How Much is BIM Going to Cost?

If you've looked into the cost of available BIM software you probably have sticker shock. BIM software can run into the thousands, even tens-of-thousands of dollars. Then you have training. Add some more digits. And the cost of another employee to run it all. It may not seem worth the investment. But let's step back and take a realistic look.

You can get the full Autodesk Building Design Suite (Premium) for around $450 a month. Think about that, and put it into perspective. How much do you spend to rent a mini excavator for a week? Twice that at least. We're only talking $100 a week! Less than what that piece of equipment costs per day. And how much are you paying the operator?

That's not a big investment, and like every other job expense – from men, to equipment, to material – your computers and BIM software should be in your bid price. It's a cost associated with the job, and often, in my experience, contractors ask for it to be priced separately. I often see a request to price an alternate to the project bid to cover “Design Assist” and/or “BIM Coordination”. That's your software, hardware, and manpower!

If you've looked into software training, that can be a big expense which probably can't be billed to a specific project. But then again so is safety training, training helpers into plumbers, or teaching someone to run an excavator. To be competitive, productive, and profitable going forward all of your employees need different levels of ongoing training and continuing education. With the rise of technology in the construction industry tech training is a part of that.

Our industry is always evolving and moving forward. That's nothing new. I've mentioned on this blog before how my father swore he “would never put a band-aid on cast iron pipe.” He did. No-hub became the new standard. He started out using lead and oakum and by the time I was his helper we were even using a little PVC. He called it “Glue-pipe.” New products require new skills and new standards.

CAD has been used for decades in design, but in the field tradesmen still relied on paper drawings. BIM has pushed that technology beyond design into the hands of the builders – first in estimating and management and now into the field with computerized lay-out and 3-D models on iPads. A well trained plumber was once required to read and work from blueprints. More and more today a well trained plumber needs to work from 3-D models and electronic documents.

The cost of not adopting the emerging technology outweighs the cost of implementing it. As general contractors and owners demand 3-D models and electronic documentation as part of their contracts the only choice becomes whether to perform the work in-house or sub it out. The cost of both are comparable, but over the long run having the capabilities throughout your workforce will add to your companies flexibility, capability, and bottom line.

But you don't need to jump in all at once. Like any other investment in your business you need to weigh cost-to-benefit and grow your IT just like you grow your business. Every business is unique. Look at your work, your people, your future, and plan ahead. You can sub a few jobs out while you train your employees and get them comfortable with new procedures and capabilities. Or add a little at a time, project by project, just like buying new tools or equipment.

Every day construction technology is improving and becoming more common in the industry. Companies and tradesmen who adapt and embrace the new tools will thrive and profit. Those who are stuck in the old ways of doing business will find themselves struggling to catch-up or unable to compete. If an old plumber from my father's day hadn't learned to use no-hub bands and 'glue-pipe' he would have gone out of business pretty quickly. Running a project these days without BIM is like hand digging all your ditches. Good luck with that.

If you have questions drop me an email, or comment below. I'm happy to help.

How Can The Internet Profit Your Business Model?

I recently started looking into local plumbing companies just to see what kind of presence they have online. I searched the white pages, the yellow pages, google, yahoo, yelp... I found a handful of plumbing contractors and very little information on those. If I were an owner or general contractor, new to the area and looking for a reputable plumbing contractor to bid on work, I would think Charlotte only has drain cleaning companies.

I found plenty of those.

I'm from Charlotte. Even companies I know to be big players in the local industry appeared, by their online presence, to be small service companies. They use the internet to advertise, and apparently they believe that only applies to service work, not contracting. One of the companies had a web site, most didn't, but all they had on their site was a splash page devoted to repair and drain cleaning—and contact info for their service department.

The internet, and your website, can do more than advertise your service department!

Your website can be a hub for your employees, customers, and contractors. Your site can have private, password protected areas accessible to different groups—from an area where your employees can view everything from their insurance information to your companies vacation/events calendar to an area where contractors can view your training docs, your policies and procedures, or whatever you need them to have access to.

The internet isn't a one page ad in the newspaper or phone book. It isn't a thirty-second radio or TV spot. It can be both, but it's a whole lot more!

That public splash page should be more than an ad for your service department. It should make your whole company shine, with jobs you've done, awards you've received, employees with special training, charities you support. Whatever makes your business unique and stellar should be there. Contractors should want you bidding on their projects. Customers should be searching for that service department contact info because they want to give you their business.

A good website can make your company shine, and it can be an asset to your company rather than a debit to the advertising budget.

Imagine your website as your company's hub in the world market. It's your virtual office. Your communication center. The driving force making you more efficient, more precise, and more profitable. You can have online meetings with employees. Let potential employees fill out an application. Offer information to potential contractors who might be in other cities, but are bidding work right down the street. Your website is your company—at the next level.

