training BIM

We recently had a two day retreat where everyone involved with implementing BIM accross our U.S. offices got together to really start laying the ground work for a firm wide push to adopt the design philosphies of BIM, and therefore the use of Revit. Our CEO has already drawn the line in the sand, he expects us to be 100% BIM in 3 years, this is HUGE, the first reaction is probably one of shock, consider our market sectors for a moment, health care, higher ed, mixed use development, high end multi family residential, sci tech, k-12, and commercial/retail. That is a variety of project types and project requirements to move into a BIM mode of production. However, the second reaction should be "thats HUGE" not because of the mamoth task ahead of us, but because we have complete corporate leadership buy-in as far moving our practice to a BIM based practice. Not only that, but our CEO and other key leaders in the firm understand conceptually what it means to be practicing BIM, and why the investment in transistion to a program like Revit is worth it.

So; that is what our 2 day meeting was about, creating a full implemntation plan for our firm, what are our priorities, what do we need to do, who are we going to need to do it, how much time is it going to take. This way we can tell our leadership what we need to full fill their goals, and they can endorse it, and help to make sure it happens. One of our great advanatages we feel moving forward is that most of the people who were at our 2 day meeting are practicing architects and engineers, this train isn't being driven by IT, IT is enabling us, and supporting us, but at the end of the day the implementation and use of BIM is being pushed forward by people who are working on projects everyday!

This brings me in a round about way to my original intent of this post. In our 2 day meeting we talked about training. During that discussion we realized that in the process of moving our firm to BIM/Revit, there are two different things we need to train people on. Users need to learn how to technically use Revit, but at the same time people need to learn what BIM is. BIM is not Revit, Revit is a BIM tool, to practice the theories of BIM a user does not have to be working in Revit, they could be in sketch-up, or archicad, or excel, the point is that BIM needs to be a philosphy of practice that affects how we design, how we deliver value, how we practice our proffession. To us, it is important to clearly seperate BIM from Revit, Revit may not be here forever, but we strongly feel that BIM is where our proffession(s) have to go, we can't look back, we must press ahead!

To that end I've created a simple vignette that illustrates the concept of BIM, without using Revit! (oh and say hi! to Mrs. Robert, :) )