How to implement BIM in a 6000+ staff company and to stay mentally sane...?

PRESENTER: Yeah? Cool, all right. I start here, so thank you very much for coming to this class. I know that the competition is pretty tough with the CEO talking and the opening keynote in the same time. So I was expecting a kind of an empty room. So thank you so much. That's really good to have you here.

So, yeah, the title. You can read the title of the class. And a quick reminder of the learning objectives for today, I want to present you the key drivers, talking about the key drivers for a good implementation, talking about BIM strategy, how to gain trust from stakeholders. And at the end of my presentation, I want to share with you some tips about how to manage our personal time to work. We are working in a very-- we're all very busy and how to make sure that we stay healthy and OK.

So a few words about me. My name is Francois Appere. I'm working for Arcadis North America as the regional BIM manager. So my role is to implement BIM within Arcadis North America for the three business lines that we have. And I will present to you in more details the company.

I started to work for Arcadis seven years ago as a bridge designer. So I got a civil engineering background back in Paris, in France, obviously. And I was lucky enough to do a BIM management training in 2014. That was one of the first in France in one of the engineering school in Paris. And after that, I completely moved to the BIM side of the force, if I can say, and I started to implement BIM for Arcadis France at the time [? only. ?] And then, 10 months ago I joined [? so ?] Arcadis North America and taking the lead in terms of BIM implementation for them.

So [? then ?] I will really share my story for these past 10 months, working for Arcadis North America has a BIM lead on what I have done to start and to engage this BIM transformation. I will be more than happy to discuss with you after the presentation what you think. And if you are in charge of implementing BIM yourself that you have so many discussions that we can maybe have. Because maybe there are-- I'm sure there are lots of ways to do this kind of BIM transformation.

I will not talk about Revit. I will not talk about the softwares. That will be completely software agnostic. This is really about BIM implementation business transformation. I am not personally a Revit expert. This is not what I do on a daily basis. So if you want to have lots of tips on tricks about Revit, I am sure there are lots of other classes that you may go. So, otherwise, you can stay for sure.

So that's my sell to you. The second time I speak to the AU. And the fun fact is that the first time I'm not jet lagged at the AU, because usually I come from Europe. So I'm completely jet-lagged. And now I come from-- I live currently in California, so it's not too far away. So that's good. I will better manage the week I think.

So the agenda of today. A few words about Arcadis for those who don't know the company. Then I want to just recap the context of this digital disruption, but very quickly because we are all aware of that. And this is one of the key topics for all these presentations this week. The Arcadis vision, when it comes to how to manage this digital transformation.

And then, a big focus on the original approach. When I say "original," this is Arcadis North America. We are divided as a global company in regions. So this is here that's really for US and Canada. And I will close my presentation with these few personal tips about how I manage personally my time.

So, OK, let's go for it. A few words about Arcadis. We are a design and consultancy company. We are operating worldwide on a global level. So you have some figures here, at number five of the top 224 international design firms, number 10 of the-- number 12 of the top 200 environmental films. So one of the big player in this field. Not the biggest one, but we are kind of decent size in terms of company.

We are working on lots of different types of projects. Started as a bridge design myself. I was working mainly in the mobility and transportation side, road design, highway design, tunnel, maritime canals, all these kind of things. But we welcome the energy side as well, [INAUDIBLE] and [? autogas ?] [? client, ?] thinking about the smart cities urbanization, so a large and very broad spectrum of activities.

In terms of size, we are more than 27,000 employees worldwide, so as I told you, operating on a global level. Our headquarters are in Amsterdam in the Netherlands. And the company has been created back in 1888, so quite an old company who grew by acquisition in time.

I'm focused on North America because this is the region I am currently responsible for in terms of implementation. So US plus Canada. The Canada (CHUCKLING) is missing on this map, but that's about 200 employees in the Canada. We have three, four offices. Main part-- [STATIC] oops, sorry-- main part is in the US.

So as you can see here, more than 6,000 employees spread across 120 offices and three time zones, obviously, 35 states in the US. So when you have this role of implementing BIM within this kind of a company, that can be a bit challenging. We are not talking just about one team here and one team there. [? There's ?] [? lots ?] [? of ?] [? teams, ?] 6,000 people, so lots of different businesses and organizations.

