information and digital information and how that might work the M in them or modeling describes an alternative to working with paper-based information so it is entirely possible today to construct within software a virtual representation of a physical building or piece of infrastructure and within this digital model all the components that you see that make up this model are objects which contain digital information about that component recorded as digital structured digital data that can be used and accessed and queried etc it's very important to note that this is an alternative way of working to paper date based information and that you know whatever you want to call this digital model whether you want to call it a digital twin or project information model during the capital delivery phase or asset information model during the operational phase it's it is a digital representation of a physical building the problem I find with the acronym boom and the word Building Information modeling is this word modeling because most people would look at that word and say well that's not something I do as a project manager I you know I don't do modeling you know as a quantity surveyor as a financial accountant as a solicitor yeah so this is good this is obviously got nothing to do with me meanwhile everybody is engaged with the building environment what might be a better word is management that you know this is a way of managing the information about the built environment in a digital way you know because if we call it management then everybody would identify with with this but of course the the acronym BIM and Building Information modeling has been around for long a long time over 15 years so you know we're not going to change the word but if it helps everybody in their own minds to to identify with this process this digital process then by all means change the word what you're saying in this short video for anybody who hasn't seen in a building information is a digital representation of a of a building so you can look around this building you can slice and dice the view that you're looking at you can zoom in zoom out you can click on the various components that make up the building you can get information about them for instance if you just look at that door and the corner of the building and we clicked on that on the right hand side be sure that's very small but you can see all the information about that door can be recorded in this environment you know all the materials being used the fire rating the acoustic rating so as you're making design decisions about elements of the buildings you know you can record those decisions right in that dialogue connected to the object yeah and that includes you know the materials and things that make up primary elements of the building such as walls and floors and roofs which are not sort of components but the elements that are constructed on-site what you're seeing now in this view is what looks like a traditional plan in the bottom left a traditional elevation in the top right the 3d model in the top left and a schedule of information in the in the bottom right so the important thing to grasp here is that you're not looking at separate documents that it's the same information being presented in a different way so the information is only input into this digital model once but it can be viewed in multiple ways let's suit your workflow you can see there that in the in the plan view we're adding a new door and that door automatically appears in the elevation view in the 3d model in the schedule so everything is connected and to the one model so if you're making changes or you require changes you only have to make those changes once and those changes are reflected in whatever view type that you you want to interact with you know if you add make an edit that's if you move that door you'll see that that door in every view so all these different views which traditionally would have been drafted independently and would have to be maintained and updated independently are all being driven off of the single building information model in this instance as you make design design decisions yeah as I said earlier you can record those decisions directly within the this environment and keep adding information as you go through each stage so you collecting more and more information about that door or any component of the building you can also create these detailed call-out views again these are just views of the same model and within these call-out views you can add additional notes or annotation or some or even overlay but more detail to communicate with people or what needs to happen in that instance but the underlying detail is being driven from the main model and so you can you can absolutely go down right down to very detailed drawing representations that are generated from this Building Information model let's say you needed a new section somewhere just to just to have a look at something you simply draw a section line through the model and it automatically generates a new section so nobody has to draw this this new view it's it's it's it's produced by the model itself and you can choose to display that section in color or 3d or black and white it doesn't really matter it's just a way of looking at the information where they want to orientate it if you're sitting in a meeting and you want to sort of create a better understanding for everybody you can simply orientate that view and everybody immediately can see and understand the issue that you you're trying to discuss something like that clash between the the beam and the piece of ductwork would be would have been quite difficult to visualize in two dimensions but suddenly everybody fully understands what the problem is and what action is required to resolve that problem you can drop a camera view into any space or room and it immediately creates a three-dimensional view of that space that you can look around in so if you're having a discussion with an engineer about that particular plant room and you know you're trying to resolve an issue you can do that straight away in a meeting it takes you know seconds to create these views you can do the same thing with the external view of the building just drop the camera and create a view which you could then re-orientate and look around so the thing about this is the three dimensions everybody understands three-dimensional views you know very quickly very few people can understand two-dimensional drawings so and you can choose to render those views up the rendering takes a little bit more time but you can get these photorealistic quality views that you can communicate with planners clients other stakeholders etc I want to take the discussion out toward talking about efficiency and productivity in the way we do things in the construction industry that the reason is there's been many studies to show that productivity in construction has hasn't changed very much in the last 40 years so we don't produce for the amount of labor input we don't produce more output than we did 40 years ago and that's creating an issue because obviously buildings are very slow to produce very costly to produce and we were being challenged by not keeping up with the demand of a growing population and an urbanizing population we if you look at other sectors such as manufacturing just as an example productivity is more than doubled in the past 40 years so that means you know in in manufacturing they're producing twice as many cars twice as many aeroplanes twice as many computers and consequently the price of that everything is coming down it's more affordable to everybody but we can't say that for construction so productivity is an issue in construction and it's related to efficiency in the way we do things so as a exercise to look at how they produce information and manage information in manufacturing versus construction and I do appreciate manufacturing isn't construction but I think we we can definitely learn something from the manufacturing industry in the design phase in manufacturing they construct this virtual model digital version of the thing they're going to build in software so they work out all the component parts are going to come together then and they resolve that as much as they can in that digital environment it's easier and cheaper to to deal with issues and then when they go to the procurement phase since they've worked out all the individual components that are going to make up that car they can go and procure those parts from any way around the world they don't have to make all the parts in the same factory they simply have to procure the parts bring them together and then on the assent when it comes to construction on the assembly line they assemble that car exactly the way they've designed it and I think that's probably the biggest thing we can learn from the manufacturing is that that don't make changes on the assembly line they don't start moving stuff around because they don't you know they don't know how that change is going to affect other people down there down the line and because they construct physically exactly what they've designed in the digital model when it comes to the physical item you know it means that they have a digital twin of that thing they have a digital version which contains all the information about every part which is why you can walk into a space shop anywhere in the world and say I've got this card I need this part they can go in a computer and look it up and you know in seconds they can tell you where that part is you know what this how much is in stock etc and so counterpoints this look at the way we do things in construction so in the design phase in construction we don't actually work out exactly what we want to build so we would we produce some documentation which describes the design intent in other words it describes more or less what we want to build you know but we feel there's enough information there to to get a price from someone at the procurement phase since everything isn't fully resolved and fully coordinated really what's happening is that the contractors are pricing and procuring a package of work at risk so in other words they're looking at the design intent information and there's they're making a call as a yes we can we believe we can develop that further and we can and ultimately construct this thing so where the information is getting resolved and tested Israeli on-site yeah it's a people you know working really hard to catch up with the the actual physical construction process and and often making changes within that but it within that physical building environment which is actually the most expensive and dangerous place to begin to make changes because often people making changes don't realize how that change is going to impact others that are coming up after them but also from a information management point of view since so much is happening on site and it's probably not being captured as as to what was actually built when the information that we have at the end is really just a mixture of design intent information or maybe design intent information overlaid with some red line markups to say what what has or hasn't changed you know some fabrication information so it's it's the whole mix of information that doesn't really describe or capture than what was actually being on side but that's not to say construction doesn't work obviously we we do build buildings and they do eventually get both it's just saying that you know the information that we receive at the end is not exactly a digital twin what's interesting if you're looking at this from an efficiency and productivity point of view is effectively the manufacturing industry builds things twice so they construct this product within the digital environment and they work it out as much as possible within that environment rather than the physical environment and then they constructed a second time on the assembly line and and that's why you end up with this digital twin whereas in construction we're really just going