The Reality of 4D BIM Implementation

ZANE HUNZEKER: All right. Hey, everyone.

SEAN ZOOK: Good afternoon.

ZANE HUNZEKER: How's it going? Having a good time? Yeah? Awesome. Well, I don't see anybody too terribly hung over. Oh--

SEAN ZOOK: A few hands. We got some hands back here. Honesty.

ZANE HUNZEKER: So I guess congratulations to everybody but these guys. You've made it.

[CHUCKLING]

All right, as the final people kind of filter in, my name is Zane. I work for Swinerton San Diego. I'm the VDC manager, and I'm in charge of all VDC and construction technology implementation. I have been doing 4D my whole career more or less, starting out with Navisworks, to Synchro, and now we use Fuzor as a company.

And I think the favorite thing that I have to do 4D on is the super-crazy technical stuff. For instance, I did a semiconductor plant years ago, and we had-- I think the scope was actually totaled at $60 million worth of piping. And everything was going in pre-modularized racks that we would group, and swing into place, and it would show the sequencing.

Claire, do you want to go?

CLAIR MAO: Yeah, I'm Claire Mao. I'm the senior virtual design construction specialist at Balfour Beatty in location San Diego. And the [? producing-- ?] we talked about earlier, actually, we worked together when he's still with us. The company-wise, we started 4D five, six years ago, going through the phase of different Navisworks. We call a thing called Fuzor. There's a bunch of tools out there, and they all have their own specialties. So we will talk about this later in the discussion, how we pick and choose at different phase of the project.

In terms of the favorite application of 4D, I won't say if it's a specific type of a project, or [? market ?] [? set. ?] I will say it's the team, and the whole team, from the superintendent, PM, designer, engineer, scheduler, estimator. If everybody is on board, and open to have some changes, then that will be the best project to apply 4D.

SEAN ZOOK: My name's Sean Zook. I'm virtual design construction manager with PCL construction. I've been in the building industry for 17 years, seven of which was on the design side as an architect, and then 10 with PCL. I've been doing 4D scheduling the whole 10 years that I've been with PCL, starting out in Navisworks. We're now using Synchro as our platform for 4D.

I don't have a favorite building. I like working on a lot of different buildings, and having exposure to different building topologies. That's what I like about working at PCL. That's part of it. My favorite aspect, though, is working with the superintendents-- having a superintendent that supports the vision of 4D as a tool to both plan the job, and communicate the plan, and helping them bring their vision and communicate their vision fully to a large group of stakeholders and audience.

ZANE HUNZEKER: So we've been playing some examples up here. And we're going to turn this off in just a minute. It's a little distracting. My envision for this panel was that you guys are probably a little tired of how to do VR, and you're looking for some insight, and maybe some-- oh, VR-- sorry. This is my fifth class at AU. So I'm stretched thin. Yes, 4D-- sorry.

So you want to maybe learn some things of what we've learned, what we've fixed, kind of the truth behind it, none of this marketing, where, oh yeah, everything works. Don't worry about it. It doesn't. It's a lot of work, and it takes a lot of input from multiple people to actually make this thing function properly. So we have a handful of questions that I've preselected. And after that, we're going to open it up to anybody that has any other questions. I think that's the best use of this time.

SEAN ZOOK: So we're looking for audience participation during the session. So if you have a question that you feel goes well with the questions that Zane poses to us as well. So I think he's going to answer them as well. Chime in, if it's part of that conversation at that point. And we can address it, and give you some insight. We're interested in what your insight is on the topics as well.

ZANE HUNZEKER: Yes, it's definitely meant to be a conversation. So the first question that I have is, how many projects use 4D software and workflow for the full duration of the project? And I'm just realizing that you don't know a whole lot of background about us. We're all in Southern California. We are three of the top five-- I think-- GCs-- top 10, in the area. So I think we fairly well represent multiple sectors, multiple GCs. And we can kind of bring a relatively good idea of what the reality of this software is.

John, do you have any projects that are actually start-to-finish 4D.

SEAN ZOOK: We do. We've had a few. It's usually driven by superintendents, usually driven by one individual kind of teamed with the superintendent on the project. So as far as PCL is working, we're really piloting our second project right now, which is the LAX Midfield Satellite Project. It's really using Synchro integrated with the schedule on a day-by-day basis. And we've learned a lot in that process. It's a really large project. There's a few examples that will run at the close, or maybe during the questions. But it's a project of many projects. So there's essentially seven major building components. And that's part of that project. And those are siloed into individual teams that are focused on each of those projects.