So in terms of business lines, we are divided in North America in three main business [? lines-- ?] the environment one, which does more than 50% [? for ?] design [? and ?] our revenue, so big environment business line. And then two smaller business lines that are the water business line and the infrastructure business line. So working on water ways, water treatment plan, water management, or highway design, roadway design. We are working a lot for the Department of Transportation [? scene ?] in the southeast of the US, for example.

A few words about the context of digital disruption. So I'm sure you all know this curve, the [? Maslow. ?] So I will not take that much time to explain that because that's obvious. And if you are here on the end to Autodesk University, you know that. Computing power is growing and following an exponential curve. And the technology costs are halving, so every 18 months. So that's huge.

Just a few facts to get a sense to it. Because as humans we are used to-- we understand the linear approach. That's easy. The time, that's a linear approach, every month, every year, we are one year older. That's easy to understand. In terms of exponential curve, sometimes that's very hard for us as humans to get it.

Just a few examples here. Back in 2015, so three-- so five-- four-- (CHUCKLING) I can't get it-- four years ago, the computing power surpassed the brainpower of a [? mouse. ?] So we'll say that was just a [? mouse ?] in a lab. And there's [? also ?] [? a ?] [? mouse ?] here [? or ?] there. That was just a mouse, so that's OK.

But following this exponential curve, by 2023 the computing power will surprise that the brainpower of one human. So it's in four years, and that's big. And what is bigger is by 2045, according, again, to this exponential curve, the computing power will surpass the equivalent of all the brain combined-- the human brains combined on Earth.

So we can imagine that for one supercomputer in 2045, it will be able to manage more calculation than all the brains of all of us on the Earth combined. And by 2045, we'll be more humans on Earth than today. So that's big.

Another big fact is the digital adoption of the different industries. And you see here on this chart, the greener the line is, the moral digital the industry is. So, of course, on top of it you see the ICT, the media, the professional services. They understood the value of digital [? and ?] these new technologies, and they adopted it, and they have already been disrupted. Now, if you're looking for the construction industry, the AEC industry, we are right there at the bottom of the list.

So construction, right before agriculture and hunting-- good for us--

[LAUGHTER]

--but after older [? user ?] sectors of the industry. And we see here that we have a lot of red and orange dots. So we are still very-- we are still behind. Of course, we have-- we see virtual reality, augmented reality, the robots, and sites, and we see a lot of them here at the Autodesk University.

But these examples are still proof of concepts. This is not if you-- if you go outside, and if you go to a construction site there in Las Vegas, you will not see all the workers with augmented reality, hard hats to do a job. This is still at the-- we are still at the early stage. And when we consider these exponential curve, we are still very at the bottom of it. But we know that that will change very, very quickly.

And the other fact is that data is the new gold. On this is already old. That's done. The big money, this is about data, data, data, data. And we-- everyone is more or less scared by these Google, Amazon, Facebook companies because they own this data and they can do what they want with this data. And they will have more power very shortly than the governments today because they own this data.

So this is something that we really have to get in-- to really keep in mind. And when we talk about artificial intelligence, generative design, machine learning, everything comes from data. So the data will fuse all of these concepts. So if we are not good in terms of data management, data architecture, data structure, we cannot go anywhere with that. So that's the three criteria-- exponential curve, digital adoption of the AEC industry, and data.

So what is the Arcadis vision to handle that? [? We ?] [? have-- ?] we really considered this digital transformation. And here I will focus on BIM, because this is the topic of the class, as a business transformation. This is the entire business that is going to be disrupted. In lots of cases, sometimes, you see some companies trying to drive the BIM transformation with the IT group only because, you know, IT and technology.

If you do that, you will have great success stories. You will see a lot of great projects. You can use, Revit, BIM 360, all these technologies we know, and you will have great models. But that will be maybe for one lighthouse project, maybe for one or two projects. If I come back to my 120 offices across the US that we have, that we work with, that will be maybe one office really good at that. But what about the rest of the business, the rest of the 6,000 people we are working with?

If IT is driving that alone, that cannot work. So the business has to be the owner of this transformation because this is a real business transformation. So really consider BIM implementation as a business transformation. And, in fact, this business transformation is just about change and risk management. So BIM implementation is about change and risk management, how to manage these big risks, because we are disrupting ourselves, and how to change our people and our processes.

Parts of this Arcadis digital strategy, we have engaged and launched, two years ago now, the 100% BIM program. So the purpose for us-- and that's a kind of very big statement-- is to be 100% BIM as soon as possible for [? our ?] design engineering projects [? on ?] different projects we do. Because we consider that working in a BIM environment, so creating this data-- again, going back to the data is the new gold-- creating these databases will enable us to reach the next steps of digital.

