Description
Key Learnings
- Learn about BIM management roles and responsibilities.
- Learn technical skills, software knowledge, and project management.
- Explore career paths and opportunities in BIM management.
- Gain insights and best practices for career advancement.
Speaker
BRIAN MYERS: Hello, everyone, and welcome to the AU class BIM Management Careers. Today I'll take you down the BIM Management career path. It really moves in a variety of different directions, and I can't possibly take you down every path, but I can provide you with guidance on what you might expect and answer some of your questions that you might have.
I'm Brian Myers, and I'm the Director for our Federal Digital Delivery Group at Jacobs. Think of that as being like, a digital delivery title as being the BIM Director for our USD federal projects. My team consists of 14 individuals in BIM Management roles, and we expect that we'll need to grow because the industry is growing.
And because the industry is growing, that means that there's going to be a lot of opportunities there for BIM Management to people to step into various BIM Management careers. As far as my experience, I've spent the last decade as a BIM Manager in various firms. Before that time, I spent seven years as an Applications Engineer supporting architecture and engineering products at an Autodesk reseller.
Then, prior to that time, I did drafting and CAD Management, which paid for my degree in architecture from Southern Illinois University as I started my career at the age of actually 17 as a draftsman, even before graduating from high school. I've worked in a lot of different fields, and that includes architecture, electrical design, mechanical design, plumbing, fire protection, security, construction.
Some of the industries that I've had the opportunity to work in include federal, military, manufacturing, residential, industrial, and even the commercial sector. Actually, I've worked in more than just that as well, but you get the idea. I've kind of been around, and I've seen most of the different kinds of project types that you might be working on.
Now, since this is BIM Management Careers, I should probably start by asking the question-- why should you go into a BIM Management career? Well, there's actually several reasons for that. The first reason is that there's really a high demand right now in the AEC industry for those good BIM Managers. They're commanding excellent wages. Why? Because they can. And it's a rapidly growing industry for technology and talent.
The second is we found substantial potential for career growth. Now, even just a few years ago, I'm not sure how well I would have answered the question, where can I go in my career if I'm heading down that BIM Management career path? But over the last few years, it's become much more evident, and I'll show you several slides coming forward that describe that path.
Next, if you enjoy just an emphasis on technical skills and technology, then BIM Management might be a good fit for you. I find that anybody who has good technical skills and likes to use technology has probably explored the various things that the technology can do for you, and you may even be able to translate that over to what you can do with that technology for other people. And that's always a good start.
Fourth reason why you might choose BIM Management for a career is involvement in a diverse set of projects. As you saw, when I was introducing myself, I've had the opportunity to work in a lot of different industries, a lot of different project types. Yes, sometimes you'll be in roles where you only work on one type of project or one type of building. But those skills transfer over, so if you move to a different project, you move to a different project team, if you decide to just move companies, there's a very good chance those skills that you developed while doing BIM Management in one area will then work in another area.
Additionally, there are many opportunities for problem-solving. So I know a lot of people that have that engineer mindset that just love to figure things out. Architects are great for that as well because they see a problem, and then they need to figure out what the solution is for it. If you have that kind of mind, this is a great career path for you because it's a constant really every day task of figuring out answers to various different problems.
Also, there's an opportunity for a collaboration with various stakeholders. Now, in this case, that could be owners, it could be the various contractors, it could be engineers, architects you would never have an opportunity to talk to. For me, once I started to move up the ladder in this, I started realizing I was able to talk to my own senior management in nice long conversations, which were things that I wasn't able to do when I was just being a draftsman within the organization. At least not very well. So it gives you a lot of opportunities there.
Also, are your detail-oriented? If you have a focus on accuracy and quality, this could very well be the role for you. So much of this role is about getting accurate information, quality information, and being able to use it that if that's something that you find that you're able to do, be detailed-oriented and care about accuracy and quality, definitely look into this. Also, you can create an impact on project efficiency.
Really, that's one of the reasons why you were hired into this role if you get into the role. It's to make sure that the project teams are more efficient and can do their jobs better. So if you enjoy making sure that project teams can be more efficient, this could be the role for you. And finally, it's an office job.
