Start Small, Think Big: BIM for Electrical Contractors Starting Out

JAMES SULLIVAN: Hi there. I'm James Sullivan, and I'm with Orca Construction Technology. The session today is about BIM for electrical contractors starting out. I'd like to start by thanking anybody who attended the session in-person at Autodesk University. And if you're viewing this online for the first time, I'd like to thank you as well.

So getting started, I'm going to go over a brief agenda of the topics we're going to cover. First topic is going to be investing in BIM capabilities and why that makes sense as an electrical contractor to decide to invest in. Next, I'm going to touch a little bit on my experience. A lot of what I'm going to share with you today is based on my experience as a field electrician and in the BIM and VDC world. So I want to share with you a little bit about my journey, how I started, and how I ended up here talking to you today.

Next, we're going to touch on the team foundation, and that's the building blocks of a BIM VDC department at an electrical contractor. And we're going to go over various skills to create a cross-functional collaborative team that will set an electrical contractor up for success. Then, we're going to go over BIM solutions for your team.

Now, there's a lot of electrical contractors in the US. They perform all different kinds of works in all different kinds of markets, so there is not a one size fits all solution. And lastly, we're going to go over some of the challenges that are specific to electrical contractors operating in the BIM world.

Again, a lot of what I'm going to share with you today is really based on my experience. There's not really going to be any technical instruction. That would be too much to cover in one hour because there are just so many things to cover in that realm. What I want you to get out of this session is an opportunity to create a roadmap as you're starting your journey as an electrical contractor to leverage BIM and VDC capabilities.

First step is investing in BIM, and making the decision, and having a clear understanding of why you're doing this. There's a handful of reasons that I think we, as an industry, can all agree on. Now, the labor on site to do the work in place is at the forefront of everybody's mind.

And I've heard over the years now that work is good, we have to figure out a way to do more with less. Now, I'm going to challenge that notion a little bit and say, we need to figure out a way to do more with more. And that's where I believe BIM and VDC workflows really fit into the idea of doing more with more. You're enhancing the services and the capabilities you already have by adding a whole other aspect of it that really affects all the operations throughout a company.

The other one is the complexity of installed systems. So buildings in today's world rely very heavily on electrical systems. So not only from a power standpoint, but from a standpoint of communications, and security, and all the other supporting features that make up the buildings that the owners are requiring and will occupy. So that being said, we have a much more complex system. We also have less time to build them.

A job site 10 years ago that would have taken two years to construct today is being built in 18 months or a year even. So understanding how BIM and VDC workflows fit into those scheduling [INAUDIBLE] these complex projects within a smaller time frame is definitely something to consider. And more often than not these days, which is a change from the past, utilizing 3D modeling and coordination on a project is a requirement.

So part of the decision is making a differentiation between, am I going to do what I call check-the-box BIM-- I'm going to do the minimum requirements. I'm going to do only what's required of me contractually. I'm going to move on, and it's business as usual. Or am I going to take the technology that's available to me, create an effective plan, enable me to do some offsite construction prefabrication, and really change the way that I deliver quality to my clients safely?

And then I'm going to tag on a couple of things that are maybe a little bit more abstract or some people may not really think about when they think of, should I invest in developing these capabilities as an electrical contractor? I want to say that during the selection phase, owners, general contractors, are a lot more aware now that these services are typically required on a project of how sophisticated somebody is in leveraging them to create some level of certainty on their projects to mitigate some risk.

Part of that is helping to develop the design. We're seeing a lot of different project delivery methods. For instance, in today's market, we have design assist, we have design build, we have integrated project delivery. I'm sure there's others I'm not mentioning, but having the BIM and VDC workflows in place to participate in those delivery methods and participate in a very effective manner will certainly set an electrical contractor apart from somebody who does not. And those are the things that are considered from owners and GCs when they're selecting an electrical specialty contractor to work on their projects.

Then, there's another point where you could take a look at a contractor that's trying to move into a new or a different market. So there could be a contractor that says it's more service oriented that wants to do more construction work. Having the BIM capabilities in place to participate in construction projects will help them transition with a little bit more certainty into that realm.

It could also be the size of the projects as well, which is another thing to consider for a contractor. You have small contractors going to medium-sized projects, medium-sized projects to large projects. And being prepared to step into that next level-- having the BIM and VDC capabilities will set you up to have a little bit more certainty once again in making that next step.

Now, I've been taught that it's a little bit impolite to talk about yourself too much, but I'm going to take a pass here. And because I'm sharing with you a lot of things that are based on my experience, I want to tell you a little bit about my experience and my journey in my professional career. So I started out as an IBEW apprentice in 2002 which, saying out loud, sounds like a long time ago now. And I worked my way up as a journeyman, a foreman, and superintendent in the field leadership positions.