As I told you, data fuels all [? these ?] [? earlier ?] generative design and concepts. So as long as we do not have these data available, we cannot do anything. So first, let's go there, and we do this [INAUDIBLE] with hiking and mountaineering And if you remember the picture of me, I love being in the outdoors.

So I like this metaphor. Being 100% BIM will just lead us to the base camp. And then, if you know a bit about mountaineering and if you know about the Everest climbing, you go to the base camp, this is almost nothing. Then you have to climb the mountain. But if you are not at the base camp, you cannot think about climbing the mountain. And first, this 100% BIM program is really the starting point of that, of this digital transformation of the company.

So what BIM does look like for us within Arcadis? We tried not to overthink everything. We have these standards. From the UK Mandate, we have this PAS 1192 standards about BIM. But when you go to a company that is not that mature in terms of BIM, we don't want to over complicate everything.

So for us, this is really based on three key points. First, of course, we want to have object-- we want to work in an object-based environment. And when I say object base, it's about creating this database. That could be BIM, that could be GIS, depending on the projects you do. That could be even working with SQL database, whatever. You want to work with objects.

We want to work using common data environment, so to make sure that we have the single source of truth. You cannot work today in 2018, almost '19, sharing information by email or using WeTransfer. That's not the way we should operate. We should have this common data environment that could be BIM 360. If we work in an Autodesk environment, that could be [? Project ?] [INAUDIBLE], whatever. We want to share this information in a smart way.

And one important part, we want to know what we are doing. So we have to have predefined information process. Because with BIM we are managing, handling huge databases that are really big. And if you've don't know what you're planning and if you do not have a predefined information process, you will you be wrong at the end of the day.

So, really, three points, and these three points can be aligned with the BIM Levels from the UK Mandates. So, again, keep it simple. And we have not revamped it, but we use these BIM Mandates as a basis, because it does exist.

So you know the Level 0 when we are in a paper-based environment. You know the Level 1 where people are working in an object-based environment. So, for example, one of the stakeholders is using Revit to develop his design, but he's not sharing this Revit model with the rest of the stakeholders in the team. So that's the lonely BIM. Doing BIM for yourself, you know?

So that's a big step, by the way. Going from here to here, you need to have the help from the other-- the colleagues in your company because in terms of learning curve that's [INAUDIBLE] steep.

But then where we want to go as a company? And this is the 100% BIM program. This is our goal, is to go to this Level 2. And if we simplify this Level 2, again, compared to the UK Mandate, we want to have this object-based env-- working in an object-based environment. So have these BIM models, have BIM Execution Plans, so having a predefined and collaborative process, so predefined information process and working in a common data environment. This is really where we want to go.

Then, of course, we could start to think about the Level 3 and the OPEN BIM and the [? iBIM, ?] or whatever. I think that there are still a lot of discussions in the Level 3. Even in the UK, they don't really know what is the Level 3. And they say there are some [? backup. ?] Like, OK, let's focus on Level 2 first. And let's really do this transition to the level 2, and then we will rethink about what Level 3 looks like.

So how do we do that within Arcadis? We have developed these what we call the skeleton, the Arcadis BIM skeleton. So on top of it you have the PMO, the Project Management Organization, because the 100% BIM program is a project. That's an internal project, really, so we manage it as a project.

So you have a Project Management Organization, and then three main pillars that's our client, data, and capabilities. So the capabilities, that's the most of use one. People process technology. We see that for a long time now. But, as I said to you, data is the new gold. So you have to have a strategy, a governance plan and an architecture plan when it comes to data, so working closely with new skill sets.

Maybe we'll have-- and that's what we do within Arcadis. We have now data scientists part of the company. That was not the case a few years ago. So we have this new skill sets part of the company to really have a guide to know how to create these data.

And, of course, the client. We have to-- yeah, we have to work with the client. On my presentation, you will see that, in fact, if I show you the level of [? effort, ?] I personally bring currently this 10 months within Arcadis North America, that's like that. That's really about people because BIM business transformation, and business transformation is about people because people are working in the business lines. So that's really about people. And then, of course, you have to work on other topics, but the biggest focus is right here.

