Architects Versus Engineers: The Project Showdown at the Autodesk University Corral!

SHAUN BRYANT: Welcome, everybody. Isn't it nice to be back? How many of you have got sore feet yet? Yeah? You've been doing that one mile each way in the nice, small convention center we're in this time, right?

So welcome to Architects versus Engineers. Now, this bunch of reprobates up here I've known for a long, long time. And all of our discussions at AU are, what about this, what about this? David's favorite question is, who owns the lights?

DAVID BUTTS: I do.

[LAUGHTER]

MATT STACHONI: Wait are you an architect or the engineer?

DAVID BUTTS: I'm the engineer. I own the lights, damn it.

SHAUN BRYANT: So basically, this is going to be a nice, polite argument between five people who work in AC, MEP, and structure.

RINA SAHAY: You never said it was going to be polite.

SHAUN BRYANT: Pardon me? Did you say something, Rina?

RINA SAHAY: You never said it's going to be polite.

SHAUN BRYANT: That's very true actually. I will-- OK, I'll let you fight amongst yourselves.

DAVID BUTTS: Politely.

SHAUN BRYANT: So I'm kind of master of ceremonies. You might know me-- CAD Jedi, Shaun Bryant. I've been running CADFMconsultants over in the UK now for about 21 years. So I kind of grabbed these guys and said, let's try and do this panel. And I think it was AU 2019 that we kind of came up with the idea. Didn't we?

DAVID BUTTS: After several drinks.

SHAUN BRYANT: Something like that. Way back when pre-pandemic. And luckily, Autodesk have allowed us to do it this year. So this is going to be a little bit of fun.

So welcome. To the AU Corral. It's the place where architects and engineers hang out, and, in inverted commas, discuss things. So we've got things like AEC versus MEP. Who wins the argument? Do the architects do something and then the MEP guys have to concur to that, or vice versa?

We also need to think about, how do we get that stuff on site to work when we're sitting in the office? There's a little word up there called stories. These guys have got thousands of them. We're going to talk about some little real-life events that have happened. I've got one of mine which is kind of fun. And we're going to basically talk about these events where people actually have to talk to each other and come up with solutions.

Those solutions are where, eventually-- I didn't put that in the slide-- the issue has been resolved and the project has been able to be completed. What techniques did we use? That's where we're going to impart the knowledge to you so that you've got the techniques that you can take away from AU, take back to the office, and then you can go and argue with the architects and the engineers, right? And why that solution, and why not another one?

So the panel. In other words, Stetson's are optional. We have me. I'm a company director and an owner of CADFMconsultants in the UK. And I'm sometimes known as Mickey Gervais.

Can you tell? Yeah? First time I met David, he started calling me that.

DAVID BUTTS: Well, you look just like him.

SHAUN BRYANT: I know. It stuck. My kids call me Ricky as well, by the way. So it's just the way it is. So I work primarily AC, CAD, BIM, CAD management. I've had lots of different hats. Primarily work with AutoCAD, Revit architecture, and PlanGrid.

So we've got Katelyn in the middle here-- Knox Innovations. Does a lot of the VDC stuff.

KATELYN SANCHEZ: Testing.

[LAUGHTER]

SHAUN BRYANT: It's working now. Thanks for that. We have Rina-- works for Fishback in the States. Architectural BIM Manager.

And then the MEP posse-- one of our guys couldn't be here unfortunately, so the numbers don't tally up. Which is a shame. But we've got David, works for Gannet Fleming, aka the Redneck Tech.

DAVID BUTTS: Thank you.

SHAUN BRYANT: And we've got Eric as well, Director of BIM Information Modeling over at C&S. So we've got a nice cross-section of how the whole ecosystem works. And you'll notice a lot of Stetsons in the PowerPoint. I got a bit carried away. Sorry.

ERIC WING: It's the same one.

SHAUN BRYANT: It is the same one. I just grabbed an image off of Google somewhere. And we have Matt.

[LAUGHTER]

Right. So Matt is our token agnostic, who, when he's working with the construction of the building, he just says, everybody sucks. Which is true. And he's a BIM manager, works in construction. And you've basically been there, done it, around the block, et cetera.

MATT STACHONI: Oh God, yeah.

SHAUN BRYANT: How many years have I know you? I don't know.