Now, being an office job may sound like a very strange thing to mention, but the reality of it is, let's say that you've been working in construction for 15, 20 years, and maybe you've been a mason or a steelworker. Your body can only last so long oftentimes in those roles, and you're ready to get out of the heat and the cold. But that knowledge that you have can be absolutely fantastic in the role of BIM Management because how buildings go together. You understand the construction process. And those are some of the most-needed skills in this role.
Now, before I dive too deep into this topic, I should probably elaborate just a little bit on the basics of what our career options are in the areas of BIM Management. Now, some of those basics are some of these possible career paths. Now, this list includes a wide variety of careers that on the surface seem to be BIM Management-related.
The careers you see on the left, I actually first talked about five years ago in a popular LinkedIn Learning Series that I recorded on BIM Management, so that was five years ago. Now, the roles on the right are, well, they're new, or at least they seem to be new to me over the last five years, even if I know most of them or probably all of them existed five years ago.
Now, for this presentation, I will talk specifically about the careers that we see on the left-hand side of this slide as they tend to be careers most people think about when saying they want a career in BIM. Now, the careers on the right are all very viable careers as well, and I actually know or have met people in each and every one of those roles. In fact, I probably right now work with individuals that are in one way or another in each of those roles, and I want to make sure that you're aware of those roles.
In the documentation for this class, I've included basic job descriptions for all these roles as well as the responsibilities of those roles so that you can have a better understanding of what each one of those roles do and the experience required in order to obtain one of those roles. So please download the class handout when you get the time. Before I advance, I do want to show you a few more roles that you may recognize.
And you'll notice that this is titled "Before Digital Disruption." Now, that's sometimes what BIM is actually considered-- digital disruption. Now, disruption doesn't have to be a bad thing. Let's say that you are in the middle of a wildfire, and you're able to disrupt the spread of the wildfire so nothing else is burned down. Disruption in that case could be a very good thing.
Well, in the case of BIM, what you're disrupting is the processes that people have been using for many years, many generations, and you're replacing those with processes that ideally are more efficient and work better. So in this case, that disruption can cause some issues with people that are used to doing things a certain way, and part of your role will be making sure that you can guide those individuals along as they're learning how to do the various different things in a BIM career.
Now, some of those individuals could include drafting supervisors, project coordinators, project engineers, maybe quality assurance managers, drafting technicians, even business process analysts. All the roles that you see here, they were all roles that existed 30, 40 years ago, farther back, within our industry, but there's something special about these roles as well that you need to know about, and that is-- you'll notice that I say, this slide again?
Well, this is the exact same list of roles that we were actually just looking at the previous slide. You see, these just happen to be the new names for those professions. And one of the things that you should probably know is that any time that you see BIM in front of the name, it may not necessarily be needed in front of that job title. Same thing for CAD or VDC. And I'll talk about what those initials mean in just a moment. But, ultimately, these are just roles that are being used within the profession.
Now, I should probably tell you this. Yes, I'm doing a presentation on BIM, but I actually hate using the word "BIM." In fact, you may hear me say it a lot on videos, but in reality, I don't say it that much at all. Yeah, I actually hate the word or the initials "BIM," except for specific circumstances-- when I'm talking to people that don't really understand the industry or we're discussing a change in workflows for a certain tool.
But all that being said, you likely don't know why I actually hate the word. And it's from personal experience going way back in the industry. Remember, I started off in the industry as a drafter at age 17. So here's a little bit of a history lesson on what those initials mean to me.
First off, when I first started in the industry, and this was back around 1990, I was a drafter, so doing drawings. Technically, I was actually a CAD drafter, now that's computer-aided design or computer-aided drafting, but my role was to take the hand-drawn drawings and then put them into the computer. So I was one of the first generations of CAD drafters.
But I did go through school and learn how to draw by hand, and some of my work in that first job was done by hand. Now, I mention this because CAD drafter eventually got to be a name that everybody aspired to be if you were a drafter. And the reason behind that is that if you were a drafter, it indicated all you knew how to do was draw by hand.
