Hola mis amigos, I have been spent two weeks for this article. I hope it will be a good one. As I said, we need to talk a little bit about the hard of BIM. Not only for the difficulty we already had, but also for really thinking about why it appeared.
So, let's begin the easy talk for the hard BIM.
I'm not a history buff, but time has taught us a lot. So, let's take a look into the history of CAD. You will find something interesting.
Let's take AutoCAD as an example. The first version of AutoCAD is developed in 1982. Based on the DOS system. Without the interface, neither icon nor button. And it works totally with commands. Until 1997, for the version R14 of AutoCAD, instead of using DOS, UNIX, they finally chose Windows. That's saying the real first AutoCAD for PC starts from 1997. Guess what, at the end of 2000, nearly 90% of engineers adapted themselves to CAD software for their drawing works which should be all hand drawing before. And that happened only in three years.
I don't have enough time to talk about the whole revolution of this industry. The history of CATIA and Dassault Systemes is also interesting. If you are interested in that. I recommend you to look at the book « The Engineering Design Revolution » written by Mr David E. Weisberg. You can find the whole ebook here, for free.
Why ? ! Why the revolution about CAD seems very easy, but which about BIM is so hard? When the CAD era arrived at the construction, it's quite easy for people to accept it and change their habit. But look at BIM, the concept is published in 2002 (in a white paper of Autodesk ) but until now, we are still continuing struggled in the very beginning. Here we go, 4 reasons according to BIM Mars.
1. Delayed gratification
For me, the first reason comes from psychology word. Delayed gratification. This word became popular with the marshmallow experiment, conducted by Walter Mischel in the 1960s and 1970s at Stanford University. The research is very simple. They presented the four-year-olds with a marshmallow and told the children that they had two options: (1) ring a bell at any point to summon the experimenter and eat the marshmallow, or (2) wait until the experimenter returned (about 15 minutes later), and earn two marshmallows. The message was: small reward now, or bigger reward later.
With the professional word, it's called Instant Gratification & Delayed Gratification. But why we need to know this? Seems like it's not on the same planet with BIM. Because in my standpoint, the BIM is the second marshmallow. Someone once told me that during the booming period of CAD, people even can stop all their work just for learning the software of CAD for months. Cause of this kind of change is directly connected with their productivity, and it's real-time feedback. You get it, you get more benefits from right now. In contrast, BIM requires people to wait, to be patient enough to get the second marshmallow. CAD let us do what we want, BIM always told you those things you can't do. It also requires more work and more time to make us well organized. So, behind the delayed gratification, we need some patience, more control and good willpower.
Simply put, CAD is a stimulation, but BIM is a restraint.
2. Great idea always need a Good Time
In Chinese, there is an expression about the three conditions required for success. A good time, A nice environment and Some right people. (天時地利人和). And so, which one is the most important? Time, right? Because the environment and the people are changeable. You have more than one choice. It's under control. But the time is a thing unchangeable. We have 24 hours each day on earth and 24 hours 37 minutes 22.6 seconds on Mars. No one can change it.
A good time in the industry refers to the good timing for application. Not the time point of the technology created. For example, we heard lots of people talking about AI (Artificial Intelligence) right now. The AI research field was born at a workshop at Dartmouth College in 1956. Can you imagine that? After a half century, we finally have a Siri and a Google Assistant not so stupid. To analyse your words and give an acceptable response, it's Ok, Google.
So, what's really changed in those years? The capacity of the server, the computer, the chip, the internet and the infrastructure. Generally, we talk about it with 3 layers. Base layer, Support layer and Application layer.
Specifically, with BIM, the Base layer refers to the computer hardware and system software. It decided the main capacity of our software. ( By the way, I have downloaded the Revit 2020, it has 15G in total. Good luck, Mate ) Then, in the Support layer, like DataBase Management, Internet service development, Graphics development, 3D parameter design, User Interface and Human-Computer Interaction research, each branch of its development is a big factor for the development of BIM. You can't count on using commands and terminal to create a full BIM model. ( If you can, teach me that, please. ) Finally, for combining different kinds of professions, we have the Application layer like Building, Transport, Mechanic, Aerospace, Automobile, etc.
And after all these stairs are built, the good time comes.
3. Digital Construction before the Great BIM
BIM is so good, do we need to take one step towards BIM? NO, We need two steps. One for the digital construction and the second for the great BIM. As I said in the last post, using BIM software in the office is not the final goal of BIM. The BIM-based system requires all of us passed to a new workflow. But, the reality is we can't reach to this yet. We can't arrive at every construction site and make all the people use a model BIM for construction. We can't avoid discussing the modification by email, phone call, and endless pdf, word, excel. We can't stop using those plans printed with the huge printer.
We just don't have so much digitalisation in the construction.
Habits are very difficult to change. When you are used to something, you can't go out of the comfort zone easily. The difficulty is the same for digital construction. I'm sure we can't pass to BIM in one day. But try it with some small changes, we can. We can take some baby steps. And finally, it will be the base stone of the great BIM.
Except for the habit issue, we have another huge problem. The price of digitalisation. A friend once told me that, Every single gift of life, there is a price behind them. Maybe you have already been told that there are so many advantages to do a project full BIM, good management, easy control of modification, centralisation of information and so on, but, have we realised the invisible price behind them? Software, Server, Laptop, Tablet and Internet, all these things are far more expensive than an A0 paper. iPad Pro with 899 Euros, 1 Euro for a paper printed. Everyone can do this math. (well, in Canada, if you want to print an A0 paper, maybe you need to pay 100 euro, it's not our case 🙂)
That's the price of Digital Construction, before the great BIM.
4. A river never turn back
BIM is an inevitable trend. Like the fire, the steam engine, the electricity and the Internet. You can't make people stop using the smartphone and do business by only sending letters. You can find a lot of excuses because of which we are not so BIM. Like, it needs a lot of time, the system is so complex, we have just a small project, the little company can't see the benefit in it, etc. But finally, we will pass to BIM, just as what we have done with CAD. The irreversible revolution is here. whether you like it or not. And think about it, our world is a world full of collaboration. If one day, the world passed all together to BIM, how can you do your job?
We must always move forward to speak with the world.
BIM is not the end, even we don't know what is the next after BIM. The change in technology is always accelerating.
Ray Kurzweil writes that, due to paradigm shifts, a trend of exponential growth extends Moore's law from integrated circuits to earlier transistors, vacuum tubes, relays, and electromechanical computers. He predicts that the exponential growth will continue, and that in a few decades the computing power of all computers will exceed that of (unenhanced) human brains, with superhuman (artificial intelligence) appearing around the same time.
So, how we deal with the irreversible change and become faster and faster each day?
Start it.
Hard BIM, yes. Easy talk, truly no. I hope the next time, before you saying 'BIM is cool, but…' Think about it, after the but, it's a reason, or an excuse.