Revit Demands – Part 1 – Think Again

BIM is a disruptive technology. Revit is a disruptive tool.

According to Wikipedia ” A disruptive technology or disruptive innovation is a technological innovation, product, or service that uses a “disruptive” strategy, rather than a “sustaining” strategy, to overturn the existing dominant technologies or status quo products in a market. Disruptive innovations can be broadly classified into low-end and new-market disruptive innovations. A new-market disruptive innovation is often aimed at non-consumption, whereas a lower-end disruptive innovation is aimed at mainstream customers who were ignored by established companies. Sometimes, a disruptive technology comes to dominate an existing market by either filling a role in a new market that the older technology could not fill (as more expensive, lower capacity but smaller-sized hard disks did for newly developed notebook computers in the 1980s) or by successively moving up-market through performance improvements until finally displacing the market incumbents (as digital photography has begun to replace film photography).”

BIM is displacing CAD in some arenas. Or at the very least it is attempting to fulfill the promise of CAD.

As such, BIM requires a new way of thinking and challenges the status quo. Here are a few areas that I see as being disrupted by Revit.

Workflow – just the way we get things done is impacted by BIM. BIM demands that we change the way we work. No longer can we use the tried and true. We must create a “new true”. Approaching BIM from a CAD mindset may get you into trouble. It may prevent you from seeing any benefit from Revit. Trying to fit Revit into your CAD world is like Ross trying to get back into his leather pants.

Old Habits – Toss them out. We need to create new habits. The old ones don’t work anymore. Working in Revit will force changes on the old way of doing things.

Project Teams – they are smaller than on CAD projects. Two or three people can do the work of 5-6. Because Revit does so much with so few software demands, there is no need for multiple people doing the same thing.

Coordination – With Revit and tools like NavisWorks and IFC’s and links to other Revit models and SketchUp, coordinating between disciplines and others becomes easier.

Levels of Design Detail – Where do you draw the line? Since we are no longer drawing lines, we need to define what is enough, not enough and too much detail in a model.

Financial Flow – changes to when the labor hours are spent and billing the client earlier in the process have to be rethought. If 25% more of your hours are going into SD and DD phases, you will be chasing the dollars unless you bill the client sooner.

Many more areas need to be investigated again as we move deeper into the tools for BIM and change the workflow of our design teams.