And so 4D is important for us to be able to communicate, and visualize how those different teams interact with each other. Because they don't always necessarily interact with each other on a daily basis. But those that are in charge of it need to. So that's been our experience on the other job as well, where it was about a billion dollar project. It had a lot of different building components. And so there was weekly work packages that were developed on that project. And again, it was about communicating to a really large team on a daily and weekly basis. And 4D was the tool.

ZANE HUNZEKER: So what percentage of your work that you guys have in your area that is actually full 4D?

SEAN ZOOK: Like, full 4D? I mean, it's in the 0.00, probably 0.01. But as far as projects that have it touched at some point, it's much higher. It's going to be probably in the 60% range, where it's either part of their pursuit in our original communication, or used for a targeted analysis for some specific part of the project.

ZANE HUNZEKER: And Claire, go ahead.

CLAIRE MAO: So first, I think we need to define what's the full lifecycle of the party using 4D. Does that mean when we start to pursue, we use the 4D schematic design to show the owner the sequence, and understand our phasing and our logistic with 4D. And moving forward to the date further of the design, do we use it to optimize the coordination, not among the system itself, but also among the installation sequence. And then moving forward, to bring the 4D information on the side, assisting with the pull planning sessions, and then superintendent using the model to track the status of the schedule. And they have the schedule updated based on their on-site daily track. And then get reports and updated the schedule simultaneously. And then, at the end, have the actual sequence compared to the baseline, and have a overall analyzed of the project schedule control part.

So if you ask me, for my project, I've never done one from the very beginning to the end. Depending on the project's specific needs and owner's requirement, the budget, we pick and choose what's the best value tool we use for the project. Right. Go ahead.

AUDIENCE: What would make a project more likely to use 4D scheduling on it, versus other ones?

SEAN ZOOK: From the top. Because usually it's driven there. And that could be driven from owner requirements, but also driven by project and journal team for success in what they see as a need for the project. But without general superintendents, construction managers pushing project teams for their plans, for very granular plans that incorporated either pictorial schedules or 4D scheduling, it's not going to likely happen on your projects. It's not, in my experience, really feasible for a VDC engineer or a field engineer to kind of strong-arm superintendent into sitting down for two hours a week to go over his planning. And that's what's really necessary with implementing some of these tools.

ZANE HUNZEKER: Go ahead, Claire.

CLAIRE MAO: Yeah, to answer the same question, like what type of project it will be best to use 4D-- I would say, when we have it required in contract by the owner, by the contract. So everyone's required to do the same thing, and it's written in the contract. And you have certain criteria to track. That way it's easier to have everybody's buy-in.

And then in terms of specific product type, I think design/build project will be best. Because we were involved early in, and then a lot of those automation connection between the model objects. And then the schedule needs to be set up upfront, like very-- when they are modeling the project or those property ID, how to naming it, how to characterize it, and then a group hierarchy. Those are key for the success of your continuation of using the 4D--

ZANE HUNZEKER: The model parameter itself, so that it lends itself to better implementation. And as far as Swinerton goes, we don't have anything that goes full 4D from start to finish. That may change in the next few months. We have a confidential client in Anaheim that is a very large project, and they're very demanding, and they have very high expectations. So that will probably be start to finish with, most likely, Synchro SITE and Synchro project, that whole suite.

But we had a question over here.

AUDIENCE: To the point that you were making before, with model elements, and properties, and things, you do not have any input, usually, on the projects that you're working on with the design team [INAUDIBLE] either a better-working design model, or are there certain prescriptions that you have for the design model in how it should be built and consult that [INAUDIBLE] process?

ZANE HUNZEKER: So the question was how to update the design model?

SEAN ZOOK: Is how we influence it to help 4D, I think, is some of it.

AUDIENCE: But do you have any prescriptions, or do you have input on the design side of how the design model should be constructed and modeled, or is it still [INAUDIBLE] 4D process?

SEAN ZOOK: Yes and-- I can talk. Yes and no. Probably we all can talk to that one. There's a number of things that we do to structure the data-- location breakdown structure that we carry through on our project. So when we have an opportunity to influence that-- and so that's defining all of your breakdown of your building, how you're going to work that into the WBS to the project. On the LAX airport project, we cooked that into as many other deliverables-- it's a design/build-- that we were able to influence. So the WBS has a direct relationship to our drawings. It also has a direct relationship to information that's within the model. We also drive a number of things that help through the cost estimating aspect of the project, with assembly codes that also then help feed comprehension of the BIM model, and application in the 4D scheduling process.