through a process of constructing the thing once you know it's a progressive development of the design intent information - construction fabrication information and ultimately what gets constructed on-site and you know instinctively you might think that building something once is more efficient than building it twice but when you look at the way these two processes work you know I think the thing we can learn from manufacturing is that it's actually more efficient to build it twice to build it as far as possible within this digital environment we're not committing real materials and real labor try and work it out as much as you can in the design phase and then execute the construction exactly according to the digital model staying on this theme of productivity and efficiency and but looking specifically in the way we produce and manage information in the construction industry the traditional way of producing information in other words not using BIM is to use several ways to describe the building or piece of infrastructure two-dimensional drawings like plans elevations sections details schedules specifications etc this is what we've been doing for hundreds of years so obviously we all understand this the problem with this way of working is that each of these ways of describing the building are manually produced so there's a high potential for inconsistencies and errors between these different documents and of course those inconsistencies and errors turn into requests for information or delays or even potential rework or bought of work on site so we are aware of those things that that occur at the moment the approach with boom is more like manufacturing where we describe the building or the piece of infrastructure once within this digital model so at the heart of the BIM process are the objects or the components that make up the building and the information about every component is digitally recorded within the component itself those components are then assembled within the building the virtual building so you literally constructing the building within software and because every object has a spatial presence it can you know the software can find if objects are clashing with each other so the coordination becomes very easy those objects can be connected to a construction programs so the sequence of construction can be considered and you know that that means you can look at issues such as logistics and arts and safety since every object knows what it is the software can easily count those objects and get quantities areas volumes etc and that helps cost control and we can even analyze these models in a real world environment so we can connect it to weather data and geographic data and test for energy performance or structural performance to optimize the design once that model has been constructed the model is then used to generate the output drawing so nobody's drawing drawings anymore typing our schedules the information within the model is used to generate those views so when you look at these two ways of working side by side you might you might say well the the outcome is more or less the same we have this set of documentation but there's two very important differences one is the amount of effort that goes in to the first way of working where you're describing the building several times through all this documentation with a manual effort to produce all those different documents compared to just describing the building once and then letting the model generate all the outcomes is vastly different but then the second big difference is in in the boom process all the documents and schedules etc are being generated from the same model so it's reducing all the inconsistencies and errors that would eventually turn into RFI's and delays and disputes and rework and the port of work etc so they are while the output might look the same there are two very different ways of working I think that's important for project managers to understand but I want to tell you about a third way of working and unfortunately this is very prevalent in in the industry that this is what I call pseudo boom that often occurs where we our client is saying I yeah I'd like to use this BIM process on my project because I believe it's going to you know save a lot of time and money and you know what people do is they they just go off and do what they always did in other words they go and produce except rate drawings and details and schedules yeah and they describe the building in the way they always did and then in addition to that they have someone in the office who takes all those drawings and tries to convert it into a building information model the problem with this way of working is there's no connection between the output documents and the model so those drawings are not being generated from them all of those schedules and are being generated from the model so the problem still exists of all the inconsistencies and errors so all you've done is you've taken the old traditional process and you just added an additional workflow which has very little value because there's no connection between the two so looking at these three ways of working side-by-side and if you said go which way is the most efficient most productive way of doing things especially when you consider the amount of original effort that has to go in to produce the information and also the effort to make changes so you know within the BIM process if you need to make a change you simply make the change once in the model and you regenerate all the drawings and schedules whereas in the process that doesn't use them you have to make that change in all the individual documents and then the management around that so if if you know as a manager that all these documents are being produced separately then there's a lot of you know checking and cross-checking to make sure they they do try and describe the building in a consistent way whereas if you know that the information is being produced from a single model then all you have to do is check the single model and also the accuracy of of information so you know when you look consider all these things side by side you have to conclude that Building Information modeling as a way of working is the most efficient most productive way of producing and managing information because you're only doing you're only creating information once obviously not using them at all just going back to the traditional way of describing buildings through drawings and details etc is the next productive but the least productive least efficient way is to do pseudo you know to describe things in the normal way and then in addition talk about adding a model to that process so this is very important for project managers to understand because you know what's happening a lot out in industry is is this pseudo boom because people think nobody realizes that this is the way they're working but it's it's very obvious when you're sitting in a meeting and somebody comes to a meeting with a whole set of drawings and you ask them well where's the model and they say well the model will be ready next week that really indicates that they they're using a suitable process and I've just added time and have added cost to the project without getting any real value a little bit of terminology now and again this is important for project managers to understand when you're sitting in meetings and people are discussing them and they're using these terms that have become known over the last couple years you should know what they mean so one of the first things you hear is people talking about level two BIM and what level two boom is describing is a level of maturity adoption of BIM so if you weren't doing any boom at all that would be level zero if you were doing some of the work in BIM some of those work in this process of creating a virtual model but then beside that you were doing some traditional to two dimensional drafting and typing schedules etc that would be level one in terms of adoption and applying some of the standards level two means that everybody is working in this process that I've described but they're doing it in separate models so the every discipline or every supplier that produces their information is producing it within a separate model and you might say well what's the point of that if we just trying to build a single building shouldn't we all just be working in the same model well that would be the future where and what they describe as level three is an integrated model but we're not there yet so at the moment the best we can do is for everybody to use permits use it with in separate models and the reason for that is to do with the contracts and the p.i insurance that we have in the industry there's no PR insurance that would cover people working on the same information so to keep clear lines of responsibility and liability we have to keep people working within their own models but you can merge these models together in what's called the federated model so that's a new term that everybody needs to understand the federated model looks like one building model but when you peel it back it's actually a collection of models that have been brought together in this federated model environment we can do some really interesting things that we couldn't do before in terms of coordination and resolution of problems because every object you know in these different models has a spatial presence the software can find where objects are clashing with each other so what's called clash detection is really just an analysis of these models through software that finds problems and I'm gonna show you a video about that in a few seconds but we can also do other things which we couldn't do before so we can connect all these objects within within these various models to the construction program and start looking at the sequence and the logistics so what people are calling for deivam is really the fourth dimension being time connected to to the objects and in this environment you can look at the sequence of construction you can look at logistics such as delivery slide set up temporary works health and safety you know fascinating things which are very difficult to do before we can also do as we said earlier cost quantity takeoffs so in other words since every object within his models knows what it is we can easily count them cost them and that what people are calling 5d bills so 5d BIM is really about cost control and working with quantity surveyors who understand how to extract quantities from these models and get more accurate costs we can also as I spoke about earlier analyze these models from an energy performance point of view from a structural performance point of view and the purpose of this analysis is to try and optimize the design and create buildings that are going to perform better once they are constructed so and understand how they're going to perform and so people are calling that 60 them is about analysis and sustainability and the last part is since we have this data rich digital model during construction we can also populate that model with additional information that will be useful to the property and facility managers such as warranties and maintenance periods etc so that sort of asset information model is what people are calling vii even so this is just important that you know what these terms mean when people are talking about them when you're in meetings there's a project manager you probably not going to be doing these things these will be done by by other people but at least you should know you know what they're talking about in this video this is just showing the Federation of the different models so you can see the civils model and the structural model and the services model and eventually the architectural model coming together within this federated environment so this as I said this looks like a complete building model but actually it's a collection of models that have come together but you can use this in meetings to walk around and discuss potential problems you know give everybody a