From the time you put your foot down for work, till you leave the premises you have absolutely no time to look around. In this fast moving digital era, you are constantly occupied with checking emails, sticking to meetings, meeting deadlines and what not. And God forbid if you are involved in a construction project, with hefty investments and tight schedules at stake, you cannot afford to miss out on executing it perfectly. But for that you need to PLAN.

But the question here is, how? Especially when project parameters and the design itself are uncertain and any plan that you may have prepared might fall apart once the project starts.

To make sure that construction costs are low, every stakeholder tries to work around on improving the design involving the client as well. Keeping the uncertainties aside, there are several phases that are certain and can be planned for a project.

Drawings standards

Setting up single set of standards for drawings, can improve the uniformity and ensure completeness of the design information. Drawing standards here means, creating, naming linking and organizing CAD files created in BIM tools like Revit. It differs from drafting standards which includes defining font type, font size, symbols, line types and weights.

Both the standards are equally important in a project execution since bad drawings leads to bad engineering. This is exactly what we do at Hi-tech. When delivering BIM services, we ensure that everyone involved in BIM project agree on the same drawings and drafting standards. However this requires proper planning and its documentation.

Without proper planning, projects cannot be headed efficiently which will result into endless confusions, miscommunication, wasted resources and pathetic drawings. Lack of planning affects entire project cycle and the aftermaths are no hidden truth. The same applies to CAD users as well.

Without knowing what items are required for the particular project, it often leads to waste of time in pulling out the required information in the model. Rather user should only include required items for the concerned projects. This will lead to enhanced efficiency and ensure that only right information is displayed on your sheet.

However, this ability is often dependent on CAD users themselves. While some may think ahead about their actions on downstream applications, some might turn blind eye to the consequences of their actions. These are often the people who do not plan. Ideally, to ensure the project success the best way is to measure the difference between planned project and an unplanned one.

Preparing for the change

It is often difficult to break away from traditional way of working and implementing a new one. The transition often creates hurdles. But as the saying goes “Change is constant”.

Motivating your team do things differently and making them aware regarding the benefits of the change can be helpful. It is vital to understand that planning is better than micromanaging the project. You can start by clearly defining the required details in project that is consistent.

Set rules and roles

It is also important to define how the roles will change during the course of the project lifecycle. For instance, architect’s ownership starts with the column grid lines to ensure that changes like moving columns with corridors and exterior walls are accommodated in schematic phase itself. The ownership then shifts to structural engineer once the design is 50-75% complete. This kind of planning can avoid duplicate items and improves the coordination.

Conclusion

One needs to have a proper BIM execution plan, to outline how the documents will be shared and utilized as well as what drafting standards will be used. These plans often vary with each project and may not involve every stakeholder in the beginning.

Consider planning as integral part of BIM project than a separate entity. It offers clarity, simplifies the communication and enhances the work collaboration. So instead of going with the unplanned project and extending the deadlines and schedules it is better to plan and execute it efficiently and cut down on unnecessary costs and delays.