ZANE HUNZEKER: We have a shared parameter file that has-- at Swinerton Builders, it's SB level, SB area, SB building, and a few others. And so it's very simple for the engineer, architect, whoever to import those models super early on. And even if they don't populate them, that's OK. We have Assemble, and we can push their model up, do some filtering, and adjustments, and some data input, pull it back down-- and then every time we get an update from them, all we have to do is change and filter for what's not assigned to those parameters. Because Assemble remembers everything that we assigned already. And then all we have to do is reassign the stuff that's new-- that either was deleted and replaced, or holistically new to the project.

CLAIRE MAO: Yeah, we do have certain standards of how we do certain things. But definitely the discussion with the architect, knowing what's your-- because typically every firm has their own custom of the modeling stuff, how do you name, and then was the family generic, or it's a wall type, different detail stuff like that. But so understanding how you usually work, and then what's our climate will impact your current workflow. That's always the exchange of ideas, and then we reach a common goal. That can help both of us. We're not forcing you to use our standard, or just adopt whatever your model have. We will understand what are the generic model family you are using so we know how we can alter it to match our workflow.

ZANE HUNZEKER: I pulled up this slide. This kind of talks to your question, too. And one of the techniques that we use to not have to influence and direct too much geometry manipulation that our design consultants need to do in order to support the 4D effort. And that's through a tool that we use called PartsLab. So it's free in the App Store. What that does is allow us to link in the design models, create parts of all the elements-- or at least many of the elements that are going to get incorporated into the 4D schedule, and then manipulate those based on their pour breaks or other sequencing breaks, and have flexibility to react to the design changes through the parts system, as well as maintain our connections with the 4D schedule. So that's one of the ways we're-- we can add parameters for auto-mapping and some of the other things that Zane was talking about.

AUDIENCE: Forgive the stupid question, but is there something equivalent to LODs for 4D scheduling?

ZANE HUNZEKER: Is there a LOD equivalent to doing the actual scheduling part?

SEAN ZOOK: No. No, there's no. There's no-- it's going to be coming up in one of the later questions. But not a lot of consistency either in industry conventions of 4D scheduling and diagramming of construction work. So that's one of the very interesting aspects of this practice of our work.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] What's the [? pedestal ?] [INAUDIBLE] 3D modeling [? classwork, ?] what kind of programming 3D models [INAUDIBLE] Synchro?

SEAN ZOOK: You can, but in this project, we're combining a lot of different data sources. And one of the challenges within Synchro that people struggled with-- or I struggled with for many years, until more recently, is how to get projects with lots of different units, and lots of different orientations combined together, and then published over to Synchro.

Also, anything you want to do visibility-wise within Navisworks, you can then push over to Synchro. You could also add additional parameters within Navisworks if you really wanted to.

ZANE HUNZEKER: In the data tools.

SEAN ZOOK: Yeah.

ZANE HUNZEKER: Yeah. So it's one option of a workflow, is really what that is.

So we're going to move on to--

CLAIRE MAO: Oh, we have another question.

ZANE HUNZEKER: We'll get to that in just a second. We have our own list, too.

CLAIRE MAO: All right.

[CHUCKLING]

ZANE HUNZEKER: And I think this one is a pretty good one. So is there a dollar threshold of when using 4D becomes more worth it, or is it more of a level of collaboration?

SEAN ZOOK: We'll give you this one first.

CLAIRE MAO: Can you repeat the question again. Sorry.

ZANE HUNZEKER: So is there dollar threshold of when 4D becomes more worth it-- like the larger the project-- or is it more of a collaboration level? Because you can have very large projects that are obviously very collaborative, like large airport projects, large stadiums, semiconductor plants, what have you. But you can also have small, cal them "surgery" buildouts, or something like we have in San Diego right now. But it's crazy in this little box, and it does need a lot of foresight to be able to plan that out properly. So the question is, which one is it, or is it both? I think it's, personally, both.

CLAIRE MAO: For me, I feel it's the size won't matter. The complexity of the project matters. Because if you have, for example, our semiconductor factory, where you have a lot of equipment lines going into that rack, and how you assemble and divide those racks-- and for installation, the installation actual sequence is very important-- then we want to do that, because that actually brings the value of assisting us for the installation. But if it's just for the look, why something is presented to the owner, I don't think it's worth it.