full understanding of what the building is and how it's going to work and in this environment you can do what's called clash detection so clash detection is pretty easy basically you have two windows and you decide what you want to analyze so you could say today at this meeting we want to analyze structural steel work versus mechanical ductwork so you select the steel work on the one side of the window you select the mechanical ductwork on the other side of the window you know make some settings and run a test and what this does is the software since every object within this model has spatial presence it can give you a list of where these things are clashing and take you to a view to see the potential problem now you can't make any changes in this environment so all you can do is identify the problems and then assign that problem to to somebody to deal with but they've got to go back to their original models and fix fix the problem it's very clear to everybody to understand that there's an issue it's very quick to find these issues and we can track the progress of the resolution of these issues with this environment so you can you can also decide if if these are real issues so maybe the software sees there is an issue but but we know that on site we you know we will make a hole through the beam and we can resolve that so you can you can also accept issues so the next time you do the clash test it won't come up there's a new new issue again yeah so this is just a quick process but everybody can leave the coordination meeting the design coordination meeting with a copy of this file with all the issues assigned to them they can go back to their office open their software make the changes and you know resubmit their model for the next meeting you can also generate from this a report in various formats which you can save for historic purposes so if if ever there was an issue later on and in a dispute at least you have a record of what was discussed on that day and who was meant to deal with the issue this next part shows a connection with the construction program in Microsoft Project so you could see it a typical Gantt chart with a work breakdown structure and items in the timeline basically you connect a lot groups of elements to the items in the program and then you can play through the program day by day week by week whatever to see how this building is going to come together now obviously this is a very simple model so we but you could have added the site set up the scaffolding the cranes the deliveries anything you want to look at the logistics of of how you're going to construct this building over time you can use this environment to communicate with people at the weekly meetings what's going to happen this week and you know the environment they're going to be working in so they can understand what they're going to be doing you can also track what what's actually happened against what was planned to happen to monitor progress on its side in a more visual way than looking at Gantt charts so it's it's very useful that's called the for deivam dig into this idea of the digital twin a bit further really what we're talking about is digitizing and organizing the information about the built environment so that's the first thing is how do we organize information of complex building or structure projects the important thing is we need a common language or breakdown structure that everybody operates with so we can take a city which is a very complex built environment and we can break a city down into districts or campuses or city blocks or at the highest level we can talk about complexes and complexes or Rayleigh collections of different entities whether those are roads or buildings or parks or you know different built elements the individual entities you know which could be the entity could be a building it could be a road it could be a park so that would be the next level so we we can classify and organize things at the entity level entities then can be broken down into various elements primary elements so a building for instance the primary elements would be sub structure the structure the external facade walls windows the primary elements then can be broken down further into systems so in this instance of you know a ventilation service can be broken down into a number of different systems one of them being the mechanical extract translation system and ultimately the system can be broken down into individual products or components or materials that make up that system so in this instance and air handling unit so at the smallest scale when you talk about organizing and digitizing information yeah we can think of it an individual product or material and hat and then we can think about how that is connected to a system to an element to an entity and ultimately to a complex and that that's a common way of breaking down and organizing information about buildings and construction we can also add some common language around non-physical things so activities and spaces spaces are defined obviously by different building elements but this face itself is not a physical entity but we begin to classify types of spaces and then talk about the activities that occur within either the complex or the entity or the space and on the other end with products and systems we can talk about the tools and equipment required to either produce or maintain those those elements of tools and equipment are normally not permanent features of the built environment but unnecessary parts of putting it together maintaining it and what I've shown you in this slide is what is called uni class uni class is a unified classification system that was developed in the UK it's the UK's implementation of ISO twelve double O six which is a dictionary for classifying everything in the construction sector so a common language that we can all begin to use to organize and structure the information that we produce there's two parts to it there's a machine readable Park in other words there's a code and then there's a human description human readable human understandable part so if anybody wants to find out more about uni class you can go to the Uni class website which is over there and read more about it but it's an easy way of trying to take complex built structures and break them down into something that we can deal with so if I just take that a handling unit as one example because if you can understand how this digital process works for one product then you can understand how it works for systems entities elements etc so we understand physical elements the digital version of a physical element would contain a number of things the first thing is there would be a graphical object it represents that thing and and the object is important because this graphical object in the digital model tells you things about the size the geometry the location of that thing in space so it has a physical presence it also tells you about the connection points so it does could be physical connection fixing points to the structure that could be connections to other services mechanical electrical services etc and that's all described through geometry or graphic graphical data through an object so remember I said earlier that the object is at the core of the buildin process but you also need to know things about this object so and we want this stored as structured digital data that we can search on find query use so let's just call that non graphical data that is connected to this object and lastly we can't forget about documentation so we do need to have certain documentation available about this this element you know in order to sell this element in Ireland or use it it needs a CE mark it needs a declaration of performance it would have had to have gone undergone extensive testing and certification so you need copies of tests and certificates installation commissioning certificates operators manual etc these kind of documents documentation you know won't be serialized as digital data but you do need to find and get to these documents pretty quickly when you're looking for them so the digital version of the physical asset is these three types of data and I think that's important to understand because a lot of people think Building Information modelling it's just about 3d models but it's not it's about all this this information and these three types of information will be stored in what's called the common data environment a digital repository of information about the the building or piece of infrastructure what connects these three types of information is a common classification system that we just spoke about earlier the Uni class so every air handling unit in the building and in the city should have this uni class classification code that connects the object to the data to the documents if you've used them correctly then you can still have drawings but nobody has to draft those drawings so there's enough geometry within the object to generate the drawings there's also enough non graphical data within the attributes or properties of that object to generate any notes on drawing so nobody has to type the notes on the drawings nobody has to type our schedules anymore because there's enough information within the non graphical data to generate any type of schedule you might like to to use so drawings and schedules are really just outputs that people may want at times from the data and we can do all these things we spoke about in the previous slide you know was fascinating 3d coordination clash detection sequencing quantity extraction because every object is classified knows what it is has the right data attached to it so that's how the digital environment looks you know for every physical product every system every element every entity within the project if you're using them if you're not using them well then of course we don't have any objects anymore so we don't you know we we have lots of drawings of people have manually drafted we have lots of schedules which people have manually typed out I hope we can still have lots of documents which people have collected together so PDF documents but will end up without them back in the situation where at the end the building record is something that is difficult to search difficult to query difficult to use and that's the opposite of a digital 20 from a project manager's point of view it's very important to step back and ask what do the the clients want what are the employers the building owners developers want what I can tell you is they don't want them they're not asking for them they were asking for a building to be designed and constructed and what's important to clients is to understand what they're going to get what's the scope of the building is it going to suit their needs is it going to suit their image obviously they want to know when they're going to get it and time is important cost is always an issue and knowing how much it's going to cost quality is an issue you know how long is this building Ana last how often do we have to replace things how much is it gonna cost us to maintain and operate this building so these are quality issues are we getting value for many clients are interested in knowing whether they you know getting the best value for money in the significant investments that they make into the built infrastructure and I think this is probably one of the most important questions clients have is are our risks going to be effectively managed for most clients building is not their core business if you're a banker or retailer whatever like banking is your business is retailing is your business not building no and what I can tell you is for most clients building a building is probably one of the worst things you'll do in your life you know it's yeah it's fraught with problems you you end up not getting what you wanted not getting it when you wanted it there always be delays not getting it for what you wanted to pay for it it's gonna always be over a cost overruns the quality will be diminished diminished you know you'll be forced to accept less