But if you were a CAD drafter, that meant that you understood how to use software programs, such as AutoCAD, in order to do your drawings. Eventually, over the span of a few years, all the roles that you saw being listed, they were all seen to be CAD drafter roles. Why? Because that meant that you knew how to use that technology. And because you knew how to use that technology, you were more likely to be hired, and you were able to get more money.
But there was also a downside to this as well. Now, the downside to this is the next step, which is designer. As time went on, we saw that the designer title began to take the place of the CAD drafter title. What occurred in our industry is that many people were going to colleges or to special courses in order to learn how to be proficient in one software package, let's say AutoCAD. And they got good on that software package, but they didn't necessarily know how to actually put together a set of construction documentation, how to document their projects appropriately.
As a result of that, it meant that there were a lot of mistakes on drawings, a lot of people doing what's called red lines, which is marking those mistakes, and then those people had to then come back in again and then fix their mistakes. Because of that, the ongoing talk in the industry for probably nearly seven years was, those people are learning CAD? They don't know how to do drafting, which meant that they didn't understand how to do those technical drawings and that design communication part of the job.
So what happened? They started advertising for designers because the designers, in their minds, meant that they understood the technical process of how to both do drawings as well as use the software programs. So then you see BIM Specialist listed. Well, this is why I dislike the term "BIM."
BIM can oftentimes be seen as being disruptive. It's part of the disruption process. So people get a little bit scared of it because they know that if they're going to have to do BIM, they might have to change the way that they've always done things. But as we saw in that previous list of different job titles that we had-- and I'll actually just scroll back to that-- these are all jobs that have been in the industry for a very long time, and then these were the new names for those jobs, right?
So it's actually the same work. They're just changing their processes in order to be able to accomplish that. I'd like to think of this in terms of, let's say, being an architect. You don't really ask an architect to change his job title. Now, you could make the argument that the reason why you don't ask an architect to change his job title is because he's taken the test. He actually has this piece of paper that says he's an architect or that they're an engineer, and that is certainly true.
But you never need to put what technology they use for their role. You just expect that they know how to do their role. And that's going to be the way that we are moving forward in this industry is you no longer need to have "CAD" put before your name or "BIM" put before your name or "VDC" put before your name. You're just going to be expected to know how to use these technologies moving forward.
Now, all that being said, I'm going to move on to the next description, which is going to be discussing CAD Managers as well as a variety of other roles. And I'll use the traditional name, not drop off those first few letters, because this is the way that they're still known within our industry today. Now, when discussing CAD Manager, CAD Management is often part of that BIM career process.
Now, sometimes they're not thought of that way because they use AutoCAD and some other software programs like that. But it's also important, these are also the individuals that help support software and people that are using that software, such as Plant 3D, Inventor, and Civil 3D. These are all engineering software programs that definitely put out information, and they're definitely aided by the computer. This truly is a BIM profession because, in the end, it's all that information that they're managing on a regular basis.
These are individuals that often support software installations and maintenance and resolve technical issues. These are people that are known to supervise drafting teams for standards compliance so that they all use the same symbology, the same title blocks. That same sort of information. Additionally, these are individuals that provide staff trainings and have a variety of other skills that are able to support staff to do their jobs more effectively.
Now, in smaller firms, and I always found this to be an advantage because I started my career being a part drafter and part CAD Manager, is that in smaller firms, they're often thought of as in-house IT experts as well. So oftentimes, they're the ones that are actually fixing the computers, fixing those kinds of software. And as you build those skills, what happens? Well, those become more valuable skills that you can take on to some of the further roles that we'll be talking about.
The next role is going to be BIM Coordinator. Now, in my experience, there are two types of BIM Coordinators. The first are individuals with BIM coordination being a primary duty, and it's actually their title, BIM Coordinator. The second are project or discipline BIM Coordinators that are design team members that also coordinate issues for the projects they're working on. That second role is also where many of the CAD Managers today get their start-- working on projects while supporting teams.
The BIM Coordinator ensures project teams follow standards and that the disciplines coordinate the work between each other and often perform clash detection as well between the various models. Now, I consider the responsibilities of this role to be a potential first step in learning how to manage projects. And often, it's a lifetime career of its own without taking that next step up into a higher project and team management. But the skills that you learn while doing this career can actually take you in a lot of different directions. In fact, the skills from that career could actually help in taking you in all the different career directions that you saw on the previous slide.