SEAN ZOOK: Yeah, for me, it's looking at your audience, looking at what kind of outcomes you're trying to achieve on the project. And so we're always trying to overcome poor communication. We're always trying to overcome schedule overruns and poor planning. And so whenever we run into those types of situations, we look for tools to overcome those. And 4D scheduling is one of those. And so we'll approach it when you're trying to collaborate with enormous-- hundreds and hundreds of project team members. But you've got to look at your audience, and can they comprehend the Gantt schedule? Are they misinterpreting the Gantt schedule? And overcome that through visuals, and animations, and a ton of information in there for people to absorb, and tie back in, and eliminate those misunderstandings.

ZANE HUNZEKER: Right. So any other questions that want to come up? no? maybe? We can keep moving on on our list.

CLAIRE MAO: They had one.

ZANE HUNZEKER: Oh, there we go.

AUDIENCE: For your 4D schedules versus your regular projects that don't have 4D, is there a difference in who is creating the schedule?

ZANE HUNZEKER: So whether or not you're running 4D, who's running the schedule. And I think at least the initial baseline is always done by our scheduling team. And then our superintendents will usually take that over in a traditional implementation. And the only difference between using that and doing full 4D is that you have somebody like one of us that's really good with technology and can put the two together. So it always starts with our scheduling team as far as Swinerton goes.

AUDIENCE: They don't need to model to create the schedule.

ZANE HUNZEKER: Typically, no. Most of time, at least for Swinerton San Diego, almost all of our stuff is negotiated work. A client comes to us and says, hey, we're going to build $150 million residential tower. We don't have any plans yet. How long is it going to take, and how much is it going to cost? So there's so much iteration in between that type of workflow and that type of client that there typically isn't even 3D content at the time of our baseline.

CLAIRE MAO: At Balfour Beatty, usually superintendent controls the schedule. They create it, and then develop it further with the scheduling department. They do the update on the schedule itself, monthly reporting to the schedule and department, and the scheduling department analyzes annual risk, and checking the dates. So superintendent is the one who are creating and maintaining it.

SEAN ZOOK: Yeah, so we're similar at PCL. The superintendent owns the schedule. So they're teamed, and work with schedulers on many jobs that collaborate with them, and help fill in gaps, and manage the production tracking from the field. On the 4D jobs, I have one slide where it's like "this" and "that," which is--

ZANE HUNZEKER: Yep.

SEAN ZOOK: This one gets to the heart of where we're at, and two different ways that 4D gets used on our jobs. And kind of where we started at, which was sort of just QCing the schedule that was developed, and now trying to flip that mentality, and use the model, and use it as a construction planning tool to inject the information and the detail into the schedule and the initial plan. And what's hopefully a more lean process in which you're not just checking something and then redoing it, but hopefully putting it in in a workable, and the sequence that you want initially.

ZANE HUNZEKER: Right. And if you're just starting to do 4D for pursuits, It's actually a really good way to find if your baseline is off. Because I've done that several times where-- at least over the five years, I've done it several times to where we plug everything into the baseline, and we find out that occasionally there's glazing coming up ahead of a deck, or there's shoring coming up, two floors up. And it either it's something that the VDC group does that's assigning the wrong geometry to the line item, or the logic within the schedule is bad.

And so we meet together when that animation goes up, and whoa whoa whoa, what is that? And we kind of come back together, and triage the problem, and find out what went wrong.

SEAN ZOOK: So yeah, revisions can come through the 4D scheduling process. Revisions can come through other processes, too. But they all get integrated back into P6, and move forward.

CLAIRE MAO: Yes.

AUDIENCE: So theoretically, the changes taper off as the project goes on, hopefully. But I heard you guys say that you're not using it all the way through. And I assume that means you're not keeping it updated all the way through. So where does that fall? Is it 2/3, is it 1/2, does it just kind of tape off naturally?

Because I would assume you start to lose the value of keeping it up to date as the project goes on and there's less changes, because you're not anticipating, and the tool becomes less valuable because you're getting closer to the end. So how do you manage that? [INAUDIBLE] I would say that a customer would-- if there's a big [INAUDIBLE] change, at what point do you make the decision to go back and remap the whole thing so it's reflected?

ZANE HUNZEKER: So the question is, in some projects, there's a taper off in the updating of the schedule, specifically in the 4D schedule, and how does that actually happen? So for Swinerton, we aren't doing 4D, aside from a few confidential clients. We're just not. It's not even starting as a 4D project. It's marketing purposes.

SEAN ZOOK: I think that's probably similar. Yeah, I mean, if it was going to roll off, it's going to be in organics. So if the changes are slowing down, that means the level of effort's slowing down. But when there's a-- we have a number of different analyses that we're doing now, for make-up schedules, acceleration, different things against the baseline. So when you get changes, we're now using the tool to analyze how that impacts, and either communicate a level of effort change that has to occur from different team members to make up that change.

