I went to the September AIA BIM Breakfast. As anyone who’s talked to me about BIM knows, I’m a big fan of this group.

We were all supposed to bring examples of BIM requirements so we could discuss how they impact the project delivery process. Twenty people attended. One person brought in an example for a new prison facility. The BIM requirements for this project (when various levels of modeled content were required and what digital deliverables were asked for) felt easily attainable. I had assumed, incorrectly, that the institutional and commercial worlds were far ahead of residential architects regarding deliverables and modeling/information. If I followed my usual good policies, I was paralleling what was asked for in this example. My ArchiCAD models are robust enough to meet this government agency’s needs–that is, if they needed a new cabin and not a 600-inmate minimum security prison. So for me this was the good news of the meeting. Doing what I can to push the envelope on documentation and production within ArchiCAD while not changing the final deliverable (still just printed 18 x 24 or 24 x 36 sets), I’m at least keeping pace. I’ve not spent much time exporting to IFC or other more complex file formats, but that feels like a smaller hurdle and one which ArchiCAD can handle, so I’m not worried. Primarily you need stuff worthy of translating and sharing. If a savvy residential client appeared tomorrow and demanded a BIM deliverable, I’d be ready. That’s good to know. I’ve just yet to meet a residential contractor that can take advantage of this.

Enough good news and self-congratulations. Time to start this post over and be a little more pessimistic:

I went to the September AIA BIM Breakfast. As anyone who’s talked to me about BIM knows, I’m a big fan of this group.

We were all supposed to bring examples of BIM requirements so we could discuss how they impact the project delivery process. Twenty people attended. One person brought an example. Five guys showed up dressed nicer than the guests at the last two weddings I went to. Solid color shirts and ties, nice suits, shiny shoes. One of them opted for a slick vest, fully buttoned, instead of his compatriots’ suit coats. The five of them all sat in a group on one side of the room and had lots of valuable input. They were Autodesk reps. Another handful of attendees were miscellaneous BIM consultants. Then there were the engineers. And contractors. All of them in the American Institute of Architects Minnesota boardroom. To round out the group there were five architects. And of those five architects, two of us were also software vendors. So at an AIA meeting, only 25% of the attendees were architects. This is typical of our group. An interdisciplinary group is great. In fact, as we BIM fanatics will rant, it’s integral to our success. But… it’s just one more example of the architect’s role being marginalized. There were as many Autodesk reps as architects in this meeting. That makes me comfortable about the future. (Sarcasm comes across in blog posts, right?)

We need more architects taking this paradigm shift in our industry with the gravity it deserves.