Attention building-information-modeling rookies: Experiences of BIM veterans in the following pages of ENR may save you from reinventing many spokes on the still-rickety wheels of the wagon rolling toward glitch-free use of high-tech tools to make building design and construction less bumpy. The first piece of advice to first-time travelers down the BIM road is to get BIM’s equivalent of driving lessons and roadside assistance. Warning: If you go it alone, you may get into serious trouble. Even modeling veterans can benefit from a BIM “global positioning system.” The helpers call themselves BIM managers or model integrators. The name doesn’t matter. Find someone who has already been through the steep learning curve, and snag that person as a guide.
To help its design team for a federal courthouse project in Jackson, Miss., create BIMs to produce coordinated 2D drawings, the U.S. General Services Administration hired Ghafari Associates, Dearborn, Mich. One of the consultant’s first tasks was to help select the tools best suited to the project. “We were clueless,” says Brian Kimsey, professional services division director in GSA’s Southeast Sunbelt Region, Atlanta. “We learned a lot, initially about the differences and similarities of all the BIM tools,” he says. “We even had Ghafari model a portion of the building as a test, using three different platforms, in the project architect’s office.