ZANE HUNZEKER: And it also could be that we end up with 4D for the pursuit, and maybe the baseline testing. And then somewhere down the line, we'll have a blip of 4D usage. And typically that is some site logistics when-- I'm doing a very, very large casino addition in Southern California. And currently we're trying to accelerate the schedule by three months.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE].

ZANE HUNZEKER: Yes, I know. So part of that sequencing problem is crane time. So I've done one little tiny thing that-- we talk about crane time in the Gantt chart, And that's kind of OK. But it's a little bit more than that. The logistics of how the trucks are coming through, and the sizes of the things that are being picked-- it's very different. So you can have that little blip of usage. Yeah, go ahead.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] see doing that for every single [? quadrant. ?] To implement that [INAUDIBLE] than if you build [INAUDIBLE] yourselves. Forget about the client. [INAUDIBLE] what I'm understanding is it's too complicated to do that-- well, not complicated, time-consuming.

ZANE HUNZEKER: Too time-consuming. And for clients that are not sophisticated enough, they don't want to--

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE].

ZANE HUNZEKER: Yeah, understood. And we do the baseline. And that's what our pursuit animation is, is comparing the baseline. So we do get that initial input at the least. But as we move forward, a lot of times it is too much time, and we're not going to get paid for it, and we have other priorities.

SEAN ZOOK: I'm here lobbying for that, right? So superintendents are always putting plans together for--

AUDIENCE: If you get this too hot at the beginning, [INAUDIBLE].

SEAN ZOOK: I mean, you're going to do some type of--

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE].

SEAN ZOOK: I mean, you're going to do some type of planning, right? And designing the construction process-- yeah, once you get the job. Yeah.

ZANE HUNZEKER: And 3D is always a better visualization tool than 2D.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE].

ZANE HUNZEKER: Right.

AUDIENCE: Yeah.

SEAN ZOOK: And that's where we're at. We're doing a number of discrete zones of heavy congestion for construction, where we have a lot of stacking of construction efforts, and also stacking of equipment. And what that looks like. Because the trades are always after, how do I get to my work? How much room do I have to do my work within? And we want to analyze that with them and have that conversation and design that work area with them.

And 4D's the tool for us to do it, among other things. Bluebeam, PDF, and Sketches. But when you start to get it tied over time, and you can look at it on a day by day sort of iterative basis, which 4D allows, it's very powerful.

AUDIENCE: So on a typical project, how long does it take to do it?

ZANE HUNZEKER: On the typical project, how long does it take to produce the baseline animation?

AUDIENCE: Baseline, yeah.

ZANE HUNZEKER: It depends. On one of the animations that you saw a little earlier-- let me see if it's still running.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE].

SEAN ZOOK: Yeah, I mean there's-- I mean we have work product in a week, we have work product in days.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE].

SEAN ZOOK: Yeah, that's why I'm here lobbying that it should be a tool that everybody in the industry is using for the planning of their work. Yeah.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE].

ZANE HUNZEKER: And so for instance this one-- it's only a $45 million dollar corn show with parking structure. And my VDC engineer, that's actually sitting right there, he did it in probably 30 hours worth of time. And that involved two design changes, and three schedule updates. So if it was just the first time around, maybe eight hours.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE].

ZANE HUNZEKER: And we do for the baseline, at the very least. It's critical to planning and laying out, like we're all saying.

CLAIRE MAO: I said the software is not that user-friendly and not that typical compared to other Autodesk softwares, and there's the learning curve of knowing how to do for your first job, but as long as you know for the first job-- you know what's the difficulty is there-- you communicate it earlier with the design team. And then a lot of automated function in the software can help us, facilitate us to do that quicker. And then the same is, don't dedicate one person to do it. Train as a group, and then so you're not solo relied on someone doing this for the update or maintaining for you. Questions? Yes, please.

AUDIENCE: How do schedule changes affect your thinking [INAUDIBLE]?

CLAIRE MAO: So the question is how do we manage the change of the schedule? As long as it's still the same activity with the same scope of work, the time changes automatically updates with the model. But if you are adding a scope, or one activity subdivided into two, then we would need to divide those selection. If it's slab, we need to cut that slab, that can be done in your original platform software, or you can do it in Synchro itself to divide that portion of work and then link these element into the new activity that you created.

So the key is you need to have model elements linked to a schedule ID-- we all have that schedule ID. This is the linking point that connects to each other. So as long as this does not get changed, and all the schedule will automated-- all the model animation will be updated itself.

AUDIENCE: Yeah, so [INAUDIBLE].

