Last week our CEO, John Tocci attended and spoke at the London BIM Conference hosted by Autodesk, Inc.

Here is his first-person account of the trip (this is the second of three parts:

PART II

The morning presentation opened with an excellent presentation by Phil Bernstein who laid out the problems and the potential solutions with BIM and transformative contract methods. This was followed with 15-20 minute vignettes by an owner, architect, engineer, and contractor. All of the vignettes were exemplary. The owner cut to the chase and told the audience to stop asking stupid questions like “who owns the model?”. He showed examples from his experience of leading a major elementary and middle school reconstruction program into the benefits of BIM with a few enlightened architects but apparently no matching contractors. 

The architect discussed their conversion to Revit and the savings they’ve realized with design efficiencies and the production of traditional documents. 

The engineer, from Mott MacDonald, the leading multidisciplinary engineer in the universe and planets yet to be discovered, was similar. He was very frank about the liability issues and talked about working with collaborators to drain the pool and then minimize how many people drown in the shallow end – an interesting analogy.

Then it was my turn. This was a good crowd they immediately got the subtle humor we use in our presentations. Many people came to the stage during the coffee/lunch break and had loads of questions. It was obvious that folks here are ready for this message. I spent part of the lunch break re-tooling the afternoon presentation based on some questions and comments.

To be continued…