What are the possible future problems with Revit/BIM?
As discussed in class, Revit is becoming a revolutionizing the construction industry as we went through the pros and cons of today’s BIM usage as well as the application inside the industry down the road. For this post, I will focus discretely on the potential future issues that Revit/BIM could have on the industry in the future. The A-Team discussed this question during our group meeting at the end of the class and we came up with several possible issues that I believe are true as well. Those included servers and computer power having to be upgraded along with Revit’s program due to the issue of how large the files can get which ultimately will just slow your computer down. Or the future of BIM may suggest that engineers could lean on the power of Revit’s software itself and forgetting the tricks of the trade that the older generation inside the industry are passing down to the younger engineers.
Reading through the article How BIM is revolutionizing the construction industry taught me as I expected, there are going to be many benefits that BIM will bring in years to come. As well as possible problems, I wanted to speak about how they are fixing the current issues that were brought up during the article as well. Kim Slowely states that current improvements that are being implemented include focus on improving quality, integration, collaboration and analysis of the information BIM generates. Then she pulls a quote from Greg Wesner as he states “BIM will be about more than just working efficiently within a single discipline, such as architecture. It will be about how we leverage intelligence in the model across functions for analysis that will help us do things like size other products and systems within the building faster and more accurately." Technically that is happening today, however there are ways that developers are working on to make this process quicker and more efficient. Whether that be creating a more systematic way of training new employees about the new update, maybe creating worldwide training video’s on the new aspects the updated Revit creates, or basic videos that can help students or college graduates to make the transition easier.
Even though overall there has been a lot of positive feedback around the usage of BIM, there are always drawbacks with introducing new software to any industry. The future risks that come with BIM can be divided into two extremely broad categories, legal and technical. The first risk breaks down the lack of knowledge about whom own the BIM data and whose copyright laws will be needed to protect it along the way. An example that lays this out in a clear way is, if the owner is paying for the design, then the owner may feel entitled to own it, but if team members are providing proprietary information for use on the project, their proprietary information needs to be protected as well. This could cause potential issues down the road of which could land in court. The second risk focuses more on the contractual issue of who is in control of the entry of data into the model and whom will be responsible for any inaccuracies during the way. In the industry, it would seem that the principles would tak on these issues, but ensuring its accuracy does entail a great deal of risk and most of them practiced engineering with paper and pencil, thus creating a generation cap and some confusing shade of grey in this area.
Joe C - I really like how you integrated the topic the speaker and Professor Mitchell spoke about during this weeks class! Before this class I never would have thought about files from older versions of Revit could become obsolete in the future. I would hope database managers and BIM coordinators have already thought about this issue and have come to find a solution as I find it a pivotal to the progression of the industry. I also enjoy how you brought this question into a philosophical manner instead of just sticking to facts. By teaching an engineer how 'to fish' in different aspects of the design process makes them more valuable inside the work place.
Peter D - I never thought of using robotics in geotechnical engineering the way you described before reading your post! That's extremely neat how drones could possibly be utilized in the future to help survey the site conditions and send that information back to the office. I also like the different aspects that Revit could include in the future to better improve the program. As an engineer, I know that we design 'for the worst case' or maybe the coldest or hottest day of the year, but what about natural disasters? Or possibly a moment wear there is an irregular flux of people inside a building where more than one level filled up to capacity. Engineers may already design for these potential issues, I just haven't been apart of that discussion yet on Co-op.
Work Cited
- Slowey, K. (n.d.). How BIM is revolutionizing the construction industry. Retrieved January 26, 2017, from http://www.constructiondive.com/news/how-bim-is-revolutionizing-the-construction-industry/408617/
- Azar, S. (n.d.). Leadership and Management in Engineering. Retrieved January 26, 2017, from http://ascelibrary.org/doi/full/10.1061/(ASCE)LM.1943-5630.0000127
Peer Comments
Brandon M - The one problem/issue with Revit that you highlighted which I agree with is the lack of processing power inside computers. Even at work where they spend thousands of dollars on each computer's processing speed, I had some issues with how Revit would run at times. However, the computer processing power at work are bounds and leaps beyond the computers at Drexel as I have seen first hand doing the assignments which you spoke about. But my question to you is, where do you think Drexel is going to get the money to allocate for upgrading these computers? Design firms put a priority on keeping there systems in tip top shape, but there may be different priorities inside a school which would make us take a backseat in upgrades like these. Sometimes there are even budget cuts in programs or Drexel may design to put a ton of money in a different department (cough cough lebow) to further enrich our students and possibly pull more students to go to Drexel.
Joe C - I really like how you integrated the topic the speaker and Professor Mitchell spoke about during this weeks class! Before this class I never would have thought about files from older versions of Revit could become obsolete in the future. I would hope database managers and BIM coordinators have already thought about this issue and have come to find a solution as I find it a pivotal to the progression of the industry. I also enjoy how you brought this question into a philosophical manner instead of just sticking to facts. By teaching an engineer how 'to fish' in different aspects of the design process makes them more valuable inside the work place.
Peter D - I never thought of using robotics in geotechnical engineering the way you described before reading your post! That's extremely neat how drones could possibly be utilized in the future to help survey the site conditions and send that information back to the office. I also like the different aspects that Revit could include in the future to better improve the program. As an engineer, I know that we design 'for the worst case' or maybe the coldest or hottest day of the year, but what about natural disasters? Or possibly a moment wear there is an irregular flux of people inside a building where more than one level filled up to capacity. Engineers may already design for these potential issues, I just haven't been apart of that discussion yet on Co-op.
Drew - I agree the legal and technical issues that may come to the surface from the rise of BIM may lead to a lot of problems. A lot of companies are implementing strict intellectual property policies, and with people collaborating on a large BIM project, this may lead to people using ideas from the building in the future unknowingly and being reprimanded for it. In a scenario like this it will hard to tell what kind of action will be taken, but it could certainly end in innocent people being arrested.
ReplyDeleteDrew, I thought that the legal issues with BIM that you raised were particularly interesting. The problem of ownership of the model at the completion of a project is a bit of a puzzler. I can see it becoming especially complicated if BIM becomes further used for operation and management of buildings. If the model needs to be used continually over a building's lifetime, how should the ownership of the model be shared between owner, designer, and manager? It will be interesting to see how these issues are addressed as the industry moves forward with its adoption of BIM.
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