Play Nice in the Sandbox
You don’t know me, but I bet you know someone just like me: A design professional, someone who likes working in BIM (you are reading this magazine, after all), who was maybe even an early adopter of the technology. I’m guessing that you, our reader, are either a regular BIM user or hope to become one. I’m also guessing you are not the principle of the firm, but wish that those principles listened more to your input, especially when it comes to collaborating and working with others.
A quick search of Google will bring up a never-ending stream of software, articles, and advice on collaborating better with BIM. They talk about the “cloud,” they talk about “sharing,” and they even occasionally mention humans. They sometimes bring up the subject of attorneys (gasp!), but if they don’t, make no mistake that the thought hangs over the conversation like a dark shadow. Finally, all of this guidance is devoid of one thing, which is what does it actually mean if you are just trying to get the job out the door so you can get into the next one. We know the goal is to make more $$ somehow, and hopefully that means more raises and happy hours, but aside from that, why do we actually need to do it?
Let’s talk about why, in spite of having some of the best collaboration tools ever (Revit®, Navisworks®, etc.), true collaboration still has little to do with technology, and everything to do with your childhood? At the end of the day it is about sandboxes.
The Box
The sandbox on the playground is a potential kill zone. There are pecking orders, turf wars, and arguments over who owns which toys. Alliances form and dissolve in minutes, and at the end of the day someone is trying to win control, possibly to the detriment of other kids. Our projects are nothing more than grown up sandboxes. There are egos, fights for leverage and control, and high stakes—both personal and professional. The same things that rule the sandbox rule the project. Protect your friends, stifle your enemies, and above all, never give up control of the box.
This has worked for decades in our industry, and shows little sign of changing quickly. Design teams build elaborate plans and strategies to control the builder and make sure “he does what he is supposed to do.” They learn from previous failures of strategy, and are always looking to add another layer of protection (spec writers out there, unite!).
So principals, managers, and corporate attorneys ask, “Why change?” and ponder why collaborating will make their lives better or more profitable. “Why should we buy all this new software, just so I can give the builder more information? What has he done for me, and won’t he just use it against me anyway?”
Builders would love more collaboration, but as historical whipping boys of the industry, they don’t always have the trust connections with the designers that collaboration demands.
Does Revit, with its nifty integration of all the parts we use to build a project, solve this problem? Maybe not entirely, but it certainly has provided us with numerous additional tools to make working together easier.
From BIM meetings on Navisworks, to model sharing during design with our CM and GC, we have come a long way to helping us all visualize the project together. The tools to achieve true collaboration are here and available to us, and the rules by which to use them were learned in the sandbox.
Make Friends
As simple as it sounds, this is the critical first step. Friends watch out for each other and trust each other to cover for them. The project team needs, before anything else, to achieve this “friendship.” It doesn’t mean you have to go out for a beer with each other (although….), but is does mean that there must be trust. Trust is how friendships start and how they end. It is also how project teams succeed and how they fail.
In the project world, the trust is sometimes written down (“the agreement”), but is mostly about understanding that everyone has needs, and the best way to make sure everyone succeeds is to be nice to one another. Listen more, talk less. Walk in each other’s shoes, and try to protect the interest of others as well as our own. Assume that everyone wants to make a profit and that we should encourage everyone to do so. Fights do not lead to more work—success does.
Production staff is generally much better at collaborating than managers or principles, so the lesson here is let them do their jobs, and don’t create reasons not to talk. We encourage open discussion amongst all members of the team, and while we document conversations, we do so after the details are talked through. Using Revit Structure, we regularly output models to those who are comfortable using them, and output 3D PDF files to those who are not. Our data is the framework around which the entire building is constructed, so the quicker we can share this information, the faster and more efficient the team can be.
Share Toys
We don’t have good toys in the AEC world, but we do have tons of information. We have rich worlds of data, and they get better and cooler every year. The answer for collaboration is to share! I don’t mean give out snippets, or dumbed-down versions. I mean to share data openly and freely; be the Tesla of the design world and let everyone see your “secrets”!
“But how can we let our proprietary info go?” you ask. Guess what—no one cares about your standards, and no one’s model is special. We have released hundreds of Revit models over the years, and have had only good come from that. I suspect your experience will be the same.
Sharing your model will win you more friends (see previous paragraphs). You will find that a builder is better able to understand your vision, and if it means you have dirty underwear (those who cheat the model), well maybe it’s time to think about washing those undies and stop cheating. Revit has come a long way, and there is no good reason not to model correctly anymore. Builders want you to be happy with their work because they want the next job. Work with them, and share like a good kid.
Make the Bad Kids Leave
In many projects, there is one player that screws things up. One bully or sneak who tries to get everything for himself. It’s that antisocial kid in the sandbox who plays people against each other, or who always has to have his own way. Get rid of this person. If not on this project, then on the next one.
Architects, stop hiring the subconsultant everyone hates. The one who takes pride in sticking it to the contractor. The one who just will not switch to Revit because it “doesn’t make sense for him.” (By the way, architects, don’t be the bad kid; you are supposed to be the cool kids with fun ideas.) Builders, don’t tolerate subs who don’t do their jobs, and be willing to hold them accountable. Remember that the one who stands up to the nasty kid is a hero in everyone’s eyes, especially the teacher (owner). If we as an industry were better at self-policing, we would need fewer barriers, and we would collaborate and cooperate better.
The More Helpers, the Bigger the Castle
Not to restate the obvious, but a team that collaborates better is more likely to deliver a better job, which leads to happy owners, which leads to more jobs. Working together is ALWAYS the best solution, even if there is an argument. We have a rule on our project teams that all fights are worked out within the team (including the construction team!) prior to going to the owner, and the owner is presented with solutions to issues, not just issues.
This has gotten much easier. Sometimes we are sitting in a room looking at a Navisworks model, sometimes it is an email exchange of snapshots out of Revit. This has been successful over hundreds of jobs, and in fifteen years of working together with our best client, we have yet to have a serious dispute with another team member that did not find a balanced resolution.
While BIM software has helped us to share more efficiently and has given us numerous tools to collaborate, it has done squat to teach us how. We learned that skill back in grade school, and would do well to keep that in mind. No matter what happens in our industry with the technology and tools, we all started out as kids, and kids have played by the same rules for thousands of years.
Josh Carney is a practicing structural engineer and president of Carney Engineering Group, Inc. in York, Pennsylvania, and Baltimore, Maryland. He was a very early Revit Structure convert, and believer in BIM as a game-changing technology. He has a wife and two children who teach him about how to play nice.
