MT - Using BIM as a PM Tool: 4.1 Results from Case Studies

Several case studies were collected from existing literature to analyze in which areas the application of BIM had improved aspects of the projects studied.
The literature on each case study was carefully read and analyzed and those aspects regarding the benefits and problems or challenges of implementing BIM where collected.
The total number of case studies gathered was 35. The total number was not previously defined, but as relevant case studies were found, they were added to the research until the timeframe of this dissertation didn’t allow more of them to be found and analyzed. The author of this research is confident that the number of case studies used is big enough to extract conclusions.
After each positive and negative aspect of the implementation of BIM had been collected for each case study, these were translated into the key performance KPI described on Table 3.1 and based on the PMBOK Knowledge Areas. It is relevant to mention here that this translation was not always easy. Some benefits or challenges were difficult to translate to one of the KPI. The results and numbers given on Table 4.1 should be seen as based on the authors’ perception and experience. For more details on the exact translation from the information found on the literature into the KPI the reader should refer to the table compiled in Annex IV of this dissertation.
One of the recurring challenges mentioned on the implementation of BIM found in several case studies were Software Related Issues. Amongst others, there were “information transfer bottlenecks” or “lack of parametric content” (Manning and Messner, 2008), “technical difficulties” or “modelling issues” (Kaner et al., 2009) and “3D modelling inconsistencies” (Haymaker and Fischer, 2001). These Software issues were very specific to the Software packages or expertise of the stakeholders, so in an attempt to keep these very specific negative effects clearly separated, a new KPI [Software] was created.
After translating all benefits and challenges of the BIM implementation into the KPI of Table 3.1, none of these were found to fit in the last category “Procurement Help”. It is for this reason that Table 4.1, which shows the summary of the results obtained in each case study, does not show this category.
The projects on Table 4.1 are organized using the added score for each of them (positive indicators minus negative indicators). This is not an attempt to find which one is the best BIM case study but to organize the projects in a way that the reader can see in which case studies it is possible to find more positive aspects of the implementation of BIM. The numbers on the score column should not be seen as an indicator of how successful or unsuccessful those case study projects were, but simply as how many KPI were mentioned positively or negatively. For example, the case study of the Cascadia Center (McGraw-Hill 2010b) shows a score of -3. This means that 3 aspects of the use of BIM related to the Coordination, Organization and Software KPI were mentioned as challenging or causing difficulties, but it doesn’t mean that the use of BIM had negative effects.

To allow better analysis and understanding, the different positive and negative aspects found in each project were separated in two different columns. For each KPI, the approach taken on this step was to count separately the positive and negative values, rather than to give a total score for each one (positive minus negative count). With this approach, it was possible to see which KPI appeared more times as a positive factor and which ones appeared as challenges or problems of the implementation of BIM. Following this approach, a second table was created (Table 4.2) with the results obtained from the case studies. This table allowed us to organize the different KPI according to the times each was mentioned as a positive factor. The table also shows the times and number of projects the KPIs were mentioned as a challenge or negative factor due to the use of BIM. This table was also the basis for the following section, were the results are described and findings on each KPI are analyzed.
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MT - Using BIM as a PM Tool: 4. – Secondary Data Results and Findings

Following the methodology explained in the previous chapter, primary and secondary data needed for the research was gathered. This chapter will show the results and findings derived from the collection of secondary data. Following the same order as the previous chapter and the overall sequence of this research, the results from secondary data will be explained first, continuing on Chapter 5 with the results from the primary data obtained through survey questionnaires sent following the process explained on figure 3.2.
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AutoCAD Find and replace text

