Introduction to BIM Execution Planning with Case Study

AHMED CASSIM: Good day and welcome, everyone, to Autodesk University. Today, we will be talking about the introduction to BIM Execution Planning with a case study. I'm Ahmed Cassim and I am an AEC applications engineer and BIM consultant at Moderna AEC and Infrastructure.

Moderna AEC and Infrastructure are your digital partners. We are situated in South Africa at the tip of Africa. We are the largest Autodesk partner in Africa. And we are also the Autodesk Platinum Partners. Our vision is systematically unlocking strategic creativity. And we are a leading digital consultant and service company with developed innovative products and solutions.

The learning objectives for today are four parts. So beginning with understanding the importance of BIM Execution Planning and what to include in it. Identifying BIM users and begin drawing up well-defined BIM Execution plans, how to engage your teams and get agreement on the scope of works. And then integrating the BIM Execution Plan with your model on Autodesk BIM 360.

The learning objectives will be split up into these sections which make up our agenda. Firstly, why do we create the BIM Execution Plans or BEPs? Some best practices to create successful BEPs.

How to get agreement on a clear BIM scope. How to sequence your BIM tasks. Solutions for and progress management. Management and verification of BIM. And some tips on BIM compliance. And then lastly, a case study.

So firstly, why do we create BIM Execution Plans? Why should we create a BEP? Well, unfortunately, as many of you know, this is how projects usually work. They consist of multiple teams, usually with different views of what project success looks like.

So firstly, how the customer explained it. How the BIM consultant described it. How the project was actually documented. What was actually installed. And finally, what the customer actually wanted was just a tire swing.

So BIM Execution Plans, or your BEPs are needed to help teams find common agreement between these multiple teams or disciplines so that everyone can follow the same standards and processes required to get to the right outcome. What happens when we don't plan.

Well, there are multiple teams. If we don't plan, there can be a lot of finger pointing. Is it a 6 or is it a 9? And we end up with this blame game. Some statistics from PMI. Almost 30% of why BEPs fail is due to poor communication and insufficient planning following right behind. These are mostly related to things we can plan for.

The BIM Execution Plan provides governance for the project. Does every BIM project need one? Well, BEPs are starting to be common practice in many large owners contracts and most medium and large BIM projects. And BEPs are also becoming part more and more of standard government requirements too. They're becoming mandatory.

So what are some of the challenges? A good question. What we have found out from some of the companies using BIM is that their current BIM Execution Process takes too long to create and manage. The BEP is usually a static document, usually created by one person. And it's mostly copied and pasted from previous projects.

Again, no one reads the BEP. Usually, it's just one large text document. It can be 100 plus pages that also references other external standards and processes that are unclear and not aligned to the specific project's needs. And then cross company agreement from all stakeholders is extremely challenging.

Processes and standards naturally evolve throughout the project, which is OK. And multiple teams need quick access toolbar reference or update. And the cycling of gathering comments and updating and receiving and sending the whole document seems never ending. All of this whilst the contract needs to be fixed.

We also hear that some are created as PDFs, are not read, get filed away. Yes, in the bottom drawer gathering dust. Only reviewed if there is a problem that needs to be addressed. So a question that we ask is, when does the BEP get used?

And the answer mostly is, only when the dirt hits the fan. So how do we make sure that it doesn't end up in that drawer gathering dust? So that's why we need one. In order to define the BIM uses and requirements. But what do we need to include in our BEP?

Some people have unrealistic expectations of BIM as well. We want LOD 500 plus COBie. Wanting everything for a BIM model may also not be effective. And you end up with either too much BIM, you're either modeling too much or you're getting this overlapping information. Or you end up with too little, where the contract didn't define enough BIM or nobody knew who was responsible for certain items. And we end up with this missing information.

So the trick is to have clear BIM goals. Make it SMART. S-M-A-R-T, for specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time bound BIM goals. Here are some typical categories for the types of BIM content in your BIM Execution plan. Maybe starting with an introduction of why we are doing BIM in the first place on this project specifically, through to the BIM uses, processes to follow.