And, yeah, one last thing I want to add on that, business transformation is about change management. And the BIM implementation is about challenging these people and putting these people out of their comfort zone because we are disrupting them. And for me, this is the most important part, [? yes, ?] and the most interesting part of the BIM implementation.

I love seeing these BIM models and all these things, that's great. But what I love the most is talking to the people to help them to go into these-- through this business-- through this challenge management. Because that's really tough. That's really hard. But in 100% of the case, [? we ?] [? see ?] [? that ?] the people who have been disrupted and who changed, they say that that was hard, but they don't want to go back.

So project managers who tried to use BIM, they said, I spent a year that was really hard. I didn't know what was going on. I was not able to find a the 2D drawings that I used to look at to check the design on the progress of my project. That was really hard. But at the end of the day, I don't want to go back. I don't want to go back into the CAD environment. And that's very-- that's rewarding. That's great.

So now, let's dive [? into ?] [? more ?] [? of ?] the regional approach. So that was the big picture on an Arcadis global level. And now let's dive into the regional approach. First, what does BIM [? mean ?] [? and ?] [? what ?] does it mean to you? For me, there are lots of different meanings when it comes to BIM. And this is really based on your business, again.

Of course, there is the BIM for Built Assets, with a t. Not build, but Built Assets. You have this kind of model, using Rivets, using [INAUDIBLE], using any kind of BIM software. We know that. It's been a long time we see that out there. But within Arcadis, especially for North America, we work a lot in the environment business line.

We work a lot on remediation projects. We have to remediate some sites that are polluted. And in that case, we will maybe not use the same technology, but we'll use other softwares to create this database. And here, you see here a model where we have modeled below-ground information, plumes, plus boreholes and wells. And this is, again, for us, we consider that as a BIM project because we are creating a database, we have a predefined information process, and we share this information through a common data environment. In that case, this has BIM 360, by the way.

So we are trying to see how we can bring this mindset of BIM into the three business lines that we have. For some business lines, that's obvious, [? the ?] [? water ?] [? and ?] [? the ?] infrastructure, we use Revit, OpenRoads, Navisworks Navigator to do that. For the other business lines, when this is about Natural Assets, yeah, we have to investigate some things. But this is really great.

Project Management Organization and our regional levels. So, remember, this [? criterion ?] with the black rectangle on the [? top, ?] Project Management Organization. This 100% BIM program is really a project, an internal project. So as a project, you need to have a plan. Project plan, you start with a project plan. So have a plan and communicate it and stick to it.

That's really important. Because, as I told you, this BIM implementation, that's a business transformation. So you are disrupting the people, your colleague. If you change your plan every day, every two days, they are already lost today. (CHUCKLING) So if you change your plan, they will be even more lost tomorrow. So have a plan, communicate it, and stick to it.

And you have to be very transparent with that because you're going to change the way you work the way they operate. So they need to know what's going on. And having this plan will help you to prioritize what you have to do because you cannot change a 6,000-people business overnight. You will not have the time. You need to have the budget to do so. And that's too risky. And, again, come back to the risk management. So you have to prioritize. So that's the purpose of this plan.

So how did I build my plan when I joined North America 10 months ago? So coming from my small Arcadis friends, where we were 700 people, that was, like, yeah, small. And I came from the business, so I knew, I understood the Arcadis friends. And here, North America, 6,000 [? people ?] [? and ?] a complete different business. First, do this assessment and understand the current situation, where we are today.

So I spent a lot of time in the plane traveling across the US to go and meet the people and to understand what they do, what they do on a daily basis. I will not be an expert in the remediation field, in the water management field, and in the road design. I will be a bit on road design because this is my background, but I cannot be an expert in everything.

But you need to understand the level of awareness, what is BIM. Sometime I started some presentation, I was like, yeah, I'm the regional manager. What is BIM? So you start here, what is BIM? I've never heard BIM. Some people sometimes they've said to me, oh, yeah, I know what it is. BIM is 3D. I said, oh, yeah. So we'll have interesting conversations sometimes. Yeah, BIM is Revit. Ah, that's not only Revit, you know?

So you have to understand what the people have in mind to start to draw this maturity map and to understand where all the stakeholders in your business, as well as the clients. Because if you go back to the UK, for example, there is the UK Mandate. So the client can say, OK, I want this project to be delivered in a BIM Level 2 environment according to the PAS 1192, then the stage is set. I mean, that's, OK, we know what you are talking about here. But other clients, they just don't know what it is.