One very fortunate experience I had is that every project I worked on was almost in a different market for a different customer. So I've gotten to work on all types of buildings, from renovations to new constructions, health care, renewables, data centers. And the transition between projects and having to learn something new every time I started a project-- yes, electrical construction is generally the same, but there's different nuances across different markets.

So it set me up to have a little bit more resiliency when it comes to taking on new challenges. And that definitely helped me out later on down the road when I moved into the BIM VDC world. Another advantage I had was I got to work with some contractors that were very transparent in the way they involve their field leadership and, say, project management functions with the understanding of budgeting, and procurement, and collaborating with design teams and owners.

And that is another aspect of my experience as a field leader that really helped me moving forward into the BIM VDC world. So fastforward a little bit, and I stumbled in backwards to the BIM VDC world. I was working as a field leader. I was doing some prefab on projects, and things were working out well for me.

A lot of this stuff was stuff I was sending in hand sketches on graph paper to the shop. And they were sending me what I needed, and it worked out fine. And some of the leadership in the company said, hey, listen, prefabs working good on your jobs, but everybody over here says it's not working so great. How do we get you to help them out to have the same experience you did, which was a very forward-thinking way for them to approach it.

And what I ended up becoming was a coordinator. And I was working with other project teams and trying to help them to implement these things. And that's where my exposure to the technology side of things began. So to give you a little bit of an idea of my level of understanding of technology at the time was, I didn't even own my own computer.

I had the one that was issued to me for work, which I use for email and stuff like that. But my knowledge of the technology side of design and all that stuff was pretty much nil. Now, I started learning more and taking more classes, asking some questions. There was people coming into the team that I could bounce things off of.

And through a lot of trial and error, we came up with a lot of great ways to do electrical work. And there wasn't necessarily a book written on it back then. There was not a lot of people utilizing 3D modeling and coordination in the electrical space the same way that, say, mechanical duct and piping had been experiencing it over decades previously.

Another interesting difference between, say, working in the field and then coming to work as a field lead in the BIM VDC department is that in the field, you go to a project. You work on that project. You're there for six months, 12 months, two years, and then you move on to the next one.

I feel very fortunate. I have a lot of gratitude that BIM VDC world-- I found myself working on anywhere from seven projects a year. Now, if you do the math, in two or three years, you get almost a lifetime of experience touching on various projects-- in a very meaningful way too when you talk about how BIM and VDC can integrate into delivering a project.

So enough about me. We're going to go on to the building blocks. So this is talking about creating more of a cross-functional team. And I've broken out a list of skills that fall into three buckets. Now, these aren't necessarily three different people. They could be. This could be one person that possesses all of these skills.

I'm not one of them. I'm sure they exist. But when you look at building a team-- to build an entire team of people that possess all of these skills, not likely it's going to happen. But if you have team members of different backgrounds that possess a combination of these skills and can collaborate with each other, and you build on that, that's part of the roadmap that really sets you up for success later on down the line.

So an example is taking a look at somebody that has the technical solutions and some proficiency in that area. They understand the hardware, how computers work. Like I said, I had no technological experience other than turn the computer on. I have the software knowledge of the different types of modeling software and viewing software that you would be using in the BIM VDC World. They have the knowledge to develop automation and coding.

And then the last line item is creativity. Now, I believe creativity is almost an indispensable part of really leveraging BIM and VDC technology to its fullest extent. Being able to identify a challenge, pose a solution, and then accomplish that in a creative manner is huge.

There's also the more human side of things. There's training that has to happen between different members of the team. Like the guys or gals with the field experience, and then the guys or gals with the technical proficiencies, they have to train each other. They have to understand what one or the other is doing.

Now, you want to create a situation where everybody is focused on doing what they're good at. That feels good. That means you're productive, not frustrated. But also learning new skills and cross-training these different disciplines is huge. And then as more people enter the group, mentoring them, and creating opportunities for them to progress in their professional career is also very important.

There's a communication aspect to this within the entire organization. Now, the BIM VDC department, or this team, is going to interact with the field team. They're going to interact with the project management team. They're going to interact with estimating and scheduling. They're going to interact with the executive team.

So building trust within an organization to really leverage BIM and VDC in a meaningful way that really impacts the way a contractor does business is very, very important. I'm going to go on to the field expertise side of things. Now, having a person or people in this team that understands how to lay out work from a design that is schematic in nature, which is what we're receiving as electrical contractors, typically, and understand how work is installed from a sequence stan-- [AUDIO OUT] and from a technical standpoint is very [AUDIO OUT].