MATT STACHONI: 20. Something. I don't remember.

SHAUN BRYANT: So I know these guys, and I know basically what they all do. So what we're going to do today is have a nice panel where we just discuss stuff and kind of chew the cud and just kind of discuss everything. So how the gunfight started.

So this is my little example. Many, many years ago in a previous life, I was a structural engineer. And it wasn't this actual balcony-- that's just a nice, pretty, standard picture. But I was working as a structural designer for a company, and it was a big high rise similar to that. And the architect basically said to me that the columns spoiled the view on the balcony.

And I said, you can move it, but the building won't stand up. It's entirely up to you. So basically, I just kind of threw it at the architect. You've got a choice-- building doesn't stand up, move column, or leave column where it is and building does stand up.

So there were solutions there, but it didn't happen. So we ended up with a balcony on that side of the building. Every balcony had a nice, big, long circular column going through it. Which, for me, if I was living on that balcony, yeah, we'd get some nice fairy lights around the column and stuff-- make it look nice.

So Katelyn gave me a brilliant example as well, where you're working with the general contractor, typical case. Have a look at that for a moment. The core walls in the courthouse didn't line up with the lift shaft. And this is the kind of stuff that happens all the time.

Go for it. Your solution.

KATELYN SANCHEZ: It's my turn. OK. Hello. OK.

So I was working with a GC actually, which I don't know why you put me on the architect side--

SHAUN BRYANT: I just did.

KATELYN SANCHEZ: But--

SHAUN BRYANT: Because I wanted you on my side.

KATELYN SANCHEZ: I'm a double agent. OK. So I was working with a GC. I was running the coordination of the job. And I was reviewing the documents, doing my due diligence, reviewing everything like I needed to. And I started overlaying some information, and I started noticing that the sump pits in the elevator shaft weren't lining up.

And so, I started digging deeper. And it turns out the entire core wasn't the same from the architect versus the structural engineer. So I started digging deeper, and then these are all tilt up concrete walls. And I started looking even further-- now, the exterior walls weren't lining up with the openings of the windows.

So I start looking, and it was all the same seven floors up. And I got the architect and the engineer involved. I brought them into the office to prove that I'm not an idiot and that this is really the case. Because he was very-- you've got to be doing something wrong, you've got to be doing something wrong. That can't be the case.

And we were three days from the pour. And so, I found the issue. So the structural guy ended up not having an updated model to the necessary team members at time of stamp set, and we found it after the fact. But we caught it before the pour, because that would have been--

SHAUN BRYANT: Interesting.

KATELYN SANCHEZ: --hell.

DAVID BUTTS: Challenging.

RINA SAHAY: Wow.

MATT STACHONI: [INAUDIBLE].

RINA SAHAY: Wow.

SHAUN BRYANT: So no preference at all. This was just in the order that I put the stuff in the PowerPoint.

KATELYN SANCHEZ: OK, got it.

SHAUN BRYANT: OK. So another one from Katelyn here. This is one that I've seen so many times on projects that I've worked on, where structure and MEP-- it's like, oh, all of a sudden we've got all these pipes going through loads of steel beams. I've actually seen on site trades cut in holes in steel beams to put the pipes through. How many of you have seen that happen?

KATELYN SANCHEZ: Yes.

SHAUN BRYANT: Yep. I'm not

RINA SAHAY: Alone then. It happens.

SHAUN BRYANT: That's good to know. And what you'll find-- and Matt's got a brilliant agnostic one of this coming up shortly--

[LAUGHTER]

MATT STACHONI: It's not agnostic. I have definite opinions.

[LAUGHTER]

But OK.

SHAUN BRYANT: But there were no details or guidelines about where the MEP stuff needed to go. So again, this is one of yours. So I'll let you do your conclusion and reason.

KATELYN SANCHEZ: Cool. OK. So working on the GC side again, I was running the coordination for the job, and it was a different project. Which is-- if it was the same project, it would have been crazy. But no, this was a different project, running the coordination.

This is on the subside, where the subcontractor was going right through a concrete grade beam underground. And he was nasty. I didn't like him. Just saying. No, he kept arguing with me that structural needed to adjust the grade beam to allow for his slope pipe underground.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

KATELYN SANCHEZ: And-- yeah, yeah. So I'm quiet for a second. And I'm like, so, are you telling me that you take precedence over structural? And well-- well-- well-- and I'm like, I don't think that's going to fly.