So we have-- I've created this kind of big dashboard with all our current CAD and BIM practitioners to understand the level of maturity and level of usage of AutoCAD 2D, AutoCAD 3D, Revit to start to understand where are the level of expertise, because we had some very good users already, and where we had gaps. So that's the first thing.

From that you can define objectives. Of course, ambitious, but reachable. Otherwise, you will create frustration within your company because you are communicating this plan. So you have to have objectives. And the most important part here is to be aligned with the business. Because, again, BIM is a business transformation. So you have to have the ownership-- the business needs to take the ownership of that. So talking with the business line directors to set the stage and to have defined objectives. And this is very customizable, meaning that for the infrastructure maybe the objectives will not be the same as for the water business line or the environment business because of the market, because of the client maturity. You have to assess that part by part.

And you have to have KPI, of course, to track your progress and to monitor your progress. So that could be in a number of projects you are doing in BIM. It could be what software you use. And if you have a contract with Autodesk, they could help you to see how many software, how many times we used AutoCAD this month, how many times we used Revit this month. And then you can see the different-- the trend, if the Revit usage is growing or not, if the AutoCAD usage is decreasing or not.

And then, again, you communicate. You have to be transparent and broad from all the levels. This plan is not just for the business line leaders. This is for everybody. So when you travel across the offices and you see the people, you explain where you want to go. And you have-- we have already great success stories. So you can present these success stories, meaning that we are not starting from scratch.

We have already some good practices. So share that and showcase the best practitioners. And, of course, report thanks to this KPI. You can go back and report the progress and maybe set up some corrective actions. But, again, stick to the plan. So do not change the plan completely, but you can update it a bit on a yearly basis, maybe, and set new objectives and targets.

So [? being ?] [? said, ?] we have this part of the plan. This is a three-years roadmap that we have to go into 100% BIM program. So you say to me, that's very ambitious in three years, by the end of 2020, to be 100% BIM. That's huge. But if you say that by the end of 2020 we'll be 80% BIM, then everybody in the business we'll say, oh, yeah, yeah, I'm in the 20% not doing BIM by the end of 2020. And that will not work. So you have to be bold and say by the end of this three-years plan, we want to be there so that we have the right actions.

Of course, you have to start somewhere, and you start with pilot projects. Again, you will not change a business overnight. So a focused approach with maybe the best practitioners and pilot projects, and little by little, the goal is to change the mindset of the people and to start thinking, OK, why do I do BIM on this project to why don't I do BIM on this project. Maybe there is a big risk in terms of procurement, agent client stuff then you don't do BIM. But for the rest of the projects, you use a BIM approach. And then, hopefully, at the end of the day be at 100% BIM.

And you cannot do that yourself, so no i in team. You cannot that yourself, and you have to set up the right structure. So first, this is what I've done within North America to work on that. Because, of course, myself alone I cannot do that.

First, key contacts. So the people when they hear of BIM and they want to have informations, they need to know who to contact. But maybe just three or four names, that's enough. You want to direct the communication. You want to be sure that you know what's going on, especially at the beginning. [? Few ?] key contacts

And then, the steering committee with the business line. Again, the business has to take the ownership of that, otherwise it will go nowhere. So having a steering committee, we have monthly calls with the business line presidents who say, OK, we have these new projects that we want to engage. So we have the training to maybe to engage, so we need to have this budget. And then, the business line president can say, yes, no. And we can assess that.

Very important to have them, to have the HR as well involved. This is not just a [INAUDIBLE] thing. This is really a business thing. So having these people. And then, you need people to spread the word because you cannot be everywhere. And you can have a lot of Skype calls, and this is already what we have, but there are eight hours in a day and seven but five working days in a week. And if you spend your day and your hours in Skype, even though you will not talk to these 6,000 people in a year or in the three years.

So you need to have people in the offices, like your personal [? space, ?] that can really see what is going on in the business. Because when you are-- when you living in New York or when you live in LA, or whatever, and you have all these offices in across 37 states, you need to have your own spies to know what's going on, OK?

So this is the BIM ambassadors. This is the BIM ambassadors group. And for me, this is people like project managers, design leads, that I trained to BIM for them to understand what it is. And then, we can work together to see office by office, and group by group, team by team, how we can move. And again, these people are not Revit experts, they are not Navisworks experts. They just know the value and they just understand the value of BIM. They know the clients, but they are not the experts in the software.