than you you wanted it may not perform as well as you expected it to perform you know clients are hiring professionals and project managers to manage these things on their behalf and you might say well what if that's what clients want what's this got to do with information management and Ben what I can tell you the first element is the scope that the fact the three-dimensional aspect of BIM the fact that you can look around this building walk around this building before it's ever constructed and let everybody fully understand and appreciate what it is they're getting helps the clients understand the scope the 4d BIM of testing the logistics of construction over time and how the building is going to come together and logistics and you know the health and safety is helping everybody to understand the time the five deivam of quantity extraction and getting a better handle on costs gives everybody much greater understanding of the costs all the analysis we spoke about sixty the energy analysis structural analysis you know optimizing the design for performance gives everybody a much better understanding of the quality and the last aspect the 7dm of presenting at the end of a project to the client a digital version of the building or piece of infrastructure with all the information they need to maintain and operate theirs in a digital structured format is also a quality issue in my opinion and instead of giving them a room in the basement with lots of boxes a lever arch files you know something that's gonna actually make a huge difference in the way they maintain and operate so you can see that boom touches on everything that's important to clients but you know they're not specifically going out to the market and asking for boom they were asking for the other things that's important for project managers to connect the dots between the you know what information management and them is going to bring to these important things for the clients because ultimately clients want better buildings built quicker and built cheaper and most people think you can't have all those three things like if you want something better you have to spend more money you'll spend more time and and that is true if you think of that in the context of the way we do things now the process is what it is so in order to change one of those variables you have to give up one but what if we could change the process and this comes back to the first quote that I had at the beginning of the lecture what Albert Einstein was saying is you know you can't solve things if you within the thinking that you've always had so what if we could change the process but it could be better the way we do things what if we could eliminate some of the wasteful way in which we produce and manage information and become more efficient and more productive and then possibly we could we could meet all these demands that kinds want for instance the lean construction Institute have said that over 30% of the cost of construction is waste yeah so money spent on things that add no value to the building itself things like duplication of work motive work rework wasted materials delays disputes even litigation none of those things actually adds material value to the building and yet we're spending a lot of money and a lot of time on those things so you know if we could eliminate some of those things I put some the money back into more quality etc maybe clients can get these three things it's interesting when you look at the UK government's construction strategy targets for 2025 this is what they're aiming for they want to build buildings 50% quicker 33% cheaper and 50% better and by 50% better they mean fifty percent less carbon as I mentioned earlier that the built built environment is responsible for something like forty percent of the carbon emissions we've got a huge climate problem on our hands and you know the construction industry the the main contributors to that so obviously in the UK government's mind we can get all three things we can get quicker better cheaper and you know whether you agree those targets or not what I can say is if our UK counterparts were working towards those targets and we are not then at some point in time we will become uncompetitive in a global market and not able to deliver even even construction within our own country so this is a global issue the World Economic Forum is writing and thinking and talking about this issue of construction the world populations are growing people are urbanizing to cities cities are growing there's an enormous strain on infrastructure for housing health care education you know all around the world even within our own country and we just need a new way of working we need to speed up construction we need to reduce the cost of construction we need to improve the quality of construction we need to reduce the amount of co2 that construction is producing so that is the challenge and in the mind of everybody studying this at the World Economic Forum technology is part of that that solution I mentioned this report before but it's really worth reading the Boston Consulting Group the transformative power of them for those who like reading reports this is also a great report from McKinsey in 2017 which talks about productivity in the construction industry as I mentioned we have a Productivity challenge in that we haven't been able to increase productivity over the last 40 years McKinsey looked at all the different economic sectors and ranked them in digitised they were and construction came in second last two fishing or hunting I think it was so that's incredible to me because most of us are using computers on a day-to-day basis in our work and yet we we've come in so low in the rankings of digital digitization and and one of the main reasons is that even though we're using technologies for many years at the end of the day we print everything often the exchange of information between all the parties is through paper-based documents so we've got to learn to to eliminate the the paper paper exchange and work with digital data this is also a European issue the European Commission realized that Europe you know in the global context has a challenging that our labor rights in Europe are much higher than the parts of the world and one way to deal with that is to become more efficient and more productive and so with that in mind you know the the European Commission have upgraded the procurement regulations in 2014 they've assembled a BIM task group and they've prepared a handbook for public procuring authorities at work across Europe on how to use Building Information modelling for public procurement doing a lot of work with the new digital deal to promote digitization in all sectors not just construction but obviously construction we fall into that they've set up a group standards group to look at the firm standards and produce where necessary new standards in to help the industry and then in Ireland the the government construction contracts committee and department of public expenditure reform announced in late 2017 that they were going to implement a mandate on all public projects starting in 2019 and and phasing in over a three-year period so 2009 to 2021 starting with complex projects and then medium projects and some cool projects so sometime in the next two years you know you can expect to see them becoming mandatory on all public procurement projects including social housing schools hospitals primary care roads etc Enterprise Island set up a group called the national boom council which was a mixture of public procurement officials and industry leaders to prepare a strategy document for the government called the roadmap to digital transition for Islands construction industry it's really worth reading that document and the National Standards Authority of Ireland have set up a a technical mirror committee to monitor the work that's that's happening at ISO and send which are the international and European standardization bodies to reflect that work in in Ireland standardization and if you haven't come across this organization at highly recommended seater the construction IT Alliance is a not-for-profit Network organization that for the last 20 years has been promoting the use of ICT in construction and producing a lot of excellent research and case studies events networking events information events so it's a good group to participate in and follow if you're interested in the subject of digitization of the construction industry but at the end of the day it comes down to your own career your own business and what what are you going to do about this digitization thing and I took this image out of the roadmap for digital transition of Ireland's construction sector because it it maps out a journey from 2 2 to 2021 with specific targets in mind 20% reduction in project delivery time a 20% reduction in capital costs for projects and with this newfound digital capability within businesses to use that capability to to export products and services outside of Ireland so slightly less ambitious targets than the UK strategy but ambitious nonetheless and I think every person and every business needs to think about you know what what their role is on this journey what the roadmap identified is four key pillars in achieving a digital transition one is strong leadership so having leaders within the organisation you understand the need to digitize the need to follow standards that are already there there's no need to invent standards the standards already existing you just need to use them the need to train and educate people and upskill people that's that's a big one because even though people have been using computers for the last twenty thirty years you know as I said we still rely heavily on a paper-based exchange of information and communication so exchanging digital data is something that's very new to a lot of people and then we need to investigate better ways of procurement that allow of these digital models to be constructed before we try and execute the work on-site current procurement models make that difficult not impossible but it makes it difficult the question is how do we get from this analog model of using paper-based documentation to a digital model of working for projects for our businesses or our industry unfortunately the answer isn't just to go and buy some software of course the technology piece is important we are using we are talking about digital processes and and software is required but probably as important or more important we need to get all the people that contribute to a project and to the work we do in our businesses to begin to think in in this digital way and to produce an exchange information through a digital process so we need capable people who are willing to come together to work together to collaborate to follow defined processes to follow standards and take responsibility for the work they do so really it comes down to each individual listening to this this lecture that you know you need to analyze what is your role within the project within the business you know what are you producing how are you exchanging that information with other people so that they can you in a way that they could use it if you use that finger that's on the screen to print information and exchange it using paper then unfortunately part of the problem you know you need to find out how to work with digital information I want to talk a little bit about standards because standards are the reason things work you know a lot of people feel standards you know there just isn't sort of added burden but actually working in standardized ways that you know that you can understand and do over and over again is is the reason things work and things work well and a really good example of that that we're all probably experienced is the travel industry so it's it's amazing to think that today I mean you can think of going on a holiday somewhere you can go online you can search for that place and almost immediately you are presented with you know information about various