Tips for Getting Up and Running with BIM-M

By Ryan Page

There is plenty of material out there to digest on the topic of BIM (Building Information Modeling). Particularly for masons and BIM-M, this revolves around the benefits and advantages you gain by adopting BIM into your company and workflows. Once you've decided to adopt BIM, the first few steps are pretty straightforward: Get the software, get the training, and start modeling. Of course, the first two parts to that statement are easy enough to achieve. Still, as a BIM Application Specialist, one of the most common questions that is brought up is how to practically apply what new adopters have learned into their actual workflows.

Practically applying BIM-M for the first time is probably the trickier part of onboarding with your new investment. This transition point is where new adopters can fall off the wagon and abandon BIM in their business. Utilizing BIM-M isn't hard, but it requires the users to understand that implementing BIM-M is a continual growth process. BIM-M platforms are capable of so much, with robust features that will make our lives easier in the long run. Therefore, it is natural to be eager to obtain a return on investment with your new platform and utilize everything at your disposal all at once. However, with limited experience, trying to take advantage of all of this for the first time can be daunting and potentially debilitating. The good news is that with a little bit of planning and realistic expectations, users and companies can set themselves up for success when getting onboard with BIM-M.

Every company is different and has slightly different needs, even if they share the same industry. However, with that said, many standard practices can be applied when adopting BIM-M for the first time. This article aims to provide basic guidance to assist in this process so that you and your company can be successful out of the gate and set yourself up for continual growth in the future.

Set Achievable Goals

The first essential step is identifying what your goals are when using BIM-M. The point of doing this is to provide yourself with a clear set of criteria to ensure you are staying on track for the things that matter most to you and your business. When setting goals, there are a few things that we should keep in mind:

All goals should be realistic and achievable.
Goals are flexible and can change over time as you learn more about your BIM-M process.
It's perfectly OK to recognize that you cannot achieve every goal with your current skill level right away and that some goals will take time.
Categorize your goals into tiers, such as Short-Term, Mid-Term, and Long-Term.
As you implement and practice, your skills will grow, and you'll be able to take on more and do more with BIM-M.

Goal setting does not have to be overly complicated. Keep it straightforward and to the points that matter to your business the most. If you get stuck on starting with goals, remind yourself to keep it simple at first. For example, your first goal can be as simple as creating a complete masonry model and gathering quantities from it. The next logical step would be creating field use drawings, adding rebar for fabrication, or developing export settings for BIM coordination and review.

Once goals have been established, the next critical step is to set yourself up to select the right pilot project. Then it is just a matter of executing the process. It sounds simple, but new adopters often fail to provide structure to this approach or have unrealistic expectations for the first-time execution. Now knowing this and with our goals kept in mind, we can proceed forward with successfully executing.

Select a Starter Project

Selecting a project to get started seems simple enough. However, if you're still getting your feet wet, it can be easy to bite off more than you can chew at the very beginning. It is an excellent step to evaluate upcoming projects and select a project aligned with your current skill level. Keeping the size and scope of your first project in check can help manage results. In a perfect world, we can do a practice project and take our time getting everything ironed out. If you have this luxury, take full advantage! But if you don't, there is no need to worry as you can learn and establish your company workflow as you go. Either way, when choosing your first BIM-M project, remember to keep it as manageable as possible. Here are a couple of additional points to keep in mind:

Be smart about first-time project size and scope.

Be realistic in project selection. Taking on too much or too big of a project for the first time will draw out establishing your internal company process and may delay initial results. Small to medium size projects (if you have the choice) work best to provide a baseline establishing your company workflow and determining which approaches work best for you. Work iteratively and methodically, with each project being an improvement over the previous.

Ensure a comfortable lead time.

Select a project that you're not going to need to complete as soon as possible. Give yourself as much breathing room as is reasonable for the first project and your skill level. Of course, you won't always have the luxury to take advantage of a considerable lead time but, if you can do so, it will provide you with the opportunity to pivot and adjust workflows as you discover new needs or requirements.

Why do this?

To paraphrase an old saying: "no plan survives first contact with the enemy." As far as you have come to learning your BIM-M platform of choice and working with it, you will still be learning new things. As you model this first project, you may need to pivot approaches, adjust workflows accordingly or even redo small portions to get a better result. Adjustments are normal, and you should expect to make them early on in adopting BIM. You should also expect that as you continue with more projects, you will become more experienced and better understand how to work your model effectively. By repeating the same process and evolving along the way, you will improve your time to model a project and handle more complex structures and tasks.

Write everything down!

Documenting what you plan to achieve and how you do it is essential. It is not something we all do daily, but it will set you up for success in the future regarding your first BIM-M project. In the previous section, "establishing workflows" was mentioned several times, and documenting the steps you take, in the order you take them, is essentially that. The benefits to this are worth the effort. Keep in mind that this should and probably will evolve. Still, the goal is to give yourself something repeatable from project to project. Here are a few considerations to keep in mind:

Outline your process.

Outlining your work as you go is very beneficial in later identifying any process improvements you can make.
It can help you teach the process to new users/modelers in the future and can remind experienced users of company standards.
It will also give you an advantage to effectively increase efficiency in modeling and reducing production time.
It can also be of immense value to you as you establish workflows and requirements in the model. You won't have to remember everything and will be able to look at it as a whole when trying to improve and refine it.

The outline should form the basis of your own "desktop guide."

Creating a desktop guide is not necessary but can be very valuable.
It should be a living, breathing document that provides as much detail as necessary for your company process and approach to modeling in Tekla.
This document may take some time to compile, and that is OK. However, it should grow and improve as time goes on.
This document can serve as a reminder for process specifics for seasoned modelers as well.

Document Lessons Learned

Keeping a log of lessons learned is beneficial as you create the model and move it through the pre-con/construction process.

This log, separate from your workflow document, can contain mistakes made and corrections required.
Also, pay attention to circumstances you may not have taken into account at first. Document these so that you will not miss them in the future.

This document should evolve, grow, and be accessible by all those involved for reference.

It should be moderated by one person or team and treated as a controlled document for integrity.

Do not forget to document success in your process as well. Knowing what works is equally as important as knowing what not to repeat.

In Summary

The main goal with the topics discussed is to structure your first modeling task and establish your baseline process. The points made in this article may not always fit nicely within the needs of running a business, so make sure to take the principles to heart and adapt to your reality. As you go along, refine the process and improve model creation and utilization as you repeat on future projects. As you do this, you'll be able to gauge things like how many projects you can handle at one time, model creation time for preconstruction tasks, and so on. This approach will give perspective on resources required to meet the company's goals or growth plans regarding the use of BIM-M. You may find one or two individuals is all you need, or you may need to grow. The desktop guide mentioned above can be instrumental in helping reduce the onboarding time of new users. Remember that this outline is just a high-level recommendation. You know your companies business better than anyone. It is encouraged that you utilize this perspective (and any others you may receive) as a tool to formulate the best plan forward for your company. Remember that your first project is still a learning experience. Goals should be iterative and achievable but still, present some challenges—your success with BIM-M results from setting realistic goals and learning from mistakes.