We can pass it and see what they say, but that's not going to be the case. You have no details. You have no instruction that you're allowed to go through that grade beam. So he was nasty though, and I didn't like him.

But long story short-- because I could get into a whole thing about this-- the ass had to move his stuff.

DAVID BUTTS: Of course.

KATELYN SANCHEZ: But yeah, that was kind of a big thing. And it was crazy to see on that side where the subs know what I do, and what I do is the most important.

DAVID BUTTS: Yeah.

KATELYN SANCHEZ: And I'm like--

SHAUN BRYANT: Absolutely right.

KATELYN SANCHEZ: --this the structural.

SHAUN BRYANT: Absolutely right. And coming from a structural background, I agree with you.

[LAUGHTER]

So we've got another one here. So we're at the AU Corral. You've all seen the movie Tombstone, right? So obviously, there's a gunfight. This is kind of how it started.

So it's along the lines of, you've got the AEC going, it's your fault. You've got the MEP going, no, it's your fault. And like Katelyn just said, who takes precedence in that particular environment?

It all happens because of normally a lack of communication. There's something that hasn't gone to somebody somewhere down the line, and then there's a lack of coordination on site, lack of coordination with the concrete and so on. The main thing is it tends to be that the Construction Documents, the CDs, are not being updated regularly. So we're now going to jump to the immortal words of the agnostic. You ready Matt?

MATT STACHONI: Yeah.

[LAUGHTER]

All right. So let me clarify this statement, because I said this off hand to him when we first started talking about it.

SHAUN BRYANT: And it made me laugh.

MATT STACHONI: I said, well if you want my opinion. When I say you all suck, I don't mean just architects and engineers. I work for a general contractor, and everybody involved makes mistakes, or does something dumb, or is a problem. It's not just architects. It's not just engineers.

General contractors screw up. Trade contractors screw up. Even VDC managers screw up. I know, I've seen me do it. Everyone makes mistakes, right?

The other thing about construction is that there are no innocents. Everyone's guilty, right? Everyone has their own part to play in all of this. So when you talk about piping going through a grade beam, that is obviously-- no, you're not going to move a grade beam for a pipe. You could sleeve it, which would probably be the most thing. But then you'd have to rebar around it and do all that detail.

But the stories that happened in construction-- I mean, they just go on for days. The one thing about construction-- how many people work for construction guys? So there's a few of us. Everybody else is a designer of some sort, right? I'll just assume that.

The one thing that most people don't understand who work on the design side is that contractors do not build your design. We don't. Sorry. We build what the trade contractors submit and approve by you. Right?

So the shop drawing process is key. So when Mr. architect goes out to the job site and goes, what in the hell is this? It's because something went through, you signed off on it, and now we have this problem to deal with because you didn't look at the shop drawings or you didn't do your due diligence. So it all happens-- everyone's guilty of something.

I won't name any names out of professional courtesy, but it's not to protect the innocent. Right? Because there are no innocents.

SHAUN BRYANT: Yeah. It's very true. I mean, what Matt says-- and this is why I brought Matt along, because he kind of has that all-encompassing opinion of how everything happens. So when you will suck-- this is one of Matt's examples, and this is something that I've experienced as well basically on any kind of structural steel kind of building that you're working on.

So what you've got here is, if you look at that, as Matt's put in the slide there, what's wrong with that model? Can you see what's going on with that framing steel?

MATT STACHONI: Anyone want to guess what's wrong with that model?

SHAUN BRYANT: Yeah, go for it.

MATT STACHONI: Any structural engineers in the room?

ERIC WING: Well, what's it missing basically.

SHAUN BRYANT: Exactly. What's it missing?

DAVID BUTTS: Connections.

SHAUN BRYANT: The connection. Bingo. You nailed it right.

So when we move to the next one-- yeah?

MATT STACHONI: That's the structural fabricators model, where it has all of the connections, the gusset plates, and so on. And I included this piece from the notes from the drawings that said that basically the structural engineer is not responsible for designing the gusset plates, and the connections, and all that other stuff. That's left up to the steel fabricator. I kind of find that unfathomable, but that's the way that this particular instance the instance happened.