options where you can stay up what rooms are available how many people are looking in that room you can make a choice you can put in make a booking you can go and search for a flight to that destination and almost immediately you're given six or seven options of flights that are variable costs you can put in your credit card details and confirm your booking I mean if you think about the complexity of that that you're interacting with the database of an airline industry and and reserving a seat and it's it's incredible the same with hiring a car you can go and look at various options pick one put in your details and have a car ready when you arrive at the airport if you've used something like TripAdvisor you know this an amazing resource where the people that are traveling to these destinations themselves are contributing information about restaurants places to go things to see as this is being served up to everyone just making the whole travel experience incredible and it's not that long ago if you think about it the only way to book a flight was to go queue in a supermarket for two or three hours waiting to speak to somebody then had to talk you through the these options and now you can do this in you know a couple of minutes sitting by yourself without any training yeah so behind all this experience on the travel industry is standards you know the information that makes up the way this industry functions now is all standardized and around web standards for HTML standards so the industry has come together and agreed to share their information through these platforms and portals in a common way and that's what contributes to the the enormous growth within the travel industry so good and we've all experienced this we've experienced the digitization of the travel industry you know in our lifetimes in the last ten years so we know how it works in other sectors so we just need that for the construction sector so that's what we're going to talk about now Building Information standards I took this quote out of the roadmap of the digital transition of Ireland's construction industry because it describes a vision for our industry which which i think is fantastic it's describes a highly efficient digitized planning design building control real estate property sector which will depend on having highly standardized machine readable data and that that there will be a common agreement amongst all the stakeholders that participate in this industry on how to describe elements of buildings or infrastructure from the macro level right down to the building product level in a common data language and that this standard would be open and vendor neutral and in line with best international practice so just that paragraph really describes a vision for our sector where we're not going off in different directions and doing different things and making it difficult for each other but we're all operating through a common way of describing buildings and I think the key parts they are the machine readable data so standards are consensus consensus agreements amongst people within the construction sector so we got to use begin to use standards standards promote operational excellence and the good thing for us in Ireland anyway is we don't have to invent any of these standards so these standards already exist for all these different functions within our sector and and it's interesting to see in this diagram that information management is central to you know other management standards like asset management or project management and even organizational or quality management iso 9000 so you know in other words you're not going to do project management without having good information management in place you're not going to do organizational quality management without having good information management in place and the standard for information management is is already there so ISO 19 650 parts 1 & 2 have already been published they've been adopted by the European standardization organization which means they are Irish standards because Ireland as a member state of of the EU has to adopt these standards and parts three four and five are still under development and should be released either later this year or early next year but you know dealing with the operations piece and and more specific data exchanges so in the in the short-term those we still use the UK standards but but those will become ISO standards shortly and as I said you know standards already exist for asset management ISO 55000 for project management 20 ISO 21 500 ISO 9000 even environmental management or health and safety management facilities management none of these things are going to work without good information in the so these are the relevant standard to consider when you think about them I think it's really important to understand that there's two pieces to it there's there's the way of doing things so Building Information modelling is a verb it's a thing you do so it's a process and so you need a standard that describes that process and then at the end of the process you do deliver a Building Information model so that's a noun it's a thing it's a deliverable so you also need standards that define the thing the deliverable so it's important to understand that these two pieces to it in terms of the process we've had standards for many years bs 1192 originally started in 1998 it was upgraded in 2007 as a standard for the collaborative production and management of architectural engineering and construction information and you know in 2013 we we got passed over 9 to r2 which dealt with the information management using BIM during the couple delivery phase and so these stands are available the first two have been superseded now by ISO 19 650 so those are already international European and Irie standards and as I said the others will be coming along the last one they are is also really fascinating bs8 536 which is a standard for what's called soft landings it's it's really a process of incorporating someone in the design process that is considering the operations and performance of the building beyond the cup of delivery phase and also keeping the delivery team involved for three years after handover to carry out post occupancy evaluations so you know people can be trained on how to use the facility or the infrastructure properly and learnings can be taken from each project and fed back into the next project so it's actually part of the BIM process which it's not often talked about in that standard isn't being used very often unfortunately but it's a fascinating when you read it it's a fascinating approach to design which is taking facilities management and occupation and performance of buildings in mind in terms of the deliverable the actual thing the information the the way the information is structured and the classifications and you know the processes and delivery of data iso standards already exist for those and those standards have been as I said adopted by the European standardization group which means that Ireland has had to adopt those as Irish standards so you know we have all these things in place as I mentioned ISO 19 650 is progressively being developed but the first two parts were really been adopted the operational data that needs to be handed over at the end of construction Cobie the construction operations building information exchange you know is is a model view definition defined under the ISO standard and we'll talk more about that there's a standard for the data security that's in place at the moment it's a UK standard it's being developed into an ISO standard and there's a standard for delivering structured health and safety information using BIM PES live 92 part 6 if you involved in the health and safety project supervise the design process or project supervise a construction stage that would be relevant to yourselves and as I mentioned earlier all of these standards were really being driven at the highest level around asset management because you can't effectively manage assets without good information and so I so 55,000 is is a standard for asset management so that's an overview of the different standards the relevant people have not asked why do we need to standardized you know and why do we need to do things in in a common way but the big reason is that we need to become more productive we need to find enormous efficiencies in the way we do things and we can't do that if we starting each project with a blank sheet of paper and reinventing the way of doing it over and over again or you know working in different ways to the people we collaborate with so the the the effort that you put in to produce the information once needs to be leveraged multiple times across the project or across multiple projects and boom or Building Information modeling and this idea of focusing everything around the object allows us to do that because the objects become digital containers of structured standardized information that can be transferred from project to project within organizations across organizations and even the knowledge that people are that when they're working on projects that they're embedding into these digital objects is captured and is transferable so organizations need to begin to think about this in terms of structuring libraries within their organization so that when you when people produce something that it's put into a library and it can be used multiple times and even groups of objects so you know if we look at a bathroom or kitchen so that this 6:52 could be 50 different objects within the kitchen yeah there's no need to redraw those things every time you know you just bring the whole group of objects into a project okay you might need to rearrange them but you've leveraged the effort that you've put in once multiple times even building types if you type in if there's a particular type of building that you work on over and over again with those data centers or schools or hospitals the effort that you put into the first project can be leveraged and reused if you use a standardized approach on multiple projects and having predefined templates within your organization so all of these are just some ideas of how you could take the effort that you've putting in into a digital object and leverage that many times over including processes so the way you check models or the way you build up cost catalogs etc and the common data environment we will discuss in a bit more detail so those are just some practical examples of the application of standards and stand standardizing your your data around digital from a project management point of view and how you get a project to leverage this approach it is a process so that process is described in ISO nineteen 650 in detail of the things you need to do but to try and summarize it for you just in a in a graphic so the standard it should be at the center it's it's a specification of how to manage information through the different phases of a project in the capital delivery phase the first thing I would say is when you're assembling a team as a project manager on behalf of your client is that you choose the right people so don't choose people just because they offer you the cheapest deal choose people that have the capability to contribute to the project in this digital way that we've describing so are some basic questions at the earliest stages about people's capability to follow the standard the capability to use these digital tools and and choose choose the right team that are going to help the project not hinder the project the second thing is make sure that a clear requirement of the information that's required is set out and it's called the employer's exchange information requirement or a IR it's it's a document that's put together at the earliest stages that describes what information needs to be exchanged at various stages within the project and that's something that people need to respond to formally so that that documents is is really important that it's put together and what I would say is many clients don't know how to write