CLAIRE MAO: Mm-hmm, yes.

AUDIENCE: How much time do you generally take when things just change [INAUDIBLE]? Is there a measurement of how much time [INAUDIBLE]?

CLAIRE MAO: So the question is how much time do we use to updating the model by the schedule change? So as long as the schedule-- the ID doesn't change, there's no hierarchy change division or adding activity, then we don't need to spend any time modeling update.

ZANE HUNZEKER: Right, because the way the link works is by GUID and activity ID. And as long as those don't get deleted, split, or whatever, that will always exist. Even if the dates completely flip-flop, the animation will still be solid.

But yeah, I mean-- in principle it's easy, but that's where the rub is. That's where the challenge is-- re-manipulating and managing those changes over time. And that's why we take a few different approaches to either auto batching based on locations and trying to automate some of those changes, as well as what we do with parts lab in order to have flexibility with the design model changes and iterations.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] pretty exciting, do you guys know any kind of surveys to your [INAUDIBLE] know what problems or issues they can solve? Like you just-- sometimes there are so many projects going on, and you won't even know that [INAUDIBLE] can solve this problem.

SEAN ZOOK: No, but I like that idea. So thank you.

ZANE HUNZEKER: The question was, do we send out surveys to the field staff to see if they understand the technology and how much it could fix some of their problems? Yeah, I think we have an open communication between most of our ops and the VDC team. It might be a little bit of an estranged relationship at times, but at least for the most part it's reasonably open.

At least I try to keep it open. Even though I'm the divisional manager for San Diego area, I'll go and visit every job, every couple of months. Just to make sure everybody's happy.

SEAN ZOOK: The large projects are tough, like my project's tough. We have like 150 staff. And people come into the job, and people change roles within the job. And so understanding their pain points is difficult to find out sometimes. Because some of them come from projects where 4D wasn't utilized, and they don't have any exposure to it. And they're not familiar. And the only way to plug that is with training and talking, and those are things that we try to get the teams exposed to the tool.

ZANE HUNZEKER: If we were having a similar conversation six, maybe 10 years ago, that same exact question was about BIM and BIM coordination. So we're just slowly raising the floor of all the expertise in the industry. Yeah.

AUDIENCE: Yeah, so you say you don't use 4D for the whole process. [INAUDIBLE] there's no one else available. Does that mean that you have your schedule team and then you have [INAUDIBLE] supporting team? You're not one unit?

ZANE HUNZEKER: We cross a lot. For San Diego Swinerton, we only have one scheduler. And the superintendents update a lot of their own stuff. And the scheduler meets with them. So he doesn't really have the time out of our, I think 25 active projects right now in San Diego. The scheduler has no time to meet with me except for in very, very emergency situations, we'll call it. And typically our scheduler was an old superintendent. And he doesn't want to be a superintendent anymore. And so he came in to be in a scheduling.

AUDIENCE: Sometimes [INAUDIBLE].

ZANE HUNZEKER: We-- We've thought about it. Swinerton's employee-owned, so the more overhead we have, the less money we make. So that's half of the struggle.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] I'm from Norway and I have a project, and the project manager says he wants to use 4d, mainly because he does not understand the huge [INAUDIBLE]. So he said, don't make a Gantt chart and tie [INAUDIBLE]. We sit down and model our [INAUDIBLE]. But he wants to use this from the start to the end of the project.

ZANE HUNZEKER: That's fantastic.

AUDIENCE: That's fantastic. And it comes down to people, as always.

ZANE HUNZEKER: Yeah, definitely.

AUDIENCE: He didn't want their schedule [INAUDIBLE].

SEAN ZOOK: And that's kind of where I'm at. We had-- 4D was like completely within the realm of EDC. On the LAX job, we pushed into the scheduling department. So he's integrated with the scheduling group. In a perfect world, my vision, it would be within operations team. And so even removed from the scheduling department.

But the technical barriers are a challenge. And the skill set and the passion for 4D is unique. It's kind of cross-discipline, very BIM heavy, very technical. But you also need that sort of planning background and construction expertise and understanding to be able to sort of fill in the gaps, if you're good at it. And so that's tough to find.

AUDIENCE: But would you agree that the big stretch is that the scheduling team just uses 4D instead of using traditional scheduling?

ZANE HUNZEKER: We're trying to do that. As soon as we start to slow down, which isn't going to be for at least another four years in my division, we might have time for some training.

AUDIENCE: But you didn't address it, so I [INAUDIBLE].

ZANE HUNZEKER: That's a good point.