So OK, that's good. Fine. What happens next? So in coordination, all the coordination is happening from the model. The model is missing valuable information, and there are those blue pipes you can see running right underneath of that brace frame.

And you also see other coordination issues with stuff going through steel. But that's kind of like, yeah, whatever. You go to the next one, and boom. We've got a situation where we had to reroute that piping all over the place. Because these brace frames in this particular building were happening everywhere.

This is a million and a half square feet building. There were brace frames everywhere. And everywhere where there is a brace frame, there was a pipe going through it, or there was a duct going through it, or something. And it required just oodles of time on the coordination side from our trade contractors who were modeling all of their stuff to resolve it. And sometimes it required a lot of really goofy architectural concessions, like ceilings had to be lowered, and we had to box out around this.

Most people walking through this building would be like, yeah. They don't even see it. But those of us in the know were like, ha-ha, yes, there's a screw-up there. You know? So.

SHAUN BRYANT: So coordination meetings. You all recognize this dude, right? So it's the trade contractor. Add it all together.

[LAUGHTER]

Sorry. That was the slide I was rushing through, yeah?

MATT STACHONI: That is-- there's no lie. That is the way they go. Everyone's like--

[LAUGHTER]

SHAUN BRYANT: So jumping along after that little bit of hilarity, what we're going to do now is this is the bit where these guys are going to talk. And I'm just going to sit, and smile, and think, yeah, been there, done that. So we're going to look at what.

Now, as you can see, I liked putting the Stetsons in the PowerPoint. So what is causing the issue? So I'm just going to throw a few questions at these guys, and they're going to discuss what solutions, what things can be done.

So what's causing the issue? What's not working? What has happened, or, more importantly, sometimes doesn't happen? Like Matt's example with the gusset plate on the brace frame.

Why has that happened? Can we fix it? Why wasn't it address? Why wasn't it noticed in time?

And also, where is the problem? As in location in the building-- where is the problem with trades, architect, engineer, et cetera. What are the issues on site? What are we going to have to fix?

Like Matt said, what are we going to box out, what are we going to need to put extra reinforcement in for, and so on? And where can we go to find the problem as well? Finding the problem is often the best way to get the solution.

So the reasoning behind that is, how can we resolve it quickly? How many of you have had issues on a site project where you're really under tight timelines? Put your hands up for me. It's a lot of you, right?

So it's got to be resolved, otherwise you're losing valuable project time. What can we basically do to make sure it goes the way it should? What processes can we throw in place? Sometimes they are a Band-Aid or a patch, just to get that through that particular process.

More importantly, who can fix it? Is it going to be the architect, is it going to be the engineer, is it going to be the contractor, et cetera, to make sure it doesn't happen again on that project, but, more importantly, make sure it doesn't happen in the future as well? So we need interaction, we need meetings, email, schedules.

As Katelyn quite rightly said, you drag them in to the site office, and you just basically shout at them. You say, fix it tomorrow. Or maybe even yesterday.

Standardization-- we've got to make sure that workflow is then the same every time so that it doesn't happen again. I was taught many years ago by a lovely man called Eric Wing. Sadly he's not with us anymore. I was a bit younger as well. I was about 18 or 19 at the time.

So if he was around now, he'd be about 130. But--

DAVID BUTTS: Different one.

ERIC WING: OK.

SHAUN BRYANT: He taught me boring is good. If everything's boring and the same, it's good because it's all standardized. It's all doing the same thing. Don't try and think too far outside the box. And then with the planning, you make sure that any project planning is corrected and adjusted accordingly. So if there are any variations, you make sure that they're taken on board, itemized, listed, archived, whatever.

Short-term solutions-- you fix the issues and move on quickly, especially if you're running to a deadline. Medium-term, you make sure that project is adjusted to suit. So you're doing it on a project basis. And then, long-term you learn from that, and you build it into your standards for the next project, the next project, and so on, to avoid the gunfight.

So this is where I leave it up to you guys. Because you've now got the fun and games of coming up with a theme and basically discussing it-- in brackets, nicely.

ERIC WING: Of course.

RINA SAHAY: That's-- you're expecting too much.

SHAUN BRYANT: Sorry, Rina. So I'm going to go with one that David always throws at me, which is, who owns the lights?