We've got standards to reference, tech to support, formats to deliver. Terms to comply with and the scope for each participant. A BIM Execution Plan should include everything from project information to teams, team members and their contact details. Even some links out to other web applications that the project needs to use.

The introduction can be different based on the team's knowledge of BIM. Define the BIM users, define the customer, align the services with the capabilities. Which processes do you need in order to achieve those BIM uses? Do you need to explain it in a flow diagram? How to create some deliverables perhaps?

And then are you following certain standards? Are you following the ISO standards, ISO 19650. Defining the terminologies so that everyone on the project speaks the same language. For example, what is an asset information model and how will you ensure that the model created is fit for this purpose?

How do you standardize? How will you support this with the right technology? How will you manage software versions?

If you're using the ISO standards, again, why not have a template for it? Will you be using the OIR, PIR, EIR or your RACI documentation methods. And your deliverables. Is that IFC perhaps? Remember the BEP needs to be a contract.

Scope. Probably the most important part of the BIM Execution Plan is the scope. Having a clear scope helps everyone on a project. So some best practices to create successful BIM Execution Plans. First and foremost, understand why you are doing BIM. These are called BIM users.

Is it for design, 3D coordination, quantities? Lately, your virtual reality or augmented reality, VR or AR. We see a lot of success when teams build their BEPs together using a collaborative approach. So make sure that you add all the team members early so that their opinion is included.

And have a central location for all of your team to access, like an online or web-based BIM Execution Plan. And instead of it being one person, let's pull the BEP together. Make sure to use built in templates, again, to standardize the processes.

We also see increased engagement when you have good content. So not just having a plain text document that gets PDFed then completely ignored. Using video actually improves visualization and saves space which documents would have taken up. Information within sections also should be easy to search and easy to navigate.

And embedding those visually rich information. So using your videos, images, iframes, flowcharts is favorable. As people just don't want to read it if it's too long. So adding videos and pictures make a huge difference.

Also gaining multiparty agreement. Having all teams agree on something, it's not easy. So have a place for contributors to comment on the various aspects of the proposed plan, like on social media. So what's great is that it keeps all the information together in one place, rather than one person emailing the suggestions to another person.

Here, everyone can see the comments. And this helps collaborative working. And it's a never ending cycle when you're trying to agree on an entire document. It could be hundreds pages long. So splitting it up into bit-sized sections. The commenting, the workflow, sharing them and publishing them, being able to comment on each and every single section, allows you to break it up into these smaller, more manageable sections so we can publish filling out each section as we go so that you want to have it always up to date and access online.

To have built-in communication and approval workflow. Progress approval, again, by the bite-sized section. Collaboration and updates should-- and continue throughout the project. And then being able to print an archive, the contract document at each important contractual stage.

So quickly recapping on which is the BIM Execution Planning and helping that to be a part of your BIM management workflow. Most of the success we see is when it's online and collaborative. Also, people really enjoy being able to comment and contribute to the structure of the BIM Execution Plan.

They really feel part of it, which has a great effect on the quality of their work and the effort that they put in. And again, having the approval process in your bite-sized form, being able to approve certain parts without approving everything allows you to move forward on what has been agreed, which saves time and money.

OK, we've covered the importance of a BEP. But shouldn't the scope document also be part of the BEP? Yes, absolutely. Let's take a look at how we can agree on a clearer BIM Scope that you can include in your BEP.

So why do we need to agree-- or agree rather on a BIM Scope? We know that most project stakeholders usually have different BIM goals. Be they architect, the engineer or trade manager, everyone has their own idea on what their BIM should include.

But why is agreement between these stakeholders so difficult sometimes? We hear from project teams that these are some of the challenges that they face. Unfortunately, many teams end up contracting to an incorrect overly-detailed, overly-generalized BIM Scope spreadsheet. These can be disastrous for the teams and the project.

Unfortunately, these scopes are generally mandated and not agreed upon. And it's usually built by a one person, and it's mandated to the other teams. Only viewed as a PDF or spreadsheet with a set of confusing numbers. And usually, inaccessible by others.