It's not that hard to make it all happen and even easier to maintain once you have the pieces in place.

Today the average plumbing contractor is a decade behind the average business in technology. They are a good five years behind engineers, architects, and general contractors. Most of what you need to catch up and get a big edge on your competition isn't cutting edge technology—isn't expensive—and isn't hard to use. If you can surf the web and handle email – and you apparently found this blog – you can manage a basic corporate website.

Step into the twenty-first century. Technology is a tool of modern business. We can do more with our computers than play solitaire while we wait for the phone to ring. You have a computer, an email account, and you're already paying for internet service. Use it to make your business more productive, and more profitable.

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2015 - The Future of the Construction Industry

Imagine the future of construction...

You get a BIM model in your morning email from a GC wanting a price. You look over the model, export the material schedules in a spread sheet, and email them to a couple of suppliers for quotes. You get the quotes back, pick the one you want, and import the revised spreadsheet back into the model. Your BIM software updates the material types with the suppliers prices, applies your proprietary filters to add labor costs, overhead, and profits, then outputs a total bid price. You email your bid to the GC.

You've spent less than thirty minutes of your time processing the bid. Most of that time was spent emailing and pouring a cup of coffee. Of course you've done your homework and have all the settings and filters for your BIM software in a file ready to apply. You use them on every job, and at the end you adjust them, but we'll get to that in a moment. If you don't get the job, there is little lost time involved, but you nailed it so we move on.

You take a little time now. You go through the model in more detail and familiarize yourself with the whole project. If you see any problems, you immediately send off an RFI to the GC for clarification. Any cost impacts are documented and the model is updated as needed. The GC schedules the first of many coordination meetings and you get to work. Coordination can be a long or short process depending on the scope and complexity of the project. And the players involved.

Coordination is at times like a negotiation. Each contractor works to assure their space in the building. The mechanical contractor needs his duct work in the same space the electrical contractor needs his main rack of conduit, which is right where the plumber needs to run his main overhead trunk line. It's give and take, but much more efficient now than with crews standing around in the field scratching their heads. You document everything, keep sending RFI's and cost adjustments, and keep updating the model. It starts coming together and the GC is ready to build.

Depending on your company structure and size the package might be handed off to a project manager after the estimator's bid, then to a coordinator, and now to a construction manager, but for simplicity we'll assume you're a one person show and you're taking it to the end. You assemble your team and brief them on the project scope.

The coordinated model is in the cloud, so all your people have access to it on their hand-held devices. You discuss logistics, schedules, and how you plan to proceed. Your team, the people who will actually do the physical work of building the project, offer their ideas and point out problems, or better solutions, the coordination team missed. You note it all for the next coordination meeting. You take your lead foreman with you to the first on site job meeting.

On site everyone is wearing their safety gear and their glasses. It's an open field, but through your glasses you can see the building model in full scale. You notice the weed covered rock outcropping right where the commercial kitchen, and a lot of your underground piping, will be. The GC raises the model exposing the below grade footers and pipe. It confirms your assessment and the mass of pipe in that location.

The GC orders a geological survey and has the results in the model for the next coordination meeting. They plan to do some blasting and undercut the problem areas before construction begins. You archive the geo-model for future use in case your team runs into problems when they start digging. You also remind the GC of the rock clause in your contract.

Construction begins and your team starts excavations. Your equipment operators have the geo-model and the building model plugged into their devices to guide them. Your pipe crews can see the underground piping in the model through their glasses and they place the real pipe exactly as it appears in the model. Work proceeds quickly and efficiently. Material is delivered to the site as needed, the BIM is updated as the installation proceeds, so you always know exactly where you stand in the schedule.

The building grows and other trades are on site working. Your crews and their crews can see each others work represented in the model through their glasses. Your foreman continues to coordinate with the schedule so everything is installed at the proper time—a section of pipe is left out so the mechanical contractor can hang a piece of duct, then fitted in later. Everything proceeds smoothly, and everyone can see exactly where their work is heading.

You attend weekly meetings online from your office and your on site foremen take you on virtual tours allowing you to see through their glasses. If any problems arise your workers can call and you are there instantly, seeing the problem from various viewpoints through their glasses and discussing it with your crew over speaker phone. You are managing a dozen jobs at once easier than you could one job ten years ago, and everything is being recorded and documented for analysis later—making the next project even more efficient.

Your foreman has updated the model in real time with any changes during construction, as have other trades, so at the end of the project the model represents the building as-built. You sit down and go over all of the data and find places you can improve your settings and filters for your BIM software on the front end and make your initial bid even tighter on the next project. You look for ways your people can be more efficient, and how you can support them better going forward. On each project you find less to change because your business is becoming more and more efficient and profitable with every project.