these documents and so as a project manager you might need to assist them because if they don't put that document in place then obviously people don't have anything to respond to the next important step as a project manager is you need to make sure that some commercial agreements are put in place so the first one there is every company that's going to contribute to either the design or the construction needs to have appended to the appointment or their contract I've been protocol approach protocol is a standard form that works with standard forms of contracts or standard appointments - basically it's the legal requirements around them such as roles and responsibilities etc we'll talk more about that in a coming slide but as a project manager you need to make sure that that occurs you need to make sure somebody is put in charge to manage the information process at the different stages and normally the lead designer on a project would would be the project information manager for design stage and the main contractor would be the project information manager for the construction stage and that's not new because the the lead designer always had a function to coordinate design information and the main contractor always had a function to coordinate construction nations that you're just formalizing that in a specific role related to information management and that that appointment needs to of their role needs to take place there's some P I insurance issues to deal with is a guidance note from the construction industry Council that basically says that if everybody who carries P I or has design responsibilities should let the insurance company know that they're participating on a BIM project the next one there is you should assemble with your client a digital plan of work that describes how this digital model is going to come together over time so you wouldn't attempt to build a physical building without a plan of work in place and in the same way you shouldn't attempt to try and construct digital building without a plan of work in place and very importantly they're the digital building must be constructed before the physical building so that you can test and resolve issues within this digital environment before you try and execute that work on site thank you the in the UK the government paid the national building specification to develop a free online tool to put these plans work together which people are welcome to use or you can use Excel or other tools whatever you like then from the supply side and by the supply side I mean both designers and contractors when tendering on projects their response to the employers exchange information requirement is what's called a boom execution plan so that's their formal response it those two documents are almost mirrors of the of each other because the first one is the client or the employer asking you know describing what they want as an outcome the designers and the contractors are responding or how they're going to do it but they're responding you know like for like to the the vir so that's that's a formal response to the document there's a there's a lighter version at tender stage called the pre contract limb execution plan which would also then include some detailed BIM capability assessments describing their IT infrastructure their HR infrastructure once people get appointed to the project then the they would contribute to what's called the post contract them execution plan and that's again a formal documents which is then managed by the project information manager for that stage so if it's what design stage the lead designer with its construction stage the main contractor and all the parties will be contributing to that that document so it's again the formal response of the supply side to the clients requirement for the project a common date environment has to be put in place and it's a digital repository where all the digital files will be held and managed and we'll describe that in more detail and at the end of this process there will be a deliverable in other words you will the project team will deliver a digital version of the building which will include operational data or Cobie so we'll talk about that in a bit more detail it'll it'll make sure that all the digital objects are classified using uni class in our instance and it may include the soft landings appointment where the team are kept on for three years after the handover to do post occupancy evaluations but there is a deliverable and that's the digital version of the building so as a project manager you need to understand this process it's not your job to do all these things but it's it is your job as a project manager to make sure all these things get done and are implemented at the right time because if they they left out or you know you they they'll have some impact on the overall process so very quickly on the commercial and legal issues we've been called up in that previous slide so there's a standard document the CRC VIN protocol is is the legal instrument to to implement them covering issues such as roles and responsibilities rights copyrights licenses to use data exclusions of liability limits of liability etc so you need to this document needs to be appended to each appointment and contract and then there's three appendices which need to be completed there are project specific as I said there's a standard scope of service for information management this particular document needs to be implemented to the lead designer for design stage and the main contractor for construction stage that they take on that role and then from the P I insurance is a guidance document as a project manager you need to ensure that everybody is aware of this guidance and make sure that every company that's participating that has design responsibilities and carries P I insurance have informed the insurance companies and be useful to get confirmation of that so you can make sure everyone the the project is covered from an insurance point of view in terms of all the other documents that need to be produced at various times such as a IRS and bps and capability assessments etc the Royal Institute of Architects of Ireland have produced a useful burden pack of advise notes and guidance that's available as a starting point what I would say about this is at the moment it still refers to the previous UK standard pass 1192 so you know when you're preparing these documents for the project you'll need to upgrade that to to the ISO 19 650 standard but at least there's a there's a good starting point in some good guidance and notes on what needs to happen at the various stages and just very quickly looking at the contents of an employer's exchange information requirement but these are the types of subheadings within the document that need to be fleshed out and as I said the REI has guidance on how to do that so I'm not going to go into too much detail but you can see you're dealing with information management issues commercial management issues company competency assessment issues and you know if you're assessing an ER or helping your clients to prepare an e I are these are the items that you need to discuss and document and similarly the BIM execution plan the pre contract version if you look at the headings are they almost exactly the same as the ER in other words the the supply side that the designers and the contractors are responding to that dir to the relevant sections of dir and that's why they have a similar structure once they get appointed obviously then they'll flesh out that um execution plan to have in in more detail to cover their standards methods and procedures and get specific about various IT solutions they're going to be using and start developing out their information delivery plans etc coming back to the slide which we discussed earlier because when we try and manage this process we we need to understand that for every component that is going into the building every product and every system that there will be three things there will be an object within a model that represents that thing there will be a set of data properties or tributes related to that object and there will be a set of documentation in relation to to that object and that in mind the to manage effectively manage the information on the project we need two lists the first list we need which is called the responsibility matrix or what used to be called the model production delivery table is effectively a list of all the element systems and products types that are going to make up the physical building so it's a long list of things and for each object type we've got to define how much graphical detail we want in the three dimensional object how much non graphical information we need at each stage of the project and who's responsible for that thing at the different stages so typically the designers would be responsible for those during the design stage from stages one to four and then the contractors and subcontractors would be responsible from stages five and six up to handover so that's one list and I'd like to think of it like an input list like what are we going to put into this model of this building but the other list we we need to make is what are we going to get out of this model so all the different files and documents that are going to be produced and submitted to this common data environment and these these files will contain various things but there will be model files drawing file schedule specifications reports those the quantities minutes you know technical data so everything about the project is stored within the common data environment and the second list the master information delivery plan is a list a long list of all the files that need to produce a I like to think of that as the output list and the one list informs the other list so going back to the previous image for everything that we put into the building there will be these three types of data you know model geometry non graphical information and a list of documentation related to those things they are connected and with these two lists in place we can begin to manage progress on the project of how everybody is doing so we can check the first list to make sure that those elements that we've specified within the responsibility matrix exist within the various models we can also begin to check that how far the documentation is and all the files are progressing within the common data environment so to effectively manage the simple information of these two lists or incredibly let's talk about in a little bit more detail about the common data environment which was originally specified in base 11 9 2 and now in ISO 19 650 it's described as a single source of truth of all the information on the project so a repository of all the information a place to collect and manage and disseminate that information with with other people so people should be no longer be sharing information through emails or other sorts of exchanges basically people share information through the common data environment it deals with a couple of things number one is every file that goes to the common data to be named in a particular way which we'll discuss it also describes how objects and layers within files get named and this describes an approval workflow in order to manage the information carefully so it doesn't become just a dumping ground of of inaccurate or incorrect information it is effectively the collection of the three types of data the documentation and on graphical data the graphical data it progressively develops over the different project stages there's key data drop points at the end of each stage obviously to to check and sign off for information for that stage before we progress to the next stage the ISO 19 650 part 2 deals with the capital delivery phase phases stages 1 to 6 and I saw 19 650 part 3 which will be should be out by the end of this year but at the moment it's still passed over 9 - part 3 deals with the operational phase of managing all that information within the common data environment the standard doesn't