Does Technology Make Your Job Easier? Or More Complicated?

Building Information Modeling (BIM) is growing in popularity and importance. But most of the excitement, and implementation, is in the office. Managers, estimators, designers, and building engineers are finding myriad ways to use the technology, but what about the construction side?

One of the greatest assets of a good Building Information Model is improving the information available to tradesmen actually building a project – and gathering information from the tradesmen about actual conditions. After all, the whole purpose of BIM is not to make a pretty model – the purpose is to build a structure. Otherwise we are just creating 3-D art, right?

The mechanical side of the MEP trades, with all their controls and automation systems, has been quicker in embracing the available technology. Plumbers are less interested. The old saying, “Hot's on the left, cold's on the right, and shit don't flow uphill” speaks volumes. Generally the most high-tech thing a plumber has to worry about is an electronic sensor faucet or automatic flush valve.

Yet plumbing, in it's own way, is highly technical. But the stock and trade of a plumber is hydraulics – the flow of solids, liquids, and gases through pipes – not the flow of information within a computer program. And the available CAD and BIM systems are not very good at that. Plumbing codes and plumbing theory are complex, concerned with the flow in pipes by gravity or at very low pressures measured in inches of water column. Only a few years ago most CAD and BIM software didn't even allow for sloping pipe!

The tech is catching up, but slowly. We can slope pipe now in a 3-D model, and calculate flow-rates and pressure drop in water systems, but there is no check for code compliance. That is probably years off, and modeling the flow of solid wastes in the system is likely decades away. So models are created which are unworkable and the plumber in the field is left to interpret design intent and install the system by code, not the actual model. From the tradesman's point of view the model is no better than paper drawings and only adds unneeded complexity.

Bringing technology to the workplace, and the promise of increased productivity, first requires that the technology be useful to the person using it. As BIM and technology managers we must put our hardhats on and think like tradesmen. Some of us were tradesmen at one time, so that should be easy enough to do. And the more tradesmen who move up into BIM design and detailing the easier the transition to technology will be. Implementation of building technology in the trades is best when it comes from the field to the office, not the other way.

One of the technologies that is field ready right now is the Trimble system. It allows points from a model to be located on the jobsite. Plumbers can lay out pipe penetrations through the slab or floors assuring those pipes will be inside the walls when they are eventually built. Hitting a wall that won't be built for weeks, when you are standing in the middle of a dirt field with nothing to pull accurate measurements from, isn't as easy as plumbers make it look. Trimble solves that.

On the design and modeling side, the work around for the limits inherent in the available software is good old-fashioned experience and expertise. That means accessing the plumber's knowledge. And plumbers that are brought in to review and consult on the design are more comfortable using the model in the field. You get a better, more accurate model for your needs and the tradesmen have something they can actually use. The more we use the available technologies, the more comfortable we become with the technology.

As 3-D models, and the programs that produce them, become more accurate to real-world conditions the more useful they become. Eventually our BIM models will be exact representations of structures as built. But that will require complete integration by the men and women building those structures. Without the workers we just have a fancy CGI to look at. CAD became popular because it made design more efficient and made the designer's job easier. To take the next step into the field it must make the tradesman's job easier and more efficient.

I've written a lot on this blog about the potential of CAD and BIM technology in the workplace. Those potentials become realities day by day. We don't have perfect tools yet, and sometime the tools we have are nothing but a headache, but its getting better one innovation at a time. I know a lot of the tradesmen in the field would like to tell the folks in the office where they can stick their iPad at times, but we should look ahead and see what is possible.

I'll keep dreaming and sharing what can be, someday. Technology is transforming the plumbing industry in good ways and bad. The more involved plumbers are in that transformation the better it will be for the industry, and the tradesmen laying the pipes. To my brothers and sisters out there pulling wrenches and laying pipe, we're trying to make your job easier – we really are. Feedback is crucial. Tell us what you need, what works for you, and what doesn't.