CLAIRE MAO: The point they made earlier, like the 4D now is like BIM 10 years ago. That's a great point. Because go back to who is paying for it? So who's paying for BIM now? A lot of company-- some company charge a percent of fee for BIM. Some they use as a best practice because, it saves themselves time and money. So same for 4D-- is owner say, hey, I have 1% of the project paying for 4D.

No, but as us, as a sub, as the GC, architect, if they see the benefit, how we can communicate it better through that 4D animation, and then how we can track the schedule better because how many of you are suffering from getting an updated schedule from the superintendent? If the superintendent is not doing his job marking his calendar with all those activity, and how can he manage it better?

Now, with some of the tools, superintendent goes on site, he put the date of the today. And then he sees what our activities are supposed to happen on the model. He look at the site with the same perspective. And he check, hey, this is in progress. This one is completion. Whenever he goes out on the field, he gets update on that schedule.

The result-- a lot of the communication between the site team and the schedule department, because our scheduling department is struggling with getting updated schedule from the site team, because they are too busy. They don't want to spend more time talking to a office person just to get an update, which he doesn't get any benefit with.

So for the-- just like the BIM a few years ago, how we as a team use that as a benefit to the whole team, and how we can do it better. Like for my project, a lot of those-- they are not required for 4D, but if I see a chance, and I'll invest some extra time myself, I don't ask for extra budget for my department. But I see how this can benefit. this scheduler, and when they all see those benefit, then they are all buying. Then next property project we can do it fully better. I think that's-- [INAUDIBLE].

ZANE HUNZEKER: Sorry, one quick comment before we go over there. I do have Navisworks training with our scheduling team and with our superintendents so they do view 3D. How much of that perspective gets influenced into the schedule, I don't know. I haven't asked. But it's kind of in the workflow. At least they're looking at it.

AUDIENCE: Not to beat that horse, but given there is some disconnect between the person that wants the schedule to change, the person who makes the schedule, and then the person who makes the 4D. Have you ever gone and just made your own [INAUDIBLE] schedule so that the animation [INAUDIBLE]?

SEAN ZOOK: Yeah.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE].

SEAN ZOOK: I mean, certainly in pursuits where you have a fast iteration, that's part of it. But we're now building small fragment schedules within synchro, just to get the sequencing right. Maybe all the durations aren't perfect until it heads over to the scheduling department. But just getting the flow of work correct and not conflicting with each other is kind of the plan.

ZANE HUNZEKER: I don't change anything that my scheduler makes.

AUDIENCE: No, I wouldn't want to [INAUDIBLE].

SEAN ZOOK: No, you want the people close to the work making the decisions and understanding the decisions that they're making, and the impacts.

CLAIRE MAO: Yeah, you always want to keep one person that are accountable for that schedule-- he owns that schedule. Like, the schedule updates get pushed to that person. He has the right to approve it or decline it. So this is how we manage it-- not everyone's updating the schedule, but those updates tend to that one individual, who are accountable for the schedule, validate it, and then check those approves it.

SEAN ZOOK: Yeah, right now it's done shoulder to shoulder with red lines. We're not going right now-- we're the same way. The P6 schedulers own the schedule, and the updates.

AUDIENCE: Sounds like maybe the obvious [INAUDIBLE] are the scheduling people. They're just going to send it over to the person-- It sounds like that person's not getting the value of 4D, right? They're just looking at dates and seeing how they're changing. They're not really looking at the logistical clash that you could see through the model. Do you guys follow [INAUDIBLE]?

SEAN ZOOK: Yeah, the hang up between somebody that should be seeing the 3D, but they're not.

CLAIRE MAO: That is the challenge. That's-- go back to the keynote topic, doing more and better with less. And some schedulers, they're afraid of losing the job. They think-- are those models and the schedule updates going to replace my place? No, they just will spend more time analyzing instead of doing manually enter, so--

AUDIENCE: We're a general contractor from Seattle where we get [INAUDIBLE]. We have a crazy level of granular detail [INAUDIBLE] pretty bad. [INAUDIBLE] do you have participation from [INAUDIBLE] subcontractors [INAUDIBLE]?

ZANE HUNZEKER: Yeah, so you're asking, do we include our MEP trades in the 4D collaboration? And I think it depends on the level of collaboration for the project. If the trades are already signed up for that level of collaboration, which it sounds like you are most of the time, then yes, of course. Some of the bigger stuff, the semiconductor that Claire and I did years back, we had-- it was an IPD. So had 195 administrative staff in one office. We'd have logistics planning meetings at 10 AM every day until lunch. And you by chance with McKinstry?