say that it should be a single system so it's it's quite likely that'll be a number of systems it's it's often the case that the design team would agree on a system to use collectively through the design stages and then they'll handle information to the contractor we would manage a different environment for the contractors and subcontractors during the construction stage and then they'd handle everything to the building owner will operate at at handover stage so there are particular points where information gets transferred in in one way or another of course it could be a single system across all those stages but is very unlikely because your design teams and construction teams are different needs and so does the operator after ferny but the information has to be consistent across all those stages you don't have to repurpose information so every everybody needs to follow the standard in a consistent way across all those stages and across all those systems a very important part of the way in which the common data environment functions is the file naming and it's like a license plate on a car which you know is in the way it works is a series of codes that tell you certain things about that car like what country it's in what year it was registered which county it was registered in you know a unique number for each car so that when cars are driving by you you can gather this information without stopping the car and sort of opening the bonnet and looking inside in the same way every file that goes into the common date environment has a unique set of codes that describe what's in the file or the container so that people can understand what's there without having to open the file and and also computers can manage those files based on those those codes so the set of codes defined in the UK annex of iso nineteen 650 deal with things like the project it relates to the company that originated the file the volume or system the fire relates to the level if it's a vertical building or location if it's a horizontal in piece of infrastructure like a road or railway the type of document it is whether it's a model or drawing or set of minutes or a rec report or schedule the discipline it relates to also each file would have a unique number and the last two are pretty important each file would have a status code telling you why it was provided so what what can you use it for yeah is it just for information or is it for coordination or is it for tendering purposes or is it issued for construction is the final construction record and finally the revision of each file so the each file name looks something like what you see on the screen there and at first people think that's a bit daunting but as like the license plate in a car once you understand how the codes work it's incredibly easy to find stuff when you when you're looking for it and understand what's in those files without having to open them which which saves an enormous amount of time for everybody the common data environment also deals with the management of those files and making sure that the files are go through a rigorous checking an approval process so files with a would start in a work-in-progress state where people are working on them and developing them internally with it within their own organization before sharing them outside when you want to share something outside of your own organization it has to be officially approved by a manager so it was the designated task delivery manager or task information task team information manager has to put their stamp of approval if you like on their file saying that it's allowed to be shared outside the organization and that's recorded so anybody else who discovers a file in the shared state knows already that you know it's been approved and checked by a manager if you're referencing files within your own environment extracting files then obviously you take those from the shared state of an of another organization and use those as a reference in developing your your design information finally at the end of each works work stage within the process you want to get final sign-off from the client and acceptance from the employer the project information manager would assemble all the relevant documents to be shared with the client and then there'll be a second approval by the client representative formally accepts those those files to be in a published state and and finally at the end of construction when the final record is so the building is constructed the client representatives would also verify that what has been constructed is in accordance with the documents that were published and everything will be archived of course along the way anything that gets rejected in not approved also a good is submitted to the archive for historical record in case there there's a dispute later so that's the management process and it's very clear and you know it's there's a double approval system to everything that's finally published to for action and and and hopefully that will ensure the quality of information the other standard we'll talk about is BSL m92 part 4 which which is called Coby Coby stands for the construction operations building information exchange and it's just important to understand what that is it's a set of non graphical data - at the handover to be transferred to computerized facilities and maintenance systems so that's its purpose it's it's a set of the data not all of the data for constructing a building but it's the data to maintain and operate a building that gets transferred to city's maintenance systems some of the the information is produced by the designers so you know they are obviously determining the floors and the spaces and the equipment layout and the specific design performance of information and some of it is produced by the contractors subcontractors and suppliers who would give them more detail of actual equipment information and serial numbers warranties etc so the way it's delivered and presented is through an XML format which like an Excel spreadsheet which effectively is a series of worksheets which are lists it's just you know it's not that complicated it's a list of information about all the floors a list of information about spaces a list of information about all the zones or departments a list of information about all the types of objects and the despair parts and maintenance tasks related to those how those are connected to various systems that make up the building the contacts a list of all the contacts of people involved in providing either information or the equipment a list of all the relevant documents etc so it's just a series of lists you know strut and a structured format that can be handed over at the end of construction and then the clinton the operators can take that information and bring it into a computerized facilities or maintenance system without too much retyping of information that's that's its purpose the idea is not that people have to type out those lists you in the BIM process with as we've described throughout this lecture is you're constructing this digital model of of objects that represent real-life components and within those objects there's information about what they are and part of that information is extracted into these various lists of information as a Salaria some of the information will come from product suppliers and product manufacturers and they may not be using a 3d process themselves but what you can do is issue them with a structured electronic product data template in excel format or equivalent and with the right attributes that they need to populate with the right values and then you can import it because it's in the same structure you can import that information into the final cobia deliverable or using tools Excel link or dynamo you can move those attributes into the the objects within the model if you like to close the loop so you know for the most part you know people aren't typing these lists the information is already there within the models to generate notes on drawings and should have various other schedules so it's just presenting that information in a particular way that's part four of the standard it's looking at the overall asset information model of its lifecycle I think is important and this looks particularly at the operational phase of of assets but you know if we look at these three types of data the capital delivery phase is a very short period in an assets life cycle of its and within that period there's a lot of time and effort put into gathering and structuring and presenting these three types of information to a client and if it's handed over at the end in a paper-based format then this happens you know the information will begin to degrade and defeat because it's it's in a static format and can't be maintained and probably end up getting mixed up and lost and so its usefulness if all that effort and all that money put in producing the information will become less and less valuable over time so obviously from a a building owners point of view or an asset managers point of view that's less than ideal and they're so pairs deliver 92.3 or what will become iso nineteen sixty six fifty part three describes a process for managing the information in the operational phase which is a much bigger phase of the assets life cycle and the way that's done is first the organization you know if you think if they maintain a number of assets will have an overall organizational information strategy that defines their requirements and then they'll look at each particular asset within their portfolio and devise a and assets a specific asset information requirement for for those those assets and then if there's any capital works projects related to those assets whether it's fitted or rework or renovation or even an extension or rebuild then the new capital project would be getting new employers information exchange requirement prepared so that you know any work that happens continuously feeds into a digital strategy for these three types of information so that's what powers 11 on to part 3 deals with you can implement the standard on any asset at any time so all the existing buildings that that that asset managers have within their portfolio they could implement this strategy straight away you know obviously any information that's in paper format will have to be converted over time into digital format for this new digital strategy but you know that can be done the cost of implementing this strategy is obviously going to grow the longer you leave it so there's an argument when you're a building owner or developer looking at this to say well if we move that that line of implemented implementing a strategy right to the beginning before anybody's done any work well then there's going to be no cost because people still have to produce the information as part of the capital works and you know as long as that information is produced in a digital way and presented in a digital way then it's there's going to be no additional cost but if you leave it to later than any information as produced outside of these standards will have to be reproduced or repurposed also the value that having access to digital structure and information would bring to the assets in terms of anything you have to do in relation to that asset over its life you know able to query the information find the information quickly maintain the information is obviously highest the earlier you move that line back to the left in the assets lifecycle so again that makes the argument to begin the strategy at the very early stages of project is if you can but if if you're ready if the assets already constructed it doesn't mean you can't implement the strategy it just means it's gonna it's going to cost you something and it's you know the value might be slightly less so that's what has no 92.3 or ISO 19 650 pot covers it in so in the same way it it looks in a little bit more detail it looks at the asset management activities related to any asset whether it's a building or a bridge or road then questions what information