A Busy Week....

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I've been pretty busy this week, with a lot of things to get through, so I haven't actually managed to get any of my jobs done - I guess this is the price you pay for being available...

Monday, we met up with our reseller to discuss what we're up to, what we need and what we want.  One of the things we've really focussed on over the past year has been our training strategy and how we are going to support our staff as they move from 2D to 3D - a jump we genuinely believe is bigger than that from pencil to CAD.

We started off making a few mistakes.  When we first invested in Revit over 5 years ago prior to Autodesk purchasing it, we bought everyone new machines and trained them all accross the board - including senior management.  Soon everyone was walking around like zombies, wondering why the hell they had just learnt how to make a family.  Needless to say, Revit takeup accross the board wasn't quick.

What we have focussed on now is providing Just In Time (JIT) training, specific to the users and the project they will be working on.  This gives them the support they need, and provides it at a time when it is most important to them.  Together with the lads from Excitech, we have developed bespoke courses tailored to our firm, and follow that up with at-desk mentor support and related specific training at a later date.  Its working really well, and we're developing skilled staff very quickly now.  In a year, we have moved from scattered take up to every new project in Revit (the odd exception still proves this rule, to my annoyance!).

We're now looking at developing our suite of software - Navisworks and Ecotect look likely to prove useful to us, which we weren't expecting.  I'll need to start looking into them asap...

Tuesday gave me a chance to catch up on some research as I took the train to give some Sketchup training, and I read some really interesting articles about IPD in the US - something that I need to learn a lot more about as we've just landed our first integrated appointment.

Wednesday I took part in a webinar with Excitech, discussing BIM and refurbishment projects.  I've just completed a bid for a project in which we refurbished and retained 85% of an existing building.  It was pretty interesting to talk about our experiences there - will post about that seperately later.  I'm not sure if I can link to the webinar through this site, I'll check and get back on that one.

Yesterday provided another really interesting meeting, with a comapny that are looking into the use of Autodesk Quantity Take-off, for realising some of the cost benefits of BIM models - something that as a company we've been trying to unleash for some time.  Finally we seem to have met someone that understands the potential, and it looks like we'll have some real opportunity to analyse some of the models we've been creating.  I think this could prove to be fascinating as we try and develop the potential to explore some of the supposed '5D' benefits that must be possible from a BIM model.

And finally this morning, I've set up a meeting to discuss and demo a laser scanner with a friend of mine.  I'm totally fascinated by this, ever since I saw the keynote address from AU this year - can't wait to see on in action and get my hands on a point cloud (which reminds me, there's some great research work on the net from the US, looking at an existing building - find it here).

So that's it - week one.  I'll be keeping this blog up top date with my weekly exploits, and as I develop some experiences worth sharing, will be posting them under specific entries for those that are interested.

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