Getting Started

Completing a BIM project successfully has just as much to do with how well your team functions and communicates as it does with how well you model. Understanding what each team member's skill level, modeling responsibility (in their mind and in your mind), workflow expectations, and goals will help everyone to come together to produce a better product. To that end, at the onset of a job where more than one discipline will be producing a design model (Revit or otherwise), there needs to be a BIM kick-off meeting.

To help guide that meeting, we've created a BIM kick-off form. It's saved on the server at CADD:\MME Revit Content\MME Library\General\BIM Kick-Off.doc and it's also in the new project subfolders under wordproc\status.

This form isn't the end-all, be-all of BIM guidelines. If you're working with a contractor that will be using the BIM for takeoffs, clash detection, and 4d and 5d simulation, this little form won't begin to cut it. Hopefully, they'll have a more in-depth form that will put everyone on the same page. We've simply created this form as a means to get all the info and expectations up front that we as engineers need to do our jobs with the least amount of headache. There's nothing worse than finding out one week prior to a deadline that the architect or contractor expected all the rebar or duct hangers to be modeled.

Think of this more as a way of getting started on the right foot.