Navigating Revit Projects: Best Practices for Project Managers in BIM

Hello and welcome to the CAD Teacher VDCI video series for Revit Project Management. In this video, we are going to discuss the role of the Project Manager and how it relates to a BIM project. A lot of the concepts are the same, but there are some things we might want to consider changing to increase our productivity and take full advantage of the new tools we have at our disposal.

So, the primary role of the PM is to manage, and this should be taking place on multiple levels. First, we will look at the expectations, and those of the most important team member, the expectations of the client. The concept of BIM is not a new one and has been around long enough to conjure up some myths about what it is capable of doing.

While we are able to increase efficiency in many areas, BIM is not the answer to all problems. While it is fast and efficient, it isn't the easy button that some clients might expect it to be. The expectations of the team also need to be looked at.

Some team members may only want to use Revit for generating a model to convey concepts, but prefer to do their construction documents in AutoCAD, or may not want to use Revit at all. On the other hand of the spectrum, some of the design team members will want to dive in head first and model door hinges and lock sets, which is not the way to go. We will discuss overmodeling a little later.

So, having a good understanding of the BIM project workflow will help keep the design team on the same page. Managing project scope is not a new concept, and it will continue to be a topic of discussion for years to come. This is critical.

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Because of the speed and efficiency of Revit, it is easy to say that it will only take a few minutes to model things that may not normally be within your scope. But within your normal scope, you wouldn't be asked to model door stops, so you should really question how it falls into your scope of work before proceeding. Just like project scope, managing the schedule is a major part of any project.

But understanding the shift in workflow, and the benefit of creating a good model up front, and how it relates to faster revisions, more efficient coordination, and increased accuracy is key to managing the schedule for a BIM project. Now we're going to take a look at how we manage our deliverables, and more specifically, our construction documents, both physical and digital copies. With the new software available to us, we can finally put into practice the promise we made years ago to use less paper.

Using tools like Autodesk Design Review and Adobe Acrobat gives us the tools necessary to digitally mark up and review drawings and construction submittals. As a PM, if you understand how documents are put together, then you will know that identifying a correction in one area of the set often means finding it throughout the drawing set, which means it only needs to be identified and picked up once. All this adds up to less time, which equals less operating costs, which is always a good thing.

With a tool like Autodesk Design Review, red lines can be overlaid on Revit sheets, and then digitally highlighted and confirmed within Revit. How we distribute files is something I get asked all the time. The big difference here is when we distribute backgrounds, we aren't just sending a floor plan or a roof plan.

It is the entire project, with all of our sheets and details and notes, all sent within the Revit model. I like this because it eliminates redundancy between designers. If Mechanical has already created a sheet index, then why should we reproduce that work? Because we are now coordinating in three dimensions, we can say with relative certainty that we can fit Mechanical, FireSprinkler, and Electrical systems down a narrow corridor.

These are no longer educated guesses, but we can provide our client or contractor with screenshots showing that all these systems fit. File organization is another one of these necessary evils. It must happen, and it has only changed in one area.

One is the key word here, meaning each discipline is most likely only going to be working in one file, which means less to worry about, and it makes it much easier to update the backgrounds as the project progresses. Now we're going to take a look at some things to look out for. The first one, and this is probably the one most people run into right off the bat, is overmodeling.

Just because you can doesn't mean you should model everything. Overmodeling takes time, but it can also create huge file sizes. Things like hinges, lock sets can be added as information to the models, but they don't necessarily need to be 3D objects.

Sloppy modeling is another issue that people run into right away, mainly because they don't know how to do things properly or haven't developed that workflow. But just like in AutoCAD, where we define line work and projects with layers, we need to make sure we create elements using the appropriate category as well. And then also the big thing here is cutting corners still doesn't work.

The next item is what I like to call the Revit-has-it-covered factor. Revit does a lot of things for us, but that doesn't mean we can get lazy and forget to check our references. Remember, the information is only good as the person entering it, and that person is most likely not perfect.

You should still check your work. And finally, no list is complete without some do's and don'ts. First thing, don't oversell your project deliverables.

You need to know what you and your staff are capable of. Don't promise a 100% clash-free model or photorealistic renderings of every room. Don't overthink it.

We are still designing and preparing construction documents for a building. You have the tools from years of experience, so put that to work. Save often.

This almost goes without saying, but a team that saves together stays together. In Revit, saving to central not only deposits your changes to the central model, but also allows other users to work on those elements that you have been hoarding all day. The last and possibly the most important item is to have a plan, which brings us to our next topic.

We need to develop a plan. There is no need to reinvent the wheel. Some organizations like the AIA and the Building Smart Alliance have developed good templates that can be used to help create an effective BIM execution plan.

The first thing we need to do is determine the use of the model. This will also inform what is called the level of detail. If this is only going to be used for conceptual design, then it may not be necessary to have a detailed structural model showing all the steel plates in connection.

But if the model will become part of the lifecycle of the building, then it may be feasible to take it to the higher level of detail. The second thing you'll want to do is identify the responsible parties. Who is going to be doing what? Knowing who is going to be responsible for creating the content for each discipline will help keep all team members informed throughout the design process.

And this also relates back to scheduling, but when are they going to do it? Develop a schedule of deliverables that includes time for class detection and coordination. Right off the bat, you should have each team member define what software they are using and which versions. The team members who are using Revit will need to be on the same version.

Remember, the software is not backwards compatible. Now we're going to take a look at some key terms that you might hear every now and then. The first one is level of detail.

Level of detail is a scale that was developed by the AIA. It is based on a scale of 100 to 500,100 being a conceptual model, and 500, which is the 3D representation of the as-built. Most projects will be developed to somewhere between 300 and 400, with some disciplines like fire sprinkler, plumbing, mechanical, and even structural taking their models into the 400 range, which is of the same detail as fabrication drawings.

The second term here is BIM manager. This is something that gets tossed around quite a bit as well. This should be the main point of contact from each office.

This person is also responsible for maintaining the standards and introducing new techniques to the other members of the team. This may also be the person in charge of class detection, also known as a virtual construction manager. Design, build, and or integrated project delivery are both the optimum environment for a BIM project.

Both project delivery methods promote early coordination between the designers and subcontractors, and the ultimate goal is to break down the information silos and develop the project from an integrated approach. The key things with integrated project delivery are maintaining the clear lines of communication, early coordination, because oftentimes subcontractors and more designers are on board early on, and then because of that there's also built-in value engineering so there won't be a lot of changes towards the end of the project. Now we're going to take a look at a sample project and review some techniques for navigating a Revit project.