My trip to the Bay Area thanks to @IdeateInc

I have to say the trip down to Sacramento, San Francisco, and Oakland was a great success.  I really want to thank @IdeateInc for the opportunity to present my take on the Top 5 ways to Promote BIM in your office.  It was refreshing to hear the success stories, and all too familiar to hear the frustrations.  I hope my tips helped those just starting, and those in the middle of the battle. This trip and the many people I talked to has reinvigorated me role to find more success in the Promotion of BIM, because it is a never ending battle.

This trip made me realize that the industry as a whole is still not coming together.  After all the entire key to BIM is collaboration – Period.  I just read an article in the new REVITworld magazine released last month on What’s in BIM for me?  The fact that in the UK’s pursuit for Level 2 BIM by 2016 two thirds of construction business believes it’s unachievable is mind boggling. Maybe we should take a moment and remember what JFK said about going to the moon, “We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.” The power that statement provided to America made going to the moon seemed achievable.  I’m not comparing BIM to the moon, however it is a similar concept, everyone thought it was impossible to go to the moon, and the construction industry thinks it’s impossible to have a fully collaborative environment.  It’s amazing to me that we are still fighting this concept, hasn’t BIM been proven to be valuable to all parties, and those that have embraced it have done incredible things.  Educating the world on BIM seems to be the biggest hurdle, and I hope these little successes soon build to bigger ones.

BIM tools are still in their infancy and it is exciting to think we are only on year 15 of Revit.  Every day someone is coming up with a new idea, or a new way to create that much need database giving us greater collaboration.  I hope in the next 2 years that the concept of all consultants working in the same model is not so foreign and added to every BEP.

Perhaps the new generation of Architects, Engineers, Contractors, and Owners can help advance the idea of BIM and in another 15 years we can look back and say remember when….