Find and replace texts in your CAD File. no need to enter edit each one of them
Català - Castellano - Deutsch
. Well, first of all, hi everyone. It's been almost a year since I posted. My current job doesn't bringing me so many new insights on CAD or BIM tricks lately, so unfortunately, I am a bit dry on new tricks. Nevertheless I still have to draft in CADevery now and then and so I lately discover this little basic trick that was very useful for a last minute change without a lot of pain.
We were about to send a set of drawings to the Millworker for quoting a job and last minute,"the boss" said, change grom Viroc to Valchromat, I told you I wanted to use Valchromat. Ok, so last minute and all the notes in all the Milwork elements needed to be changed. There were abotu 20 different elements with many notes each that needed changing, so I decided I 10 minute search was worth the effort to save maybe 30 minutes of manually changing texts. And it did pay off quickly.
Can't remember now were I found it but the solution was simple, use the FIND command in AutoCAD. It basically has the same or almost the same functionalities as the Find and Replace user interface in Word or similar text prcessors. So changing all those notes took basically less than a minute. Simply type FIND, enter the text to replace in the FIND box and enter the new text you want in the REPLACE box. Very simple. It works both for TEXT and MTEXT characters.
Hope to write more if I get a chance! THanks a lot for all the comments the blog keeps getting despite my partial absence!

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Presentation of the Spanish BIM Users Guide

Video Presentation of the Spanish BIM Guide Sponsored by BuildingSMart Spanish Chapter
Català - Castellano - Deutsch
Last October 7th I helped present the first Spanish BIM Guide based on the Finnish Common BIM Requirements 2012. If you understnad Spanish and want to know a bit about this guide, take a look at the video below.

The Spanish BIM Guide or "Guía de Usuarios BIM" can be downloaded from BuildingSmart Spanish Chapter.
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Revit: Joining Walls to Extend an Opening

If you want to model as you would build, you might find this helpful.
Català - Castellano - Deutsch
If you want to use Revit for the latest stages of design or during pre-constructio, some tools, specially those to create layer based families like Walls, Floors, Ceilings and Roofs might not work for you. This tools were probably designed to speed up modeling but thinking more of an architect's need (drafting plans) than actually Virtually Building your facility in the computer. This problem has been partially solved with the Create Parts Tool. It is a good improvement appeared in Revit 2013, but it does complicate a bit extracting quantities.

A solution to build the model as it would be build on real life is to model walls (or other layer based elements) in parts. That is, that instead of modelling a brick wall with its layers of substrates and finishes in one element, we model them in several stages.

The main problem with this approach is what to do whit openings. A Window or Door will only cut the wall that actually hosts it, right? Well, not exactly. If you have two parallel walls and place a door in one of them, you can extend the opening cut to the 2nd wall by joining geometry of the two walls. See the pic.

Simple when you know how.

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Revit: Locking Circles to Reference planes.

How do we lock a circle's center to a reference plane in Revit?.
Català - Castellano - Deutsch
Locking linear elements to reference planes is pretty simple, I normally use the align tool and after the element is aligned I check the lock icon to lock the element to the plane. But if what we want to lock to a plane is a circle, it is not so straight forward. The trick to do it, is to unhide the circle center mark.

To do that, you need to select the circle, and go to the properties tab and check the Center Mark Visible checkbox to unhide the center mark. After you've done that you will see a cross at the center of the circle that will allaow you to lock the center to one or two reference planes.

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Revit: Converting a Wall Based Family into Face Based Family

Convert a Family that was created as WALL based into a face based family.
Català - Castellano - Deutsch
I have to apologise for whoever wrote this somewhere but I didn't store the link to give credit to. Anyways, lets go with the trick. I donwloaded a Radiator Family. I tried to put it in my MEP Model. It didn't let me. I Checked. It was a Wall based Family. I could have created a new one, but it was an ok family. I wanted a faster way around. And so, checking aorund (again sorry to whoever wrote this first, I don't remember from where I took it) i found this trick. First of all. To know if a family is Wall Based or Faced based we can check it in the Family Editor.

1. Open the Family
2. Got to Modify Tab --> Family Category and Parameters --> Scroll to the bottom of the Family Parameters Area

Here is the trick itself:

1. Create a new Project A.
2. Model a Wall
3. Insert the Wall Based Family A
4. Save the Project as Project A
5. Create a New Project B
6. Link as a Revit Link Project A into Project B
7. Go to Collaborate Tab --> Copy / Monitor --> Select Link -->Pick Project A-->Copy-->Select Family A on the screen --> Finish
8. Select the Copied Family A-->Modify Tab-->Stop Monitoring

That's it, now if you open the family usign the Edit Family button you willl see that it is Face Based. (be sure you had closed the family before using this or you will be opening the old version still Wall Based).