DAVID BUTTS: So it's interesting to me to watch in the industry how we argue over ownership of items in a project, right? And you look at the situation in the case of the piping that you had in there and who was responsible for all this. And I think it's really interesting that as an industry we really haven't figured out how we actually use data and use components within a model in such a way that you're not doing something twice. How many people work in silos right now? Right?

If you have your project, nobody else can get into that project and mess with it. We were having this discussion earlier. You have a client that has a working model and an annotation model. That's a great example of something like that. Why would you split it up into two pieces like that?

And as we move into digital twins and we start looking at how this model is going to be generated, this whole concept of a single source of truth is going to eliminate that need for people to have things separated out in such a way that nobody else can change or alter anything else that's going on with the project. So think about this scenario-- what would happen if the owner came up to you now and said, I don't want you working in your project hub, I want you to do all your design work in my project hub?

Think about it. You're not working on your server, your network, your cloud. You're working in theirs. And you have to generate that single set of models to work on. How would that alter your work?

And are you ready to do that? That's the first big question I have for you. So is anybody countering that, where the client is changing the rules of the game of how you actually work?

MATT STACHONI: Yeah. I don't want to dominate the conversation, but yeah. I've had a client-- a very, very large client-- who manages billions of assets, and they told us, working on their project, that we weren't allowed to use anything that had to do with the cloud.

[LAUGHTER]

And I'm like, so you want me to turn this clock back to 1992? And how are we-- do I give you a model on a floppy disk? You know.

ERIC WING: Yeah.

DAVID BUTTS: Yeah, same.

MATT STACHONI: So that definitely impacted. If the owner wants to take on that kind of responsibility, they have to-- there are consequences to their decisions. And they can be disastrous for the overall health of the project.

RINA SAHAY: Right. We've got projects where the project lead is taken by an engineering discipline, and they take over graphical elements like a cover sheet. And the cover sheet is-- that's my baby.

[LAUGHTER]

And they do things to it. And when something goes wrong, I'm expected to go in there and fix it. But there's a bit of a payoff. I actually get divine dispensations to actually open the engineering model, and get in, and fix up the cover sheet.

But then we have all kinds of wonderful stuff happening, like the sheet lists don't match up to what our standards are. Sometimes the text doesn't match up. A lot of fun stuff happens. But but that's kind of a side issue.

And here's my war story-- I get a call from one of my architects. We can't open the model. We just can't open the model. And then electrical calls me up. We can't open the model. Same project-- we can't do it with the model.

I get in, try to open their models, sure enough I get the error message that one of the links isn't loaded. It was structural. Yeah, we're throwing structural under the bus today.

SHAUN BRYANT: Sorry, Eric.

RINA SAHAY: We hate structural things today. You know? So I get into their model. Their model opens. And when I scan it, I find that they have got a bunch-- maybe 50 or 70-- imported and exploded CADs.

And this is something I tell them all the time-- don't do it, don't do it, don't do it, don't do it. Nothing has happened so far. It's in our template. Just because it hasn't happened till now doesn't mean that it won't happen. Hey, guess what? It happened-- and it's killed a project.

So here I am, fortunately it's lockdown, fortunately we are on Zoom, and I can be as vocal as I want, once I've muted. Rio out my hair and things like that. But when I wasn't muted, I just told the gentleman-- let's call him Tim-- I just went, Tim, this is what's been going on. It's your template.

So fixing this project is just a part of the story. You need to go in and you need to fix your template. Now, structural's template, that's their holy cow. They are the ones who take care of it. I can't touch it. So it's your template-- you need to take care of it.

Oh, no. It's perfectly fine. It's never happened to us before. It happened now, so get over it.

Also, one of the other engineering disciplines, they get equipment families which are 3D CADs. They import them.

ERIC WING: Ouch.

RINA SAHAY: And me going, please, guys, don't, don't, don't. Give it to me. You don't have to do it. Don't take your time. Just give it to me. I'll fix them and give them back to you.

So here is the moral of the story-- just the single-minded focus upon this is how we have done things, this is how we are going to do things. And you know what? She belongs to the architectural team, and she is telling us stuff, and we don't need to listen to her.

And my point is, I'm an AU. I tell the whole world not to do this stuff, and my own team does it to me? Wow.

SHAUN BRYANT: It happens. It certainly happens.