And we know using a spreadsheet to define the who, what, when, and where becomes too complex and confusing for most. And again, unclear scope spreadsheets cause models that are missing scope models with duplicate or overlapping scope. And it's just a huge waste of time.

But let's look at some tips to agree on a clearer BIM Scope. The key to unlocking most challenges is being able to ask the right questions. Yeah, some of those questions.

Why are we doing them? What is the scope required for that BIM use? How much is actually needed? When is the scope needed? Who is responsible and where do we start?

So when it comes to defining the why, why are we doing BIM? What are the most important BIM uses for this particular project? Why are teams creating a 3D model in the first place? Why are they modeling it 3D in the first place? What's the purpose for BIM?

And once you've got that, you need to know what scope needs to be managed on the project. What's the list of elements that will need to be estimated, coordinated, handed over? And then each BIM use team must decide and define how much BIM is actually required. How much matters for each customer of the model at each stage of the project?

And then define the required geometry, documentation and information requirements, very important. And some of the most important parts are understanding and defining when critical handovers of responsibility occur. Like here, for the stairs, from the architect to the structural team. So knowing who is responsible and when is critical for project success.

What's needed for the perfect BIM Scope? Answers to these questions reveal what's important, when it's required, for what BIM use or purpose, who is responsible and what handovers are expected or agreed to. So a quick recap.

Always start with a purpose. Why are we creating a model in the first place? What scope is required? How much is actually needed? When is the scope needed and who is responsible? We see a lot of teams responding well to a visual grid.

So not just the information or the accuracy or the geometry, it's a combination of all those. So we define what is required by whom and then being able to assign them. And that helps us see the handover from one team to another.

And very importantly, we are making it a lean, less cluttered workflow. So everyone understands what the requirements are and is able to deliver. And then we move on to sequencing our BIM tasks. So why sequence BIM tasks?

It's all about making sure tasks get completed at the right time and in the right way. Why? Well, if we get them in the wrong order, even if we were to avoid a clash, it could still lose us money. On the left hand side, the pipes don't run through the cable tray. But it will cost more in materials and time-- more bins and wells, more supports.

But if we get the sequence right, if we get the plumbing installed before the cable tray and avoid losing time and money-- so how do we prioritize tasks to minimize the impact on cost? Sequencing the less expensive content or element to route around the other will reduce cost.

And why is sequencing BIM tasks such a challenge? Well, some teams report these challenges. Since we can't all be in the same office and it's difficult to influence other people's work, and we can't end up with-- or we may end up with out of sequence work which leads to rework due to having to move something because it didn't work out. And again, this method of lean design management concepts are starting to become more common.

But for most, this is a completely new concept perhaps. So let's talk about some tips on how to sequence the tasks in a more optimal order. Well, the big picture is that if we can have a system priority structure which sets the foundation, the more important or less flexible items first, your architectural and your structural items, again, they're before you're civil. Then going on to the more flexible or less costly things like your gravity systems and mechanical systems to work on.

And that would be really smart and cost and time effective. And also, implementing a lean design management workflow and your pool planning and phase planning. So we can really sequence the tasks effectively. And this can help to ensure that everyone is contributing to the plan and agreeing to the most optimum sequence.

We can start to capture those critical dependencies and assign tasks digitally to team members so that the assignments carry forward for when they are not in the office perhaps. And the result is that we can have a plan to start each team at the right time, even if it means in vastly different project stages or project phases. So that we avoid unnecessary waste and rework.

And this means we are not wasting people's time. They are adding to the model at the right time and in the right place. We are we are reducing the amount of rework on a project. And this directly impacts the project cost.

A quick recap. We are enhancing teamwork. Again, collaboration is key. All of us need to agree on the system priority structure. Everyone involved needs to be present for the pool planning. Have your end task in mind and then what you need before that, what you need before that and before that.

And ultimately, this reduces all the amount of work, it makes managing and completing schedules lean and more straightforward. But why is updating project progress such a challenge for teams? Everyone tends to create and manage their own to-do list in their own isolated environment.