is required to carry out those activities and that information will reside in the digital asset information model which again is the collection of graphical data and on graphical data and documents held in the published area of the common data environment it also sets out certain activities which potentially will change the information and it and it sets a trigger against those so these activities listed here such as changes in occupation maintenance tasks minor works fit arts major works these types of activities will potentially result in a you know change in the physical building and therefore will require change in the information model and in the same way the common data environment is updated workers taken out of the asset information I worked on updated shared checked finally approved shared with the client who then authorizes that to be submitted back to the the published version of the asset information model and anything that gets changed gets archived and put the call for historical purposes but if you could if you carry out this process every time something happens to the building that could change the information that means the asset information model will always be up-to-date and will always reflect what's physically out there on site and if you do that if you can make sure that you're maintaining the asset information model in the same way you're maintaining the physical building it means you have a an accurate digital digital resource of information that you can connect to other enterprise systems such as financial systems ERP systems building management systems etc that would contribute to their functioning as well so you can see that the common data environment has a very important role to play both in the capital delivery phase of projects but also the operational phase and it has some really important work that it has to do it has to maintain this central repository of information it's got to deal with the three types of the information the graphical data the non graphical data all the documentation it's got to manage these workflows that we're describing it you can't you can't expect human beings to remember to manage these things manually you know they will forget and if they forget then the information gets out of date so you need a system that is controlling this for you and and managing the responsibilities the approvals maintaining all the historical data and the audit trail in case is ever a dispute or a problem and since the this data will be quite sensitive to the building and the building owners that have to be able to control who has access to it and the security around it so we've discussed a lot of things today it's been a intense overview of all the different standards and you know briefly touched on many subjects but some of these subjects different people will have to get into more depth on so you know we just a short list of some of the things we touched on the standards the ability to to interact and review these models the ability to author these models if you are a designer the collaboration tools the coordination and clash detection the sequencing and planning the the costing and quantity takeoffs structure analysis energy analysis site setting out surveying engineering safety quality control document control delivering Cobie so all of these topics I think when you look at a business you need to decide where you know you are in the business and which of these are relevant directly relevant to you which do you just need to know a little bit about so you can have a conversation as a project manager with other people and make sure they're doing the things they need to do and which do you need to know in in more detail and so you need a sort of an education plan for everybody on the project or in the business that that to make sure that people have the right level of skill so there's a lot to learn outside of this lecture there's lots of different ways to learn and the purpose of learning is to acquire the skills and knowledge that are required that you can develop competence competencies in these different areas in terms of ways of learning obviously there's less formal social media and community sharing learning such as you two - there's self learning you can do formal courses online you can do whatever you can you can undertake third level education at undergrad post-grad level and master's level so it's ready to figure out what works for you in terms of where this is all going the digital future of construction and the construction and property sector there's some already some fascinating technologies emerging and trends that are occurring that will be that will describe the the environment in a few years time so as a project manager you need to be aware of these things that these are coming and and see what you need to find out about these different technologies such as laser scanning you know and converting laser scans to BIM surveying setting out on on site using the model instead of traditional coordinate systems the 3d printing and digital fabrication so there's a big move to off-site and modular construction and using new new forms of fabrication to build buildings or components or buildings virtual reality and augmented reality as ways to interact with these digital models at different times you know virtual realities is a way to interact with models before the building exists augmented reality is to overlay the models with what's existing at the moment to do comparisons there's the use of drones and robotics is increasing in the construction industry and equipment and elements of buildings are becoming more intelligent by having connected sensors that are connected to internet networks and giving feedback all the time so the Internet of Things is is growing all the time there are trends in how people are using technologies to design buildings so computational design general designed you know doing more and more calculations and option hearing to come up with better and better solutions new forms of manufacture so construction in general is moving more towards a manufacturing model with off-site construction more modular construction lean principles lean lean is something that has come out of the manufacturing but it's it's a methodology for reducing waste and you know those principles are being applied to the design and construction world so lean design lean construction and then new forms of procurement so there's trends in moving away from the traditional adversarial sort of design but build models to more integrated partnering or Lansing models of procurement so these are things you need to begin to become aware of understand see where they're going and keep ahead of the curve and the big question to ask as a project manager is what is your role in this digital future of construction so after that boom for project managers guess the kinds of questions I think you should be able to answer as a project manager when you're helping your clients is many clients won't understand what BIM is and you know why it's needed and you need to be able to convey that message to talk about why it's relevant to the project why it's important you know what it's going to bring also to give them give your clients some idea of what's happening globally in Europe in Ireland and and just know as how can you as a project manager ensure that people are doing this properly and they're not practicing suitable five key questions I think every project manager should be asking all the time is or is all the documentation as set out in the standards in place you know because this documentation isn't just for the sake of it these are tools to to allow certain things to happen so the pre-qualification questionnaires is a tool to make sure that you're getting the right people on the job the exchange information requirement is a tool to communicate formally the requirements of the project to to anybody who's participating the bond protocol is a tool to a legal instrument to allow them to to legally work with contracts and appointments PR insurance the the project information managers a key role berth design stage and construction stage so that somebody's feels ultimately responsible the project implementation plans and an assessment of the capabilities of all the participants and and dealing with any shortfalls in skills and is really important to mitigate risks the task information and master information delivery plan as I said is a tool to manage all the information files that are going into the common data environment and to track progress against those the BIM execution plan is a formal response from the supply chain from the designers in the contractors that can be assessed again it's these are very important project management tools the common data environment as we said is this central repository of information that is managed carefully where all the files are named in a particular way and and you have been through a robust approval process the responsibilities matrix or the model production that every table is a tool to monitor what's going into the building all the objects and the digital plan of work is a tool to to assign responsibilities and decide when during the phases of the project these things are needed and to what level of information or little detail they're required so these are all very important parts of the BIM process and it's the role of the project manager to make sure that these things are happening also protein managers should be aware should make sure that all the participants in a project are aware of their of their role in this in this process because of the way the construction industry is structured the typical project could have up to a hundred different companies or people involved at different times and the the requirements can get easily lost within within that's a refracted structure and I think one of the roles of project managers is to monitor and make sure everybody is aware of the their participation and what's what's required of them is project information being generated and delivered through a suitable format so not being printed off and putting in a box but being delivered as a digital file that can be used and leveraged by other people is this coordination of the federated model taking place at the regular design coordination meetings and are the issues being resolved in the digital environment long before those issues those become real issues on-site and and there and is the information being regularly checked for compliance with the employers information requirements so project managers have a very important role in my opinion on projects within the burn process it's not their job to do everything of course those those jobs are assigned to various other people but as a project manager you have an overview you have a responsibility to your clients to make sure these things are implemented properly and that them delivers value delivers time savings the developer's cost savings and it delivers better quality for your your clients and that's ultimately what your your clients are interested in so I hope that lecture was useful and helpful to all the project managers listening or future project managers and so just to end off is say a little bit about our own company we're a consultancy practice role is to assist any participants on projects or companies to participate in this digital process through either advice consultancy we do offer some production support if people needed to to close any skill gaps or production resource problems on projects we are for training in various software and processes and and support our job is not to do other people's work for them but rather to help other people do their work in a more collaborative and digital way so we see ourselves as the glue that brings us all together thank you very much for your time and hope everybody will participate in the digital future of construction thank you

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Length: 127min 52sec (7672 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 20 2020