Now, another rule that is inside of firms is BIM Manager. Now, I consider this to be the next step up from the BIM Coordinator role. Some of these BIM Managers are very much like their CAD Manager counterparts, with similar skills and duties, from training staff to overseeing projects. These BIM Managers, they can oversee many different facets of a firm.
They also may be involved in the strategic planning of project setup, data sharing, and perhaps a firm's direction with technology. But most get their start as either one of the two BIM Coordinator roles or as a seasoned staff member that's just looking for a change in career direction and has the vision and skills to step out of the role as an engineer, or maybe an architect, and take on the responsibilities of BIM Management based on their strategic vision and their various technology skills.
This next one will probably be a little bit less well-known to individuals, but it's important to know, and that is VDC Coordinator. Now, a VDC Coordinator and a BIM Coordinator are very similar as far as their roles are concerned. In fact, they're equals. But I like to think of BIM Coordinators as being on the design side of the business. So in the original architect engineering offices, while the VDC Coordinators-- VDC standing for virtual design and construction-- as being on the construction side of the business.
Now, it's not uncommon for a VDC coordinator to be an entry level project engineer that understands how a building goes together. It doesn't even have to be entry level. Maybe they've been around for a few years. They understand project schedules, and they can serve a leadership role in coordinating the various project partners.
They may also be an expert in a variety of other areas, ranging from the creation of models to the process of fabrication of parts. They can know laser scanning, reality capture. They may use various data-driven construction tools and a variety of other tasks that really could just be a part of their skill set. These are some individuals that have some real diverse talents with the various construction software and hardware.
This is actually an overlooked role by some that are coming out of college with architecture degrees because they see construction and think that they have an architecture's degree and they can't easily make that transition over, but that's not true. These are actually natural positions for people with architecture degrees. Also, if you've worked in construction for years and you're ready to use that knowledge in the office instead of being outside in the elements, these VDC Coordinator jobs are oftentimes that first role that you get, other than maybe being a project manager or a site superintendent, to allow yourself to get out of the field environment and into an office setting. It takes less toll on your body, and you can make more money doing it.
Then you have your VDC Managers. Now, the VDC Managers are like their counterparts, the BIM Managers, except on the construction side of our business. They're often those visionary employees from other areas ranging from project management to, let's say, some of the well-versed VDC Coordinators that have been part of your project team.
Now, it's not uncommon for them to also manage or train the VDC Coordinators that you have on staff. Additionally, they are also more likely to take charge of the implementation process of new technologies or perform the more heavy duty tasks of data exchange or various parts of the project controls process. So they're constantly managing models and data and managing the way that their firm is using them.
Then you have your BIM/VDC Director. Now, this is a role that I never actually thought I'd have the opportunity to step into, but I've been fortunate enough to have earned that role, and I've been in the role for the last three years. In my case, it's for federal projects and the construction of buildings of federal projects.
Now, that director role is one of the rarer roles, but it often is the next step up from that BIM and VDC Manager role. They run departments, they manage budgets and resources. They often supervise those managers and coordinators that we just discussed, and they are the organization go-to individuals for senior management in their organizations.
Now, these are the individuals that probably set the organizational vision and goals for BIM while managing employees and various budgets. Most have been BIM or VDC Managers, and it is also possible that they may not have come from the BIM or VDC Management side of things. They may have come from IT where they've managed large IT departments. Ultimately, these individuals are the visionaries. The people who are used to managing and dealing with the finances as well as having those high-level talks with upper management people.
Now it's my opportunity to actually talk about my own organization, which is Jacobs, and that's important to me. The reason why it's important is that Jacobs is, according to ENR, the largest engineering and architecture firm combined in the world. We have a lot of what we call digital delivery staff. Now, these are those same BIM Management careers, the BIM Management staff.
Individuals in these roles need to demonstrate leadership. They nurture internal skills of employees. They expand the business through digital tools. And they do a variety of different things based off of what their role is in the organization.
For our organization, we have two different groups-- our technology leaders and our region and market leaders. Now, these are the people that actually lead these groups, OK? Now, the technology leaders include our digital delivery process leader, that actually starts to define what those processes are of the BIM Management personnel. Then you have the vertical technology leaders, which is buildings, anything pretty much gets built up from the ground level.