It's usually up to one person to gather everyone's updates. And even when you do receive that information, can you trust it? So let's look at some tips for simple and seamless progress updates that teams can trust.

So we've seen the best results when teams use simple Kanban boards. It's a column based chart that you can drag and drop cards to quickly understand the status. And you can have lots of different columns to represent those.

What is prioritized? What is ready for review, perhaps? And the power comes from consolidating all team members tasks in a single location. But it's not just the Kanban board, it's about doing everything in one place, one location, one source of truth.

And this means that everyone is tracking the progress together, not in their individual silos. On the left hand side of the screen, we see tasks that are simply filtered and that makes it really easy for the user to just drag and drop their updates. And on the right hand side, we see another user, a manager, who is able to see the overview of all the tasks, making it a lot easier to understand the process.

And then it's important to make sure that the updates are a team effort instead of it being one person being responsible for going around and collecting the reports. Each team member can filter their own tasks and make updates. Then the managers can see all the tasks and understand the big picture.

A quick recap. One to-do list can help all the team members collaborate in sequence and effectively communicate when tasks and content will be completed. Kanban boards help visualize this process and keep everything all in one place. Then it's imperative to ensure that teams are meeting those requirements.

So let's take a look at how teams can verify that these objectives have been met. So why verify BIM compliance? First of all, well, if there is one bad apple or bad model then it can cause a significant impact on all of the other models. Cause a lot of problems for everyone else in terms of clashes and missing content, which can really affect the whole status of the project.

We want to keep it all on track, so it's really important to make sure you have compliance. And if you've missed content, trying to coordinate around it, it's virtually impossible. Think about the impact of missing content on the quantities for an estimate.

And why is this such a challenge? Why is verifying against those requirements sometimes such a big challenge? Well, a lot of the time, unfortunately, again, the original requirements are unclear. Is it a 6, is it a 9? We use disconnected tools which make it difficult to bring that data together, to connect the requirements to the deliverables.

Also, understanding contracts and how risk is usually allocated in our design and construction industry really does not help. It's a big challenge when someone is not on the hook for something that is part of their requirements from a budget perspective. So we are given deadlines.

And whether it's ready or not, it has to be delivered on the deadline. We get a start date and an end date. And on the end date, there is a whole lot of things that need to be done or reviewed. Imagine having to solve 100 clashes in one day.

But if we had bit-sized processes for our deadlines, solving those 100 clashes in, say, a month's time doesn't feel that bad. For example, let's get first floor coordinated and then move to second floor. And once that's done, the next thing and so forth and so forth.

So sequencing when you can deliver on a weekly or biweekly basis is a lot more efficient. So using the Kanban board, as you can see, people can just drag and drop something from in progress to ready for review to show when they've completed it. It doesn't have to be the whole model. It may just be a set of elements that are ready for your review. And you will be notified about that too.

How to check this? Well, it would be great to have the BIM Execution Plan and the BIM requirements, the BIM scope and the BIM deliverable all in one platform. And imagine that it was all connected to the model on Autodesk 360. Now that would be powerful.

Imagine being able to explode the building and sort elements into these groups, which you can review. As if walking into a store and you walk through the aisle and lighting fixtures on the left and all grouped together. And then in this case, the stairs on the other side and then review the items without having to search for them separately in a model.

So if you had a set of information requirements-- for example, going through the process to check whether geometry and information requirements are present and verified before delivering the model to somebody else-- how do you then check progress and BIM compliance?

Usually, it's just a checklist that you go through. And then you can see whether you are 50% complete or not or whatever the percentage is. But imagine if you can connect that to your BIM tasks and BIM requirements and visually see the model from Autodesk BIM 360 and filter and hide what's been verified and completed every time you check off a task in the model. And then see the model metrics and status instantly, imagine.

And then how about making sure that when you have a model and that checklist is finished, that is the only time that you then share and publish that model. And the relevant people or teams will get notified when things are verified and published or fully baked. No half-baked models.

