image: www.autodesk.com
Let us consider a project that begins today. Very roughly, the procedure will be as follows: the various designers (architects, structural engineers etc) design the project and produce a series of drawings which they deliver to the contractor, providing him/her with the necessary information to carry out the construction. The contractor receives the drawings, does the construction work and delivers the building to the owner, who is now required to manage the O&M phase. How much information was lost during this process?
Losses of information during hand-over between the different phases
Seldom is this realized at the beginning of the project; the painful realization comes only later in the process, and it mainly concerns the owner who is left without the information he/she needs to manage the facility properly.
Preventing vs curing
If the owner does not decide to simply give up after the painful realization, he/she will make an effort to “cure”. This effort will probably require some of the staff to be sent to the warehouse, unpack the boxes left that the contractors and vendors left there when the construction was completed, find the manuals of the various machines operating in the facility and input their technical features in Computerized Maintenance Management Systems (CMMS). We are talking about a costly process that can take years.
Prevention, on the other hand, advocates for a proactive approach: to begin designing and constructing the project keeping the end in mind: the Operations / Maintenance phase, and gathering the required information from early on.
The service
The service is based on an innovative platform (see here) that facilitates precisely this: it provides a specific information exchange framework across the lifecycle of the project, in which all associated parties are to input the information that will be required in the future. So, when the constructed project is delivered to the owner, it is delivered with all the information required for its effective and efficient Facility Management.
Diving deeper: towards understanding the dialectic of project’s life cycle
The typical approach treats the lifecycle of a project as a as a linear, one-way sequence of independent phases.
Of course, no one can disagree with the fact that the decisions made during the O/M phase are affected by the decisions made in the previous phases. Could it be, though, that the decisions of the O/M phase cannot only be affected by the decisions of the previous phases, but also affect them, as well?
And what benefits can such a proactive approach bring? This question causes a lot of excitement to a number of directors of the BIM departments of major construction companies across northern Europe at the time...
To whom this service is addressed
To the vanguard of the construction industry, whether architects, civil engineers, contractors or owners. To those who are able to grasp the importance of BIM and want to upgrade their practices, upgrading at the same time the quality and value of their services.