But then, you have the BIM champions. And they are your best BIM practitioners. Because when I came, of course, we were already creating Revit models on using this technology. And they have already some templates. They have already some processes set up. So you want to work with them to build on that. So it's really important to create this core group of people so that when you have new users, you can refer them to the champions.

And then, on top of it, the community of practice. So a group which is completely open, and the idea here is to have regular calls with people that can join this call, and we just share best practices on stories for them to learn about BIM. Again, there is no mandate of being part of this course, but this is just if you're interested, just join this course, and then you will learn more about BIM little by little.

So as you can see here, that you have to find the right balance between a top-down approach, bottom-up approach. So that's sometimes you have to be more bold on a top-down approach with a steering committee and the business line that says, OK, we go there. So that you get-- you start and you engage this momentum.

But a lot of great things come from the bottom as well, bottom-up. And you want to just guide this initiative so that you go into the right direction according to your plan. So that was the PMO part, and now the people. And you remember all the people, that was the big square on the right of the slide.

And to talk about the people, I'd like to start with this normal distribution. And as scientist engineers, we know that. We have seen this normal distribution that, in fact, illustrates how a lot of behaviors out there works. So, for example, the height of humans. It is this according to a normal distribution, so we understand that. Some people are very tall, some people are more small, and so people [? are-- ?] [? the ?] average is in the average, of course.

That works for all the blood pressure of humans as well. [? I ?] [? know ?] that works for the intelligence and the IQ of humans as well. For the chicken weight as well, I've checked.

[LAUGHTER]

And for all the tire's lifespan as well.

But more importantly, that works for all the innovation adapters that you have within your company. So when it comes to willingness to change and to adopt this innovation on these new technologies, you will have your people within your company that will be like that. That will be this distribution.

So on the top right, you will have the innovators. You know, you have a few of them, for sure. You know, they will talk to you about AI and artificial intelligence. They will say to, oh, yeah, we should do that now in this project. That will be awesome. Yeah, that will be awesome, for sure, but if you drive these BIM transformation with innovators only, you can be sure that you will have the rest of the company behind, and just a few innovators ahead that will do some cool stuff there.

And you will have this kind of roadmap. And I take the roadmap from a BIM Level 8, that is kind of famous on Twitter, about BIM Level 1, 2, 3 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. And I'm not sure that you want to go to the BIM [? Kardashian ?] Level here. So that will be meaningless, and that will be completely out of-- completely far away from the business. So this is not what you want to do.

So you have these few innovators, [? when ?] of course, you want to have them part of your team. You want to talk to them. That's very important because they can give you the sense of where the industry and the technology is going. But most importantly, you have the early adapters.

And these early adapters are the BIM champions, again, on the BIM ambassadors. In fact, all these group you had, these are the early adapters. So, for me, you have three profiles within this group. You have-- you have the practitioners. So the BIM models who try drive it, maybe six or seven years ago. And they said, oh, that's really great, and I want to use that on my projects, so the practitioners.

You have the project managers. Some project managers, even if they are not asked to use BIM, they will use BIM because they have read that it's improved the collaboration process, the delivery process. So why not using it? So that's the project managers.

And then you have some leaders, some leaders that are convinced that BIM is good for the business. You want to work with them, for sure. They will create the success stories you need to gain trust from the rest of the company. So you really want to empower these people, to put them in the spotlight, and to work with them to start this momentum and to start this move.

And then you have the early majority. So that's a good group, as well. But this group will wait to have one or two success stories to move, but they will not be that reluctant. You know, they'll say, oh, yeah, OK, why not? If you ask me to do, OK, I will go there. I will not take the initiative myself. I will not be as autonomous as the early adapters, who will find all the solutions online and they will go to the Autodesk University, [? they ?] [? are ?] [INAUDIBLE]. But they are-- yeah, OK, they go there.

For this group of people, and you have to identify them, you want to make sure to have enough time available to support them. Because the day they will have a problem with your item, the BIM 360 that is crashing or your Revit model and you don't know how to create this sheet, they can be very frustrated. Because, you know, you said to me that that was great to do BIM. And now I'm stuck, and I've lost one week of my time. So this group of people, if they started, you want to make sure to have the proper support to guide them. That's really, really important.

Then you have the late majority. And that's a big part, a big chunk of your company. Because BIM is about change management, and you don't want to be out of your comfort zone. You know, if I can do my business like 20 years ago, I'm good and that's OK.