So with regard to BIM compliance, it's really important to consolidate those requirements, making sure we have reviewed all our models against the checklists before we share and publish them. So let's talk about a few tips on BIM compliance.

The first important task is to prepare and consolidate your requirements. So one of those things might be to organize your requirements, whether they're by team, team members, status, milestones, whatever that may be. You just want to grab that information organized by team, team member, date, status and milestone.

You will want to organize your scope list. Then consolidate your reference materials as attachments. Perhaps then the list requirements for each system or element. Again, tying back to the scope of requirements that you had initially planned.

This could be information requirements and your LOI requirements per stage. Having all these requirements in one place specifically ties to an element really helps you begin that verification process. Then having all of this in one place makes it easier to review against the deliverables.

We can review if those contracted tasks have been completed. The most important part of this whole workflow is getting to a deliverable that meets requirements and can be released. Only models that meet the original requirements can and should be published for the intended BIM use.

Again, never publish a model that has not been verified. So as we change this model over from share to publish, we need to make sure that it has met those requirements. So a quick recap. Let's consolidate the requirements in one place. Let's make sure that we review every single model before it's released.

And to anybody else, Let's make sure we can go through that QA list and make sure it's consolidated. Then we can make it a lot easier to review before we share and publish that model.

Case study. So back at Moderna, we do a lot of scanning and modeling. And the main setback or pain, if you like, was that we would end up with a lot of coordination issues. And we wanted to know how having a BEP by identifying our BIM use, having our processes and standards in place, having the different modeling teams agreed to their deliverables, having an agreed scope and prioritizing the deliverables and somehow linking all this up with our model, which always sits on BIM 360 in the cloud-- how will this resolve our coordination issues?

The thesis here was that traditional design management follows a large batching process through your schematic design, design development, construction development. And a large batching process causes inflammation buildup. And too many assumptions are made on information which is out of date.

And misunderstandings are a root cause for the most waste. And all of this results in incomplete and late design. And in the past, we would follow a very traditional approach where we would get a project and get a conceptual design, a point cloud, if it went as build project. We plan for a few hours.

Assign responsibilities maybe within the day. And from there we get straight behind our desks and start modeling. So we get a design and a basic layout, send it to the relevant teams. And everybody would spend the rest of the weeks modeling. So the typical workflow is that we model for, say, a long time.

And after a few weeks, we get together and have coordination meetings and find clashes. And then another few weeks are spent updating the models. Then we do the cycle over a few months to try and get good quality clash-free models.

Unfortunately, we're still experiencing thousands of issues and clashes and challenges. It's mostly reflective or reactive coordination processes. And out of all the BIM uses, the most common is coordination. We put models together and we make it a semi-automatic process. We refine issues and fix them.

But because we're working in 3D, we are finding more and more clashes. So we have the tools to model correctly. We know when and where these clashes will most likely happen. But we still run clash detection and get this long list of clashes in our models.

And yet after all that going back and forth, we still end up making these mistakes. And this would affect the model quality and our deadlines. And the root causes are-- well, for clashes, we have two objects trying to occupy the same space. And that's what flags a clash.

This is usually because the models were uploaded at the same time. Because sometimes in other cases, that's what the contract tells you to do, whether it's a specified daily or weekly or monthly. The reason why that is is because we are operating using a traditional phased-based workflow. And in turn, we are creating large patches of work.

So what would the solution be? How about we plan and agree on smaller batches of work. And we get people to agree on a specific scope. And also, between teams, to agree on a sequence of that work having a priority structure in mind.

So it's not possible to prioritize easily if you have just three or four or five major phases of a project. Your schematic design, design development, construction documentation, it's very, very difficult to prioritize with so few phases of a project. Because you have got so much of work to issue in each phase.

So what we had done was we broke this phase-based approach down into smaller stages. So as many as 15 stages on our new projects. So we now have a more focused group to prioritize work within a stage. And closing out those stages is much more easier and manageable then having longer stages that housed a lot more modeling work.