Then you have linear, which is roads and civil. Visual media, those are some of the interesting ones that are fortunate enough to be able to do renderings, animations, videos, use VR equipment. We do have people that manage robotics as well as process automation, and process automation is what it sounds like. You're actually automating the process of, well, really, the entire design process or the construction process.
Then you have your region and market leaders, and that includes APAC, which is Asia, the Middle East, Europe. And then we have our different markets-- advanced manufacturing; federal and environmental solutions, which is my area; electronics; life sciences; water; transportation; and facilities management. Now, I mention all of these because each of these could be the ultimate end goal that you might eventually want to go to in a BIM Management career path, where you're actually managing entire organizations full of digital delivery or BIM Manager-type people, BIM Coordinator-type people and setting the goals for projects that aren't just in your region but literally across the globe.
So there's a lot of opportunity there, and it's in a lot of different industries. So don't feel bad about just going into a very specific field because more than likely there's going to be a BIM Management requirement in that field.
Now, one of the number one things that I often get asked is, what about software? Software is important. I need to learn the software in order to get the role, right? Well, the answer to that question is, where are you in the world? Where are you in your career, in your ambitions? And what do your projects need? What do your projects use?
This is important because different parts of the world use different technologies. Different stages of your career, you'll be doing different tasks. So I can't just say that you need to learn software XYZ because it's not about just learning software XYZ. It's about all those management processes. Understanding how the industry flows. That's the important part.
Software can be learned. Yes, you do need to be an expert in some software. But, ultimately, that's less important than a lot of the other functions. So how do you get a career in BIM Management? Well, I like to say that actions speak louder than words.
Put yourself out there. When I say, put yourself out there, I'll go to industry conferences. I will go to various engineering groups or architectural groups and just talk to people. By talking to people you get to learn more, and through those relationships you're more likely to find those roles available to you.
Also, meet people and communicate with them. That is different from "put yourself out there." Meeting people and communicating with them can be an internal thing. You don't need to go outside of your organization to do that. Communicate that you want to do this role for your career, that you're interested in it. Because if people don't know that you're interested in it, it's going to be very difficult for you to develop the skills and be given the task it takes to get into this career.
Also, there's project management skills involved. In fact, I sometimes say that BIM Managers or VDC Managers are really just project managers that are very specialized because of the kinds of work that we do. Virtually every job requires what's called soft skills. So can you speak fluently? Can you write appropriately? Those sorts of things. That always helps.
Understanding the process of your organization. That's a biggie. If you understand that, particularly if you understand the finances, that can take you a long way. Talk as an industry professional. Very often I'll have industry conversations, and when I'm talking to those individuals, I'll realize that they're just using industry jargon and they don't actually understand what they're talking about. So make sure that you actually understand all those terms that you're using and you use them appropriately.
Teamwork is a must. If you don't like working with other people, it's probably not the industry for you. Now, I am an introvert, so I have a tendency to enjoy working alone. That being said, I have to work with people every single day. In fact, this job doesn't exist unless you're working with people on a regular basis.
You need to be able to demonstrate your value, which means you need to be able to articulate what it is that you do and what it is that you bring to a project. If you don't know what makes you more valuable, than the next person, or what your special skill is within the organization, then you need to be able to find it because that's going to be one of your biggest keys for advancement.
And then, software, as I mentioned before. Yes, it's important. But if you do the other items on this list, you'll likely not need to ask the question of, what software do I need to use in order to get into BIM Management? Because if you can do all the other things on this list, those conversations, those career paths, all those different things that you've done along your journey, you'll know what software that you need to use because it's just been part of your life as you're going through this field.
In closing, these various roles are the gateway to a future, really a positive change in our industry. I urge each of you to consider the many opportunities, the various careers associated, where BIM Management can take you. In the world of construction and design, BIM Management isn't really just a career. It's a pathway to shaping the future of our built environment.
And I urge you to consider the various opportunities associated with these various career directions. Thank you for your time today. I look forward to continuing this conversation with you in the comments and hopefully, someday, in person.