So for these guys, you need to come with a real proof of concept. You need to have big case studies and success stories to show to them, look at that. There is no risk. We know what we are doing. You can trust me. We know what we are doing. It's been 10 projects we are doing like that. You are one of the last not trying it. So you should go there.

And then they will be maybe a bit [? first. ?] And if you are working with the business line, presidents and their leaders, then these guys will force the late majority to move. So prepare the stage with the earlier majority and adapters, and then late majority will move.

And at the end you have the laggers. But these guys we still have today in the company, people they don't know how to use Outlook, they don't know how to use Skype. That will be the same here. And maybe when I said 100% BIM, maybe that's 89.5% BIM, and you have a few laggers there. But, you know, that's OK. That's human behavior and that's the normal distribution.

So how to engage these people? We like to use this concept of VIA, so provide something visual, interactive, and always accessible. This is really important, especially for this early-- this early majority, not the early adopters. They don't need that. But that's a majority, they like to have some tools that they can play with to start to be engaged.

And, for example, we use BIM 360 a lot. I've opened a kind of sandbox where I have pushed some models. And the people, if they want to play with that, they can play with that. So they can crash everything, you know. I don't really care. That's just a random project, but at least they can play with that.

We have tried, as well, something else. We used Forge to embed a BIM 360 into our SharePoint, our internal SharePoint. So then the people, when they go to SharePoint, they can click on an object, see the information in Revit, and these kind of things. So that, you start to create some engagement, some curiosity. So that's really important to have that.

And-- Jesse thank you for the photo-- you want to engage them with cool stuff, as well. And this is really easy. This is what I call a cheap viewer because it doesn't cost anything but a cardboard, $8 on Amazon, and just you have these models already done.

So you have Navisworks if you use Autodesk technology. You have Navisworks, and if you have access to some Cloud Credit, you can click on export and render in the Cloud. And then you can trade some 360 stereoscopic view that already easy to do to create. I mean, you not have to do anything. I'm not a Revit expert, a Navisworks expert, and I can do it. So that's easy.

And then, you put this 360 view into your smartphone or this cardboard and the designers who worked in the [INAUDIBLE] and the 2D environment, they say, oh, yeah, I am in my design. I am there. So even if you cannot move like in [? a ?] [? real ?] [? viewer ?] or in augmented reality, they feel this immersion. And in terms of engagement, that's huge.

And each time we create these kind of things and we put that on the table in the middle of the office or in the kitchen, you have for three hours, you will have people around talking and saying, oh, yeah, that's so great. So that's a way to start to engage people. And that's very important to engage people because if they are willing to come you, you do not push them. They just come to you, so you won.

And I will say that it's very important to engage them all. Because, again, going back to the business transformation, BIM is not just for the few modelers that are creating the Revit model, and the coordinators, and the managers to spin around the model just for fun, that's not the purpose. But before engaging these people, you have to make sure that you understand who is in charge of what, and you have to have a clear definition of your roles and responsibilities when it comes to BIM within your company, so what a BIM modeler is going to do, what a BIM coordinator is supposed to do, a BIM manager, project manager, engineer. Not only the BIM people, but the engineers as well. And maybe the group leaders, they all need to have an understanding of BIM.

I will say that you need to, as a BIM implementation manager, or something like that, you need to make sure to spend time with HR as well. Because if you want to hire the new talent, the young people from the school, the HR need to understand what is BIM. If they start to talk about CAD and, oh, yeah, how do you-- are you good in AutoCAD? And you imagine someone really refresh and motivated from school who is great in Revit, if he heard the-- if he hears the HR talking about CAD and AutoCAD, he'll say, hmm, I'm not sure this is the company I want to go to go to work for, you know?

So talk to them. Talk to the common communication team as well. Because in terms of internal, external communication, that's very important that they understand what it is, what is this BIM thing. Talk to the business line presidents. All 100% of your business and your colleagues should be aware of what is that. Of course, you are not going to create BIM experts in your HR department. That's not the point. But you can talk to them about BIM.

And going into that path, I remember when I joined, sometimes I talked to some project managers, or they talked to me. They called me and they said, oh, yeah, I want to do BIM on my projects, so I want all my team to be trained to Revit. I said, hmm, I'm not sure this is the case. I'm not sure you want that to happen because maybe some of the designers will have to be trying to Revit, but based on your role on projects, you will work with different tools, different softwares, and this kind of thing.