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Some differences between Solibri Model Checker and Navisworks Manage

Just a link to an interesting article ppinting to the things Solibri can do that other moedl aggregators like Navisworks can't.
Català - Castellano - Deutsch

No time to write more for now, so just the link to the article here. Hope to be back soon. Cheers
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MT - Using BIM as a PM Tool: 3.2.2 - Primary Data

Questionnaires were used to gather primary data. The type of primary data necessary for this research was both of quantitative and qualitative matter. The questionnaires were divided in 6 pages, and written both in English (Annex I) and Spanish (Annex II) to be sure that the low level of knowledge of the English language in Spain (Europapress, 2010) was not a reason for getting less answers from this country. This translation required an extra effort but was seen as a key step, since as we have mentioned on the previous section of this chapter, no reliable secondary data was found regarding the penetration of BIM in Spain in any publication.

A preliminary version of the questionnaires was sent to some test respondents to ensure that the questionnaires were easily understandable and to get some feedback on the type of questions and length of the questionnaires. The feedback received forced the author to simplify and shorten some parts of the questionnaire as well as to state more clearly what the purpose of the survey was and what would be the benefits for the respondents by answering the questions.

The initial page was an introductory page to the questionnaire and to the subject of BIM, to ensure that even those who had no knowledge of what BIM is had a basic understanding of why this topic was being studied.

The second page was intended to collect information regarding the profile of the respondent and the company he/she worked for. Basic information about country, gender age and job type was asked to have a basis to compare the different respondent’s profile. The type and size of the company was also requested. Regarding the size of the company, the definition of the European Commission for micro, small and medium sized companies was used (European Commission, 2009).

Page three wanted to get a basic overview of the attitude of the respondent towards ICT. The author of this dissertation considered this point important to be able to compare the respondent’s attitude towards a more general topic like ICT and the implementation of new processes with their attitude towards the more specific subject of BIM.


The next page, page four, intended to get a basic understanding of the software expertise of the respondent, to know if their opinions about the topic were based on own experience or just on intuition. At the end of page four, a question asking if the respondent had any experience using BIM was used to redirect those who had no experience directly to page six. This way, page five that consisted of questions that only respondents who had used BIM should answer was skipped by those who had never used BIM.

The final page was meant to collect some qualitative information on the views of the respondents about BIM, its usefulness and the challenges that make BIM implementation difficult. Overall feedback about the topic and the questionnaires was requested and the possibility to receive the results via email was offered.

The questionnaires were created using the free platform Google Documents (available at http://docs.google.com). This platform allows the easy creation of survey forms and the results are automatically placed on a spreadsheet that can be exported to Excel or to other statistical analysis programs. The choice of this platform was based on the previous successful use of this platform by the author and on a cost basis. Other online survey applications were analysed, but the chosen one was seen as the most convenient due to its zero costs, ease of use and author’s previous experience with it.

To reach the highest possible number of respondents, the author used all free online means available to him to spread the questionnaires to the maximum number of professionals of the AEC Industry. The questionnaires were sent per email to all the author’s contacts that work on AEC related fields. Additionally, the questionnaires were posted on AEC related online forums and professional groups of the professional networking site “LinkedIn” and, lastly, the author posted a link to the questionnaires on his website (www.cadaddict.com).

The author website is a blog styled website that since 2007 has been publishing articles related to the AEC Industry, with special focus on AEC Software tools. With around 800 visitors per day, the website has a quite diverse audience in terms of locations, and most of its readers are from AEC related fields, this was seen as a great opportunity to reach a great number of unknown professionals who could have some valuable insights for this research. The results shown in chapter 4 prove that using this platform was of great relevance due to the number of responses that came from this source.