This way, as this 3D modeling coordination workflow is developed, we're producing deliverables that reflect what can be done in the field and what will be done in the field. And that is another part of building trust within the organization specifically on the field side of things. Also, I have a line item in here that references somebody having experience leading teams in the field.

Now, I don't mean that from a standpoint of, this is somebody that knows how to tell people to do things and when to do them. This is somebody that can relate to the field experience, that has been out in the elements, that's run a crew, that understands what the day-to-day activities of a field leader looks like. Now, when I talk about BIM and VDC and the solutions that are developed, I always try to keep in mind how is what we're doing or the challenge that we're approaching here, how does it make a difference in the day-to-day activities for the person out in the field leading the work?

Are we creating something else for them to do when they already have too much to do? Or are we creating an effective plan that reduces their crew size from 15 people to 10 people? That's a big difference. I've been there. The difference between running a crew of 15 people versus 10 people, and having to account for everything that they need to do is a big difference.

And if I've got a team of people that's, say, providing me, as a foreman, an effective plan to deliver the work on schedule and of high quality, that makes a world of difference. And then the last item we're going to talk about in terms of building a team is the trait of being a risk taker. Now, you can't necessarily innovate, in my opinion, without taking some level of risk.

So within this department, there has to be risk tolerance for the people that are innovating, that are performing this work. And then as an organization, there has to be a safe environment for this team to take risks in the name of innovation. So in terms of innovating and trying new things, I believe there's an acceptable level of failure. And I'm not talking about the routine things that are done from day-to-day.

A lot of that stuff has to be done right. Yes, mistakes happen. But trying new things, stepping out of your comfort zone, and truly innovating and really leveraging the technology to change the way that you deliver your services to your clients involves some level of risk.

And as we move on from this one, I am going to share a quote from my favorite comedian, Jerry Seinfeld, a fellow New Yorker, that I think really sums up that idea or that mentality. And he says that, pain is knowledge rushing in to fill a gap. When you stub your toe on the foot of the bed, for instance, that's a gap in knowledge. And the pain, a lot of information [AUDIO OUT] quick.

So in this world of BIM and VDC, when you're trying new things and you're truly innovating, you're going to make mistakes. Some of them are going to hurt. But all that information that you get from that experience, if it's in a positive environment that encourages that kind of risk taking, is priceless. And that's where the biggest leaps in leveraging this type of technology as an electrical contractor really happens.

Next, we're going to talk about BIM solutions in a very broad manner. As I mentioned in the beginning, there are thousands of electrical contractors in the US. And these contractors do works of all kinds. Some of them are in telecommunications, some of them are in transmission and utilities.

Some contractors only work underground utilities. Some are in renovations. So there's all different kinds of specialties within the electrical realm. So there's not necessarily a "one size fits all" roadmap to successfully utilizing technology to deliver your work. So I've got a list of things here to consider when you look at focusing on different challenges that a company faces in providing their services.

Yeah, you've been in business. You're already good at it. You've already got the work. You're taking the next step by developing a new set of capabilities in the form of BIM and VDC. So what challenges require what level of effort, and what impact do they make to the organization as a whole?

I'll give an example of one of my experiences. When I was working at a contractor and working out some of the prefab stuff, it was mainly focused at that stage on more of the component-level things-- outlets, light switches, data boxes, very repeatable stuff. And I said to myself, when I'm out running work, I don't necessarily have a problem with those things. A lot of those things, I've got a good plan in place. I can get them done. The walls are up. They get covered. I move on.

Where I was really getting my butt kicked, so to speak, was the overhead infrastructure. Getting everything in above the ceiling, around the duct guys, coordinating with them, fighting for space up there, staying on schedule, not having to work through ceilings, not having to pull stuff down because the duct guy decided to do something different than what was on the drawings. So I said to myself, my team, how do we solve this problem?

How do we use this technology to get out ahead of the other trades and really make a difference in the order in which the work is installed so that we can then focus on the more component level of things? And it took a long time. It took a lot of effort. There was a lot of tripping, and falling, and mistakes, and lessons learned, root cause analysis. I can go on and on.

But once we got it and it was repetitive, the field teams could not get enough of it. They were going on to a floor, and they were hanging thousands upon thousands of feet of conduit a day. And they were getting it all up before the duct guy even got his first piece of duct work up.

And that's another good example of how are we impacting the day-to-day operations of our field leaders, how are we changing how they spend their time on things that they need to do, and adding more value to the project, and how are we staying ahead of schedule, on schedule, and getting the owner the building they need when they need it. So again, more of a question to pose inward to understand what the path forward looks like for a specific contractor because it's all different, and there is no one size fits all.

