A former colleague of mine, who was in the process of starting her own one-person firm, told me “I never liked drafting, I’m hoping to get someone else to do that.” This comment drove me crazy. Production is key to good design. And BIM is production on steroids and PCP. I said nothing at the time, but wow. Maybe she was just trying to get me to leave her alone and didn’t really mean that. I hope so.

Delegation made sense in the past. Hand-drafting can be hugely time consuming. Mistakes and changes can absorb hours. But with BIM we can merge design and production into one. Design until you’re happy, clean up, note, print. True, an experienced hand-drafter who is also the designer can be just as efficient, to a point. But it’s the story of John Henry. That hand-drafter is better because his craft is superior, because the person is superior. But the steam shovel doesn’t need to sleep. It’s ready to dig the next tunnel. Progress can’t be stopped.

I have a coworker who still does everything by hand. He’s frustrated with computers because the results aren’t good enough–too slow, too ugly, too cold. He has 30+ years of experience behind his pencil. He knows what he’s doing. He knows what he wants to see. The ArchiCAD user he’s comparing against has a quarter of the experience and has only been using ArchiCAD for a few months. Of course that fails. He’s John Henry to the steam shovel that is a new ArchiCAD user.

Now imagine that same architect with 30 years of BIM experience. What can he produce? At what speed? Give John Henry a modern tool that takes advantages of his strengths. Now let’s see what happens. My coworker is probably at the peak of what hand-drafting can do. He’s reached the physical limit. He can’t get much more efficient with hand-drafting. But with a better tool –ArchiCAD– he could probably outproduce multi-person firms.