So you have these smaller batches of work to issue at smaller intervals. It also meant that we were able to start the right teams at the right time and at the right stage and at the right sequence inside of that stage. And the output of that stage or the deliverable had less issues.

So teams, instead of using only a day or so for planning, we spend a few days-- a couple of days, perhaps. We start by pool planning our tasks. So having the end goal in mind in first. And then planning backwards what we need before that and what we need before that and so on, until we come to what's needed to start off with.

So planning backward with the end goal in mind, instead of running off to start modeling, we have conversations with each other. Well, I'm not going to start off modeling plumbing layouts until you have modeled the interior worlds because we need to know the layout. Or I will only model lights after you have given me the ceiling layout.

So the architect would probably just need 2D symbols on where the lights would be. So there were a series of conversations that occurred and that do occur that do not necessarily happen in the traditional approach. Fortunately, we have the ability to do this in digital form that everybody will have access to.

And those tasks-- those cards can be represented as the period of time that they have just committed to. And also, represented so that we can have the dependencies that they have asked for. And we will have a checklist in digital form as well.

So the conversation was that, what do you need before you can actually model something? So this leads to the discussions on prioritizing. So we realize that these elements or these other items that are flexible and these are the items that are less flexible or not as flexible. And an observation that was noted was that we were talking more continuously throughout the process, instead of it being quiet like before when we use the traditional method.

So understanding what others are doing made everyone's contribution so much more engaging, so much more powerful. So there are these exchanges of information that are required at each stage. And now, you can filter by week or you can remove filters. The purpose of the weekly planning and check-in is for accountability.

You want to hold yourself accountable. But you also want to hold others accountable for the deliverables that you require so that you can do your work on a timely basis. And you can manage those tasks in a simple Kanban board with its visual nature and simple drag and drop features. And using the filtering to see specific tasks within a specific time and also checking off what needs to be done. Making sure everybody and everything that was captured in the pool planning is then tracked and controlled and updated so that everyone knows where things are at which stage.

And then linking them up with your model. Or in our case, linking them up with our models which sit on Autodesk BIM 360. So in BIM 360 in your Account Admin module, you will go to the Apps tab where you can link up with a loads of apps that Autodesk BIM 360 has to offer. And we find the Plannerly app.

And once you select it, you can see a whole lot of information here on it and some workflows. And so you will click on to add to BIM 360. You will give Plannerly access to your BIM 360 account and documentation management. And now, you have activated your Plannerly app within BIM 360. And you've linked the two platforms.

So going back to the Project Admin and Document Management module in the folders just to showcase the model that we wish to link to the BEP on Plannerly to the sample architectural project in Revit in Plannerly. In the Verify module, you can drag or drop a model or you can choose to drag one or bring it in from BIM 360.

You will be allowed to browse through your projects in BIM 360, find the relevant one and basically, add it in. And the project is now loaded into Plannerly with it's versioning from BIM 360. And you can now cluster the two. It allows you to group elements where you can hit the button to consolidate it again.

By clustering these elements, we can choose which elements we need to link to a specific task that we had made using the cards in the Kanban board. Hit the button to consolidate the model again. We have the Status tool to see how much of the project has been verified at that stage.

And once we've verified enough of the model, we can then publish the latest model as well. So turn the model from shared to publish. And the result?

Well, compared to the results of similar sized projects with similar scopes and deliverables, we had found that by having a BEP, by identifying our users, having our processes and standards in place, having our different modeling teams agree to their deliverables, having an agreed upon scope prioritizing the deliverables, ironing out any misunderstandings of the deliverables-- and more importantly-- now being able to link our elements in the scope up with our model on BIM 360 and verify each of the elements at different stages of the project, we were able to see our model progress.

And we were able to verify compliance. And in turn, saving weeks of time on projects. And more importantly, dealing with far fewer clashes. I trust that this will lead us to create clearly defined BIM Execution Plans and will assist in incorporating much leaner and more collaborative workflows in BIM management.

And hopefully, this will take our meetings between us and our clients and the rest of the teams involved from this to this. Thank you, everyone, for joining. Keep well, stay safe and enjoy.