reImagine
Driving Technical Delivery
The reImagine campaign seized the opportunity to rethink the typical workflow of a project by leveraging the power of BIM. Revit's 3D modeling environment had eliminated a lot of mindless chores from the design process, especially in the documentation phase,allowing teams more time to focus on the more strategic aspects of delivery. Instead of inputting column grid values and room tag values, (which Revit handles automatically) teams were able to turn their attention to more tactical actions. Also, Revit models were created with system families which are entire assemblies rather than single lines. What would now be possible with the new time we gained from the new technology?
We looked at numerous aspects that impacted delivery: tools and software, technical standards, behaviors, and staff mix,. It soon became clear that much of what would power reImagine was going to be driven by behaviors - individual commitments we would make to use the tools in very specific ways, and in a very deliberate sequence. We identified six distinct behaviors that in combination would create a powerful workflow to crate a 'do it once' workflow.The image above is a process map of the life cycle of a project which showed how the use of tools was balanced with behaviors that guided their use.
Six Behaviors
Each of the six behaviors dealt with a specific trait or aspect that we needed teams to become fluent in. They spanned between ways to leverage Revit's object technology, to timeless issues about teams and leadership.
- Day One Thinking: This behavior was critical to project success. Most teams lost momentum when they had to change direction in mid-production because they had missed something they could have foreseen. So Day One was a commitment to look at key project drivers from the earliest stage and to look for "show-stoppers" that needed to be watched for as the project went ahead.
- Live Sets: Because Revit is a single file from which all the deliverables are produced, it was now possible to create a cartoon set of the entire submission very early on. This behavior was a commitment to create a set of deliverables and to keep updating them and printing them as the project progressed to aid in coordination, and estimates of completion.
- Active QM: The problem with traditional QM is that it is like closing the barn door after the horse has bolted. QM that occurs at the end of a project is actually not the best way. Building on the previous behavior of Live sets , it was now possible to conduct QM as an ongoing activity on the live Set. We named this Active QM. Milestone QM still occurred , but it was much less disruptive as most of the issues could be picked up by the daily QM.
- Active Coordination: I am not a big proponent of clash detection; clash detection is again like fixing problems after they have occurred, rather than looking to prevent them. Active Coordination was a commitment to coordinate upfront, to plan where utilities would run and then keeping them in that zone. Yes, clash detection is valuable, and I wouldn't be without it, but the clashes detected should be minor.
- Everyone Leads: This is a timeless behavior; on high performing teams they are no leaders or followers, there are only leaders who know how to work as a team. In the BIM world we needed team members to lead when they needed to, and not assume that 'someone else' would notice an issue, or 'take care of it'.
- Lean Documentation: This is one of my favorite behaviors, and it totally revolutionized the speed for us to complete documents. Instead of mindlessly repeating information on assemblies throughout a document set, lean documentation was a process to define assemblies once, and reference them multiple times to greatly speed the flow of information.
High Performing Teams
The critical result of reImagine was that it bridged technical aspects, digital tools and human behaviors.