BIM Level 2 Accreditation - What it means for us.
I was due to talk about this with Excitech at BIM Show Live, in Newcastle last week, however, due to the Brits not being able to cope with snow, I didn’t go, but promised I would blog my thoughts about the pro’s and con’s. It’s a slightly different format to the presentation, but this is more or less what I would have ended up saying anyway.
We have chosen Lloyd’s Register
For our (Corstorphine + Wright) accreditation, we chose to go with Lloyd’s Register, who, if I’ve heard correctly, were the first company to award certification for understanding the processes, and implementing Level 2 BIM in practice, and on projects.
This was an important factor to me due to the fact that I believe a company needs to understand, top down, how to implement a new workflow, and for it to be successful, it HAS TO HAVE TOP DOWN APPROACH! I’m shouting that, as without backing of board or directors, it will be an uphill struggle. There is a cost, there is a downturn in production whilst staff and users are learning and experiencing BIM authoring tools for the first time.
What do they look at?
Essentially, your QM systems. The way BIM is integrated into these, and how you manage systems and staff. Remember, without people, your business would be useless. But, you have to be able to train these people, manage them, and make them want to work for the company. An old phrase I quoted long ago was
“what happens if we train people and they leave?” | “well what happens if we don’t and they stay?”
I still stand by this today, and the GAP analysis we received from Excitech on behalf of Lloyd’s Register showed that we could manage the processes better. It also showed that we valued our staff in the way we train and nurture them. I’m not going to stay all preachy, we did have flaws, but this also made me realise something else.
But why do it?
When the other BIM Managers and myself started looking at accreditation, it was because we wanted to show how good we were at having templates and processes in place, and the working ethics and skills to deliver BIM projects. The more I looked into it, and after sitting down with Excitech, and understanding where we had go to with our gap analysis, made me realise ,the real reason we were doing this, was to make ourselves better. That is a really important point to remember. Not only with accreditation will you let the world know you can do this, but also, it may just improve the way you do it…..
Whats next?
We have now undertaken the GAP analysis, with very good results, and have given ourselves a six month window to rectify the Major non-conformities. These are elements that Lloyd’s consider ‘risk’ to the business. There were only a couple, and they things we did, but we simply hadn’t documented. The minor non conformities are items that will not stop you getting accreditation, but could easily be rectified. Again, we didn’t have many of these. The bonus with the GAP analysis is that it also lists ‘room for improvement’ items, a nice ‘fresh pair of eyes’ to how we manage systems, information and people.
Would I recommend it?
Quite simply yes, we’ve had highs and lows of our BIM journey so far (and who hasn’t), but this has shown we are making very good progress across the company, and that there are a couple of items we could document to tick all the boxes. The exercise isn’t about ticking boxes, its also looking at the ‘if you got hit by a bus’ theory that if you didn’t turn up one day, could all the information be placed, understood and actioned? Well I’ve been hit by a lorry before, it wasn’t very nice, so I’m not planning on that, however, it meant everything came off my hard drive, and onto servers…. This is a good thing.