Now this isn't over the rainbow. Every piece of technology mentioned in this article is available today. Contractors are adding tech project-by-project. The early adopters have an edge and will keep their edge as the technology is used more and more. Everyone is talking BIM now and those who started with the software five years ago have an advantage. Contractors who refuse to adapt, or who use the technology only reluctantly, are falling behind. Those who refuse to use it are losing work.

Stay with me and I'll help you keep on the cutting edge of what's possible. Click the link and subscribe to the blog for updates or drop me an email and get inside info before it hits the blog. The future of technology in the building industry is exciting for managers and tradesmen. Don't be left behind.

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Why Do You Need a Plumber for BIM?

The state of the art in BIM design is changing how we manage projects. But where does all that information come from in your Building Information Model? What BIM can do for you is only as good as the information it gives you. Remember the old saying, “Garbage in. Garbage out.” Your model must be a true representation of what will actually be constructed by tradesmen. In plumbing, state of the art BIM ain't all that!

The standard package BIM software comes with elbows and tees—fine if you are modeling small size pressure pipe for water distribution, but that's not where you need it most. As a plumbing contractor, what you need is a realistic sanitary system for coordination and take-offs. That sewer line is worthless with tees and nineties. As tradesmen we know there is a big difference in the area a long radius sweep or a combination takes than a quarter bend or a sanitary tee.

To design a true to life model that represents field conditions in coordination and real world materials for take-offs you need one of the guys who install plumbing systems for a living—someone who knows what pipe and fittings those tradesmen are going to use. An engineer may throw in a standard elbow for the design drawings, and that works fine for a blueprint, but your man in the field needs a sweep and you need to count the sweeps and quarter bends separately on your take-off.

BIM can streamline your work and make the whole job flow more efficient, but you need some work on the front end to create a realistic model that will provide you and your men accurate information. You need a plumber! Someone needs to sit down with the model, check all the fittings, streamline the design, and key in all the data for schedules so your take-offs represent what your actually want to prefab or order. Then your tradesmen in the field can use the model to make their job more efficient and make you more money!

BIM is a fantastic tool for the construction industry, that is why so many contractors are moving to it. As a plumbing / piping contractor you need to make sure the information you need is in there so it can work for you. I've been told the plumbing/piping technology in the average BIM software is as much as ten years behind the architectural/mechanical technology. It is up to us to plug in that expertise that hasn't been programmed in yet. Plumbing codes and practices are complicated. There is no replacement for the experience of a plumber in pipe design.

You Need a Plumber!

BIMing the Real World

Autodesk Revit is a great tool for design and coordination on BIM projects, but it needs a little creative thought to be realistic. The stock joins, tees and elbows, are fine for layout and design, and work well for pressure lines. They even do okay for producing line drawings. But when it comes to coordination in tight spaces every plumber knows there is a big difference in the space a tee takes out and the space a combination requires. And if you want to take full advantage of BIM in your take-offs and material schedules you need the right fittings in your model.

Charlotte Pipe andFoundry has great resources for your needs. They provide Revit families for every fitting they produce – cast iron and PVC. Plug these families into your models before you start designing and it's a lot easier to produce a solid, realistic model you can use in coordination and material take-offs. It doesn't take a lot of work, only a little advance planning. Trust me. It's a lot easier to plug in the right fitting from the start than to go back and edit a model that has nighties and tees where there should be sweeps and combinations.

The process is simple. Charlotte Pipe'swebsite has walk-throughs. You should start by downloading the Revit families, then load them into Revit. I keep a separate folder to make the official families easy to access. You also need to add the .csv files to your look-up tables so Revit can find the info it needs for sizing the fittings. Once you have the fittings you need loaded open the settings and edit how revit makes connections. The default will be set to standard elbows and tees – change that to the quarter bends and sanitary tees you downloaded if you are modeling vents or sweeps and combinations if you're working on drainage.

If you are concentrating on modeling one system at a time it works great! Intersect two pipes and revit sticks in a cast iron or PVC sweep or combination to make the connection. Done. If you go vertical and want a san. tee instead of a combo it's simple to change the fitting for that one placement with a couple of mouse clicks. When you change over to vent piping, just go back into the settings and change the sweeps and combos to quarter bends and san.tees and all your connections will use those fittings. With a little advance planning and proper settings all your fittings will be true representations of what will be installed in the field.

Once you have your model built using the correct fittings, coordination is much more useful. That standard elbow may look just fine turning out of the wall an inch below that duct, but the radius of a quarter bend is going to cut into the ceiling grid. Better to know that now than when someone tries to install it in the field and a vent or a duct has to be re-routed. You can also build a fitting schedule and revit will tell you how many san. tees and combinations you'll need to purchase instead of telling you to buy a bunch of standard tees!

Revit is all about the settings. Take the time to get everything set up before you start modeling – proper fittings and settings – and you'll love the results. Revit can be a great tool for coordination and material takeoffs if you use the right fittings in the right places. And don't neglect the settings! You have abundant control of revit's default behaviors, use it. Going back to change tees to combos later is a monumental waste of time. Do it right the first time.