AUDIENCE: Close, [INAUDIBLE]. We [INAUDIBLE] pretty small, but we have to tag and itemize all the [INAUDIBLE]. I wouldn't know where [INAUDIBLE].

ZANE HUNZEKER: Sure, and on a design build or IPD project, it's very easy to coexist in that digital space and share the same information. It's a little bit more challenging on a negotiated project, or design assist, where it's kind of design build, but not really. And nobody is actually obligated to do it but, we're doing it anyway. Yeah.

CLAIRE MAO: Yeah. We definitely will get involvement from trade partners, that no matter what, deliver [INAUDIBLE] that is-- the hard part is, like you are onboard. But some other trades-- they are-- if they don't participate, then it defeats the purpose even you are willing to-- yeah.

ZANE HUNZEKER: It's like BIM coordination. If not everybody's onboard, it's almost useless. If you're missing one of the key persons in that meeting, you are losing 20% of your input, which is unacceptable. Very large margin.

SEAN ZOOK: How are we doing on time?

ZANE HUNZEKER: We are at 1:46, so we have 15 more minutes. You've had your hand up for a while.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] I think the more [INAUDIBLE] projects are really [INAUDIBLE]. And it's not anymore just the GC's who [INAUDIBLE] putting the schedule together. It's our MEPs. So I think the benefit in 4D scheduling will be once the software is really capable of getting all the pull planning data in, and actually showing the 4D schedule to the entire pull planning team, not just scheduler, project manager, or superintendent.

ZANE HUNZEKER: Right, because the pull plan does a three week look ahead, typically. So-- and we also typically have a three week look at in our schedule reports. So tying those two together-- there needs to be a way to have data input from that, from one to plug back into the other, is the biggest hiccup right now. Technology wise.

AUDIENCE: Full time 4D scheduler participating in the pull planning [INAUDIBLE]. Otherwise you're going to be waiting for two weeks to get updates, and [INAUDIBLE].

ZANE HUNZEKER: Right, take your take your VDC and scheduling budget, and overhead, and double it to make that really worth it, is part of the problem.

SEAN ZOOK: And for me that comes down to, your goals with 4D, your goals with pull planning. So pull planning's usually focused on certain milestones, and filling in the gap. So maybe 4D's the same way, where it's showing you where that goal post is, and you're focused on illustrating that. And using the pull plans. That's finding out how these tools work together with your teams and trying not to step on each other's toes. But you know we've got our scheduler and our 4D scheduler sitting side by side in the pull planning meetings, so that those meetings get kicked off with a modeled enabled comprehension of what they're trying to accomplish that day.

ZANE HUNZEKER: [INAUDIBLE].

AUDIENCE: Going into that concept, to be able to get that in the pre-planning stages, you have to basically have some kind of an idea of what the timeline is based upon what type of activity there is. Do you guys have a database source where you're pulling that from? Or are you still relying upon the scheduler to fully fill in the timeline gaps?

ZANE HUNZEKER: So we, as far as the database goes, our scheduling departments have the exact same database across the whole company. So we have that same data input, the same line items, as far as the base goes. You start from there. So that's half the question.

SEAN ZOOK: Yeah, it's the same for us. Productivities are driven based on information available that the schedulers hold. But again, it's kind of similar thing. Sometimes you build your 4D scheduler into a more granular, with basically-- in Synchro, it's child activities to a parent, that you can subdivide it and show or illustrate a more complex narrative that you're trying to tell and communicate.

AUDIENCE: What techniques do you use to portray interiors and [INAUDIBLE]?

ZANE HUNZEKER: So to do interiors and MEPs in a 4D model, that's even rarer than doing a 4D model.

SEAN ZOOK: I don't know if we left ours in here. I have a couple examples of that. Our situation, we have two that we're utilizing. Two techniques for that. One is-- it's an exterior envelope, but it shows kind of a similar approach that we're going to take for the interiors-- for interiors. At least your wall work. But you can isolate one system and show that with the sub window that's illustrating how it fits into the bigger picture.

So that's one way. Another one is these multi situations like this, where you're seeing-- now we're moving into planning right now our interiors work on this job. So we have large common scaffold. So we're working through multiple viewpoints to show what's going on with those interior common scaffold work as well as the exterior skin work.

ZANE HUNZEKER: And I guess a little broader than that. It's all about the return on investment. If you have a really good MEP team, and it's a simple design-- call it a hotel tower, where you just have one air handler unit per room, and maybe a couple pipes up above there with fire protection also being up there, then do you need this level of planning? No. If it is multi trade racks--