A list of all used means of spreading the questionnaires amongst AEC Industry professionals is detailed on figure 3.2. This combined methodology, as it will be further explained on the Results and Findings Chapter, has the advantage of reaching a much wider audience. The problem encountered with this combined methodology was that it was almost impossible to get accurate response rate numbers; it is not clear to how many potential respondents did the questionnaires reach. To try to get an estimate of the response rate, the author used a hyperlink tracking service. This type of service, allows tracking the number of people who click on certain link, and thus it allows knowing how many people showed interest in the questionnaires and reaching the starting page. Although this is not the traditional method for calculation the response rates, since it is impossible to know otherwise how many people saw the link or received an email, all response rate estimations will based on this methodology. The estimation of the response rate as well as further details on the methodology used to track it will be explained in detail in the following chapter.
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MT - Using BIM as a PM Tool: 3.2.1 - Secondary Data

We have already seen in previous chapters the potential benefits that BIM can bring to projects, and as a consequence, to Project Manager’s workflow. This section explains the gathering of data that proves that this potential benefits are actually materialising when BIM is being applied to real world projects.

Because of the resources and time frame available for this dissertation, it was impossible to get those results from primary data. For this reason the author chose to get the needed data from secondary sources which are easily available on the internet.

The topic of BIM has already been studied by many scholars (Aouad et. Al., 2006; Manaula, 2008; Succar, 2009; Lee, 2008); by professional groups (BSI, 2010; McGraw-Hill, 2008, 2009, 2010a and 2010b); and of course, by software vendors (Autodesk, 2007; Bentley, 2003). Of all of the above mentioned references and many others, the studies by McGraw-Hill provide a greater amount of data about the status of BIM in North America (McGraw-Hill, 2008) and in Europe (McGraw-Hill, 2010a). The latter study has its focus on UK, France and Germany. Unfortunately, no data about the status of BIM in Spain has been found, so any specific reference to this country on this research will rely for on the primary data gathered from the questionnaires that will be further explained on the following section.

Additionally to these two studies, several case studies mentioned in other papers where compiled and the data of these case studies was organized to get an overall picture of what are the real benefits that BIM is actually providing to practitioners. This data was later on compared with the a priori stated benefits of BIM (Figure 2.2 and Table 2.1) to analyze how accurate these potential benefits are and in which areas BIM is not yet being used or perceived as a useful tool. The benefits extracted from the case studies were translated into the Project Management KPI compiled in Table 3.1, to be able to quantify which KPIs benefited the most from the implementation of BIM.

All data obtained from the above mentioned secondary sources is organized and explained in Chapter 4 of this research. Links and relationships between the information gather from secondary and primary sources will be also drawn. The gathering of primary data is explained in the following section.


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MT - Using BIM as a PM Tool: 3.2 - Data Collection

The necessary data was gathered in the following way. A combination of qualitative and quantitative data was gathered.n Primary data was gathered from questionnaires and secondary data was collected from available sources. The data was analysed to test the starting research hypothesis as part of the deductive approach, then the observations from primary data were used to formulate a theory on “How BIM can help PMs” and to propose further research topics relevant to this dissertation. The results of both the collection of primary and secondary data are explained on the Results and Findings chapter of this dissertation.

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MT - Using BIM as a PM Tool: 3.1.2- Inductive Approach

The second part of the research question “How can BIM help Project Managers succeed in delivering complex construction projects" required a complete different approach. In this case an inductive approach was more adequate, because we were trying to come with a theory from a series of observations and from own experience. For this part, it was important to find out what were the expectations of AEC practitioners and their readiness to commit to a new technology and new processes. The opinion of construction professionals on how BIM can help AEC professionals to better deliver complex projects was also necessary.

Questionnaires (Annex I and II) were designed to gather data regarding the perception of construction professionals of BIM. These questionnaires, later explained in more detail, were the base to come up with the list of ways in which BIM can help the delivery of complex construction projects. For this part of the research both the primary data gathered from this questionnaires and the secondary data gathered from several sources were the corner stone that would allow the author to come up with a theory of how BIM can help Project Managers. At the same time, all this primary and secondary data was used to fulfil the 4 research objectives, which are here listed again.

1. To identify in which aspects is BIM implementation showing more benefits for the delivery of construction projects
2. To compare the benefits of BIM with the role of the Project Manager
3. To define which role should the Project Manager assume within the BIM framework.
4. To analyze the existing challenges for BIM implementation and estimate future developments that might mitigate these challenges.

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