One final note: You can create your own default settings and import them into each new project. That will save you tons of time up front when you start a new project. If you are a plumbing designer you are going to want all your fittings and basic settings available on everything you do, so take the time and make a settings file.

A Plumber's Guide to BIM

 

The best thing since no-hub bands?

Back when I was a kid I remember my father saying, “I'm not putting a band-aid on cast iron pipe!” Times change. I know a lot of good plumbers these days who've never poured a lead joint, much less wiped a joint. The industry changes and our skills as craftsmen change.

BIM stands for Building Information Modeling. BIM is the next step beyond CAD drawings and 3D modeling. BIM adds layers of information and is sometimes called 5D design. In BIM all of the submittals, specs, and product data we printed up and put in binders for the architects, engineers, and owners are incorporated into a three dimensional representation of our work. But that's only four dimensions.

Time is the fifth dimension of BIM. The BIM model contains a realistic virtual installation of our piping systems, tagged with all of the information I mentioned, which we can use to extract material and labor calculations and cost estimates. In our BIM model we can bring together all of the information and data we use to bid the job, buy the job, install the work, and bill for our services. We can make accurate cost projections and realistic work schedules – then we can track progress along the way.

To do all of this we need a good, accurate model. Unfortunately the level of development in the industry has the MEP trades far behind the curve, and the plumbing industry is years behind Mechanical and Electrical. I work in Autodesk Revit and NavisWorks, but all the current design software available suffers the same limitations. In Revit the standard fittings are limited to tees and nineties.

Pipe can be sloped in Revit, but there aren't standard representations available of the wide range of pipe fittings used in the industry. You can add custom fittings to the program, but the program doesn't understand when to use them properly. The promise of quick material take-offs falls flat with a list of tees and nineties when what you need is a list of combinations, wyes, sweeps, quarter bends, eighth bends... And what about all those no-hub bands?

Mechanical and Plumbing Engineers design piping systems. They often leave the details of which fittings are used to meet code and create a properly working drainage system to plumbers in the field. If you are working with an architect and engineer who are using a 3D modeling program to design the building and a contractor who is using BIM to coordinate the work and provide documentation to the owner, you are likely to get a model with the standard tees and nineties that ship with the software, not an accurate representation of how you will install the plumbing system.

These powerful 3D models can tell you how many yards of concrete is in the building, how many feet of pipe you'll need, and in the case of water pipe how many tees and nineties are needed. (Though in the case of tees you will probably get a list of tees and reducers not reducing tees) In the coordination phase you can see if your pipes are conflicting with other trades, but as we know there is a big difference in the radius of a standard ninety or tee and that of a sweep or combination. And often that makes all the difference in tight spaces.

If your contract requires a realistic as-built model, with all the product data plugged in, you'll have a lot of work to do changing all those standard tees to combinations and sanitary tees. But it takes a plumber to pipe a building, even a virtual 3D representation of a building. This is where plumbers need to step up and claim the future. It should be the plumbers job to realistically pipe the model, not the engineer. You can go to manufacturer's websites, and in some cases supply house websites, to get all the add on content you need – from realistic fittings to exact 3D models of fixtures and trim – to use in your model.

Like the no-hub band, BIM will revolutionize the industry. Plumbers can embrace the new technology and leverage it for increased demand for our expertise and increased profits for our companies or we can ask the engineers to put our fittings in for us and we will just become robotic installers. BIM is here. Technology will become more and more integrated into the working environment. It is up to plumbers and the plumbing industry to use that technology to move our industry forward.

What's a BIM?

I've heard that line over and over -- "What's a BIM?" BIM stands for Building Information Modeling and is sometimes referred to as 5D design. We all know what 3D design is, we live in a 3D world, but what is 5D? In BIM we incorporate a three dimensional model of a project with all the information associated with that project -- specs, product data, submittals, manufacturer data, OEM manuals -- and we add time and labor estimates and statistics as well as resource management.

BIM gives us a preview at what the project will look like, what material it will take to complete, what it will cost to build, and even future maintenance costs. We can schedule construction labor, project material needs, even calculate ongoing utility usage once the building is occupied. We can track our labor and material through construction and use that to evaluate our bid and fine tune future estimates. We can virtually build the building before we break ground and document every phase of construction as we proceed.

One of the major uses of BIM in the industry today is coordination between trades and scheduling the work efficiently. With our 3D models we can see conflicts before the piping starts and avoid them. We can also schedule which trade needs to work in an area, when, and avoid labor stacking conflicts. This saves both time and material. We can then provide this information to our workers for more efficient installation.

Here on the Plumbers Guide to BIM I will look at the cutting edge of design/build technology effecting the plumbing industry.