BIMBeing: The Journey #23

#23 – Consulting for clients…

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The construction industry is now awash with BIM Consultants; from sole traders to large, multi-national consultancy firms – there are more than just a few to choose from. As with anything there are some very good consultants and, inevitably, some that are not so good. It’s generally quite difficult to spot the difference, especially for those that are not well versed in the world of BIM. These ‘not so good’ consultancies are part of the much wider issue of successful BIM adoption as they’re often distorting what ‘good’ should really look like; dare I say it that many of these individuals fall into the ‘Academic’ category – impracticality is a large portion of the issue (See posts #6 and #20 for some opinion on academics in industry!). Maybe all of these consultants should try the BIM Competency Assessment? That should ruffle some feathers.

These issues, however, are not what I want to address. For several of the projects that I’ve worked on there is a different problem – it’s how the BIM consultants have been used.

When it comes to project BIM delivery the client should be steering the ship, leading the way. It’s their project, and it will become their asset, therefore the decisions as to what information is required and how it will be used are also theirs. Unfortunately it’s all too often the case that the client is not equipped for this task; they typically don’t have the sort of in-house knowhow that’s required. I’ve seen first hand multiple instances of the following:

1. The client has no documentation for their ‘BIM Requirements’ (OIR, AIR, EIR etc.)
2. The client does not have a thorough understanding of BIM, information management or digital asset management
3. The client does not know how they want to manage their facility
4. The client does not know what information they want from the project team
5. The client does not know what they will do with the information provided by the project team

This is a substantial issue. The client simply does not know what they want, therefore the project team do not know what they need to deliver; without a reliable captain at the helm this ship is heading for the rocks. A common theme now is for these types of client to employ an external BIM consultant – we’ve got a specialist on-board, problem solved! Actually, not quite.

Even the best consultants will not be able to fully understand the requirements of a client, only the client themselves can lead this; a consultant can support and advise but they cannot make all of the decisions. That aside, said consultancy will be able to produce some documentation for the project based on whatever little information they are provided. That’s great news, the project team now have something to aim for and we can all get to work. Unfortunately, there are still several problems. That 1-5 list of red items now looks like this:

1. The client has no documentation for their ‘BIM Requirements’ (OIR, AIR, EIR etc.)
2. The client does not have a thorough understanding of BIM, information management or digital asset management
3. The client does not know how they want to manage their facility
4. The client does not know what information they want from the project team
5. The client does not know what they will do with the information provided by the project team

We’ve got documents – excellent! Item number 1 ticked off of the list. Unfortunately that has had little-to-no effect on items 2-5 and our client still does not have that in-house knowledge required to steer this project to success. The worst part? Our specialist BIM consultant has probably gone! This is my major concern.

On the projects I mention it has always been the case; the client has employed the BIM consultant at the start of the project to write the documents – and that’s it, end of scope, end of contract, thank you and good night. They’ve provided the client with a class-leading boat, but they’ve not changed the person at the helm. Guess what? We’re still heading for the rocks. We’ve not solved the problem at all.

This is not the fault of the consultant; they’ve fulfilled the requirements of their contract and typically they’ve provided some good documentation. It is quite common for the requirements they’ve documented to be ‘too much’, however; without the client knowing exactly what they need the default stance is to ask the project team for ‘everything’. This, I feel, is counter-productive. It puts additional work onto the project team, will often incur additional costs too and it may even elongate the delivery programme whilst a lot of the information (if actually provided) will never be used – agan the consultant is still not really to blame. This issue is back to the client. They still don’t know what they want, they don’t know what to do with this information, they’re not equipped to make these decisions and they still do not know how they’ll manage their asset. This is not a recipe for success.

I see that there are only two options to resolve this:

1. Employ the BIM consultant for the duration of the project. It’s not a perfect solution as they still can’t get entirely into the clients mind to extract their requirements, but at least now you have somebody to manage the process. They can oversee project delivery, advise the project team and verify compliance of the deliverables against the required standards. There is an obvious financial impact to this method and it’s still not improving the client’s abilities, but it is a vast improvement to having nobody. There’s a good chance that well-structured information will be delivered at the end of the project, unfortunately though it may not be exactly what the client wants or needs in order to efficiently manage an asset. This too may be avoided if the consultant is employed to oversee more than just project delivery: if the scope is extended to an over-arching involvement in organisational requirements and asset management then the benefits can be extended. This of course comes with an even greater financial commitment.
2. Up-skill the client. This is truly the only way to achieve successful delivery of useful information. This may require employing specialists to bring that knowledge in-house, training teams, investing in new technology and bringing different parts of the organisation together to fully understand the requirements of both construction and asset management. It’s a big task, and it’s a significant investment, but the benefits of efficient asset management will soon out-weigh that, especially for a client that manages multiple assets. There is no magic wand to wave for this to be a solution, it’s far more involved than a specialist ‘gun for hire’ consultancy that can be brought on-board in an instant. This requires high-level strategy, planning, investment and time. If you’re a client reading this and you haven’t started, start now.

Option 2 would truly change the industry, for the better. With knowledgeable clients at the helm of our projects we, as a collective, would be leveraging the true benefits of BIM for efficient project delivery and asset management – up-skilling the team at the top of the tree forces all of those beneath to follow suit. There would be no option for the delivery team than to provide good, consistent, useful information that’s driven by a client with the know-how to verify it and put it to good use. What a fantastic incentive for any team to know that some of the data they’ve spent months trying to deliver could actually get used! There’s always hope.

The question, therefore, is how? How do we up-skill our clients in order to inflict positive change? In my opinion, only this top-down approach to BIM can bring true efficiency throughout an asset’s lifecycle, from conception to demolition. Only with clients leading the way will we realise BIM’s full potential.

Any ideas? Let us know in the comments, or drop an email if you’re feeling shy.

Mr. Smith
smith@dbe.careers