BIM 2010 Event, London 02 November 2010

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I have a 3 hour train journey to round off a 16.5 hour day, so I thought I’d improvse and write a quick blog post on the way home, whilst battery and 15 minute wifi access permit, so here goes…

I’ve been down south in London for the day to attend the BIM 2010 event, organised by BISRIA, CPI, CE, CPN and UKCG and sponsored in part by my very good friends at Excitech (still in the pub no doubt!).  Anyway, enough acronyms?  Then I’ll begin.
The events of the day differed slightly from the BIM presentations/events that I have recently attended, and focussed more on a presentation followed by a discussion/workshop which then preceeded an audience participatory vote regarding the subject.  The format worked well, and certainly promoted discussion amongst the groups, and prepared some useful stats.  All of the presentations and the results of the votes are available by following @bim2010event on twitter, or by visiting the BISRIA website which, I am told will be updated in due course.
I thought for this quick blog, I’d highlight the running order, and then offer my perspective on what was a really useful event.

Running Order

Compere for the day: John Lorimer, Manchester City Council

1015:  Who owns the building information model?  Grainne McCormack, Eversheds
1130:  How can we make money from BIM?  Mike Baker, Skanska
1215:  How can we persuade clients that BIM is worthwhile?  Bill Price, Costain and David Sibbitt, ASDA
1400:  What do we need to do to make BIM happen?  Nick Deeming, Faulknerbrowns
1445:  BIM and the construction industry.  Paul Morrell, Chief Construction Adviser

The presentations gave an interesting insight into all sides of BIM.

The first presentation was certainly the first time I have seen a lawyer present at a BIM event, though I’m not sure I agreed with all that was said.  It stimulated some very interesting debate though and I certainly listened intently to the argument that as use of BIM increases, so too does our liability when you consider what a reasonable expectation of the use of BIM could be from a legal point of view if it becomes the norm (reading between the lines, there may soon be a legal situation where it is reasonable for a client to expect a design team to use BIM for project delivery – cue discussion!).
Next we saw three presentations in two, covering a contractor and client perspective of how risk is managed (or not) in BIM, a clients expectations (on a plate – ASDA own the BIM, full stop, end of.) and how a contractor aligns their business to work with a BIM aware client.  This section was very interesting and provided (me certainly) with an insight into how BIM is perceived by other players in the collaborative environment.  Certainly interesting to hear my first quote – “Construction is more challenging than neuro-surgery”!
The only architect speaking at the event presented an honest appraisal of what it is like to implement and adopt BIM as a business.  Having only recently undertaken this exercise, it was interesting to hear – certainly they have some very similar experiences that we had, albeit a few years ago now.  Encouraging to hear an honest appraisal of how much of a big decision it can be, and what an impact it has to a business. We were left with some parting questions too, such as “How is BIM learnt” and the opinion that the BIM coordinator role as a separate role is a threat to the profession – cue more discussion.
Finally we were treated to the thoughts of Paul Morrell, who provided us with the same presentation he gave at the Autodesk event a few weeks back – “My opinion hasn’t changed in three weeks, so why change he presentation?”.  I say treated because all of his thoughts were well delivered and made sense.  It was the first time I heard the comments in person, having missed the event 3 weeks ago (presenting BIM to a contractor ironically), and hearing the speech between the magazine quotes was enlightening. 

That said, I’m not going to summarise, as people far more qualified than me have done so already – I’ll leave you with some of the best quotes:

• “Cash is King, and Carbon the Queen” (of the current economic climate).
• “A well functioning team is the unit of success”
• “Commoditisation of some parts of the building is inevitable”
• Next week an announcement will be made from no.10 that a “charter for fair payment will be mandatory for all government jobs”.
• “Very soon looking back on BIM and thinking it was a choice will be funny”
• “The government (image of the Queen) will own the model” Full stop.
• “The people who won’t make any money are those that profited from waste”
• (I) “absolutely believe there is serious money in this”

That presentation concluded a really positive event.  The organisers have promised to put the presentations on the BISRIA website very soon, and today there has been an active discussion on twitter regarding some of the presentations above.  In my opinion there were some extremely clear messages coming out of the day.  BIM is coming soon, and it will not be optional.  Clients will own the model.  Design teams need to wake up to these two facts and start seizing the opportunity to make this happen – collaboration is at the heart of all of this, but the bottom line is that clients and government are waking up to BIM and they expect the professionals to have their house in order.

BSRIA website:  www.bsria.co.uk

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