Next, I'm going to outline some challenges that are specific to the electrical contractor more in the BIM realm in general. And these are issues that are recurring that I've experienced over the years, and some of them are becoming even more challenging over time as the amount of construction that's happening currently is still on the upward tick. First one is the deliverables from design teams.

Now, we electrical design is very schematic in nature. And when we think about 3D models, say, that we're receiving as an electrical contractor from [AUDIO OUT] engineer, they're very different than, say, what mechanical contractor is getting from mechanical engineer. The level of detail is very low. There's equipment placed. There's some components around. They're loosely sized. They don't necessarily represent what the equipment is going to look like when it comes to the job.

And then the points of connection between everything to get from one place to the other out to the building where all of these devices are being served is non-existent. So as an electrical contractor, you're responsible for a lot of the constructability associated with the design. It's very general. So there's a lot of dots to connect. There's a lot of gaps of information that need to be filled as opposed to when you look at some of the other trades where they can get a model from a design team, plug it in, adjust it, and it's ready for fabrication.

So what that leads to when the project is now starting-- for instance, you get a late contract award. The GC says, it's time to go. We're going to start the BIM coordination. Everybody have everything done next week.

Well, as an electrical contractor, there's a lot of legwork that leads up to even creating a 3D model. You've got to connect those dots. You've got to fill in that gap in information that takes you from schematic to a 3D representation of the system that is going to be installed. So having the people and the processes in place-- you to do that [INAUDIBLE] consistently, and repeat that-- are very, very important.

I'll also talk about another challenge for the BIM and VDC team as they go through various projects is managing changes. Now, depending on the project, the level of design, and how it's completed, and how fast moving it is, the type of project delivery, changes are inevitable. Now, how often changes are received varies from project to [AUDIO OUT].

It could be a project where you're getting a bulletin, a CCD, an ASI, an addendum-- call it what you may-- once a week, more than once a week.

So [AUDIO OUT] VDC team to take that information in, implement it into their design so that when the information goes out to the field, they have the most up-to-date version of the design as it stands to that date. And then that lends into more of another conversation that is more related to budgeting. Is that considered coordination, is that considered a change order?

And I think that's something, as an industry, that's still a little bit fluid. These services are something that are included in budgets. These are real people doing real work. If there's a change, how is a contractor tracking that and compensated for that accordingly?

And then the last part of the challenges, and what I consider to be one of the most important, is the deliverables. Completing a coordinated 3D model of an electrical system is a feat within itself. Getting that information out to the people that need it to deliver that product on site in place is quite an undertaking in itself.

Is the most current information available? Is it available to all the right people? So figuring out the best way for your team to receive and communicate that knowledge between stakeholders is very, very important. And these are all things to consider on the journey from deciding that you're going to invest in BIM capabilities as an electrical contractor to implementing them and providing them in an effective manner.

So covered quite a few things. Again, a lot of this is more an inward reflection to understand how to lay out a clear path to get from where you are as an electrical contractor currently to where you want to be with BIM and VDC capabilities as one of your services or as a complement to your services and your organization as a whole. So we'll start from beginning and recap each step of the way. And we'll start with why.

So we touched on why investing in BIM and VDC capabilities as an electrical contractor. Again, that's specific to everybody individually, every team individually. But having a good understanding why you're doing it, and where you want to go, and what you achieve is a fundamental foundation to laying out a clear path.

Who is going to do the work? The people and the skill SETS and the collaboration that happens within the team that is performing this work is indispensable. So creating an environment where people can innovate, and can learn, and can grow will set you up later on down the line to scale, and grow, and continue to do great work.

Implementing the work-- now that you've got the right people in place, again, encouraging a team to take risks, and having a good risk tolerance for innovating, and trying new things, and building trust within the organization between project management, the field, BIM, and all the people that are involved in a project and projects is super important. And I'll say it again. I've probably said it a couple times, but how is what we're doing, from a BIM VDC standpoint, helping the field do the work in place? Keeping that in mind, I have found, has made a world of difference in getting people to buy in, collaborate openly, and solve problems as a team.

And then lastly, adapting. Now, you don't necessarily start, get to a certain point, and you're good, and you just keep going. There's going to be a constant cycle of trying new things, solving new problems, and successfully implementing BIM and VDC as an electrical contractor and doing it well.

Where it does help the field, the demand will grow. The demand will grow internally. The demands externally for your services as an electrical contractor will grow. And setting everything up properly as you're leading up to this point will help you to scale, grow, and continue to deliver quality to your clients, whether they be owners, GCs, or otherwise.

I'd like to thank you for taking the time out of your day again to listen to this recording. And if you attended the session in person, thank you for that as well. Thank you.