Integrated Practice

This morning I had a chance to go to an AIA breakfast on Itegrated Practice (IP). It was led by Norman Strong, FAIA. Most of the people in attendance were prinipals, owners and managing partners of architectural firms from around our area. The great thing about this talk was that it was focused on how BIM allows IP, and how in reality to fully immplement BIM, and your BIM tool of choice, a firm must realize that what is required is a change in the way we practice. Firms cannot rely on their IT person or deptartment to immplement "BIM" IT can certainly help and support, and lead the training on a specific tool. However, should we fail as professionals to realize that we must alter our approach to practice then "BIM" will never be more than a glorified CAD package. An interesting point made by one of the other speakers at this morning's engagement was that when the industry transitioned from hand drafting to CAD the "experts" promised 3%-5% improvement on our productivity, however when you do all the math, we haven't really improved our efficiency. This can lead to two conlusions, a) either CAD did nothing to improve our efficieny, or b) as business people we managed to find a way to give away any improved value/productivity that resulted from our adoption of CAD. This is extremely troubling. Not only do we need to determine how to change our practice, but in doing so we also need to determine how to maintain our value, while sharing risk & reward, so that our clients and consultants see the value we can and do provide.

-R