ERIC WING: Yeah, I find that's-- I get kind of the same thing. But with Revit, I think it allows you to do too much line work and 2D, right? Like looking at that structural model, they probably drew that in some drafting view somewhere. It didn't get in the model. So you run a [? clash, ?] that doesn't show up. You know?

But I find that even if we get to that point, the projects that go south from me are just ones that aren't coordinated at all. Here, can you set up a project? Sure. Two months go by, and all these problems happen. I'm like, did you even discuss this at all?

How do you think this wasn't going to happen? It's going to happen again. It's probably happening right now. Right now, I've got someone doing something somewhere in our company. And I've got a lot of them here too, so--

[LAUGHTER]

--i won't call any of you out. But it just happens. Right? And to me too, we get into a situation where when I started using Revit, it's like, shit, this is easier. You know?

Now we get to a point where there's so many weird standards and everyone does stuff differently, it's like knock it off with all this stuff. You know? It's supposed to be easier. So don't belabor it all.

I don't want to get into arguments on work sets and stuff like that, but I don't really use them. Uh-oh. I got people yelling at me for that.

SHAUN BRYANT: There was a tuck somewhere ahead of it, right?

ERIC WING: Because I'll select that chair, and it's on a core-and-shell work set. They're layers. Knock it off. Unless your model's blowing up, knock it off with that crap. You know?

SHAUN BRYANT: I'll throw something at all of you. This is a project I worked on in London many, many years ago. And basically, I had some engineers-- because I'm an ACI. I'm a Certified Instructor, so I teach this stuff. And basically, one of the architects was a little bit hesitant with Revit. And I think we had three different model sets that linked.

They're all linked Revit models, but we had the portico, the internals, and the external walls. And I was responsible, as the project coordinator, to get all of these files out to the contractor, everybody else, normally on a Friday afternoon around 3:00 PM. So I'm sitting there trying to drop all this stuff into Google Drive onto the project and everything else, and I always did a sanity check.

I always opened the master model before I sent it. Because you can imagine, Monday morning would have been absolute hell in the meeting. So I open up the model. The portico is 10 meters out from the main model. And weirdly enough, the external brickwork is 10 meters above the internals.

And I'm like, OK, what happened here? And the architect that was a little bit dodgy with Revit just kind of moved them out of the way so we could work on something and didn't put them back.

[LAUGHTER]

And I'm like-- dude, please? This only takes me about 4 hours every Friday to get everything out. So I had to jump into-- I think he did it to 10 buildings on this entire site. So I was there until about 8:00 PM Friday night explaining to my other half, honey, I'm not going to be home yet.

So one of those days. But this is the kind of stuff that we all experience all the time. So we've kind of eaten into 30 minutes here. What I'd like you guys to do now is each of you come up with a solution to something that you've had happen to you. So I'll start with Matt first, and we'll just work down the line.

MATT STACHONI: Oh God, where to begin.

[LAUGHTER]

RINA SAHAY: Which one to begin with.

MATT STACHONI: There are so many horrible, horrible instances where the solution was horrible and horrible too. I mean, you know--

SHAUN BRYANT: Think of a nice one, Matt

MATT STACHONI: I know, I'm trying to look on the slide.

[LAUGHTER]

You have-- OK, I've got one. So on a project that I was working with, we had an elevator subcontractor. Very famous-- I won't say their name. Not out of respect, but just because I don't want to hear about it tomorrow morning.

[INTERPOSING VOICES]

SHAUN BRYANT: No lawsuits.

MATT STACHONI: Right. You'll see their name on the escalators going downstairs by the way.

[LAUGHTER]

So if you run into these guys, just know, they did no shop drawings, they did almost no submittals, they did almost none of their normal-- BIM coordination was completely out the window. No CAD drawings. No nothing. They just said, we're putting our elevator machine stuff together here. We're going to pipe it to these elevators over here.

And I'm like, OK, how are you going to do that? They said, well, that's your job to figure out. OK. So I modeled their entire system to the letter, coordinated it, gave them a routing. And the routing went something like, it went up, it went over, it went up, and it went into the elevator. So there were a couple of different [? bets. ?]

Out in the field, they look at that and go, well, we don't need to do this extra bend here. We'll just go straight up and go over. So that's what they did. And I go out in the field, and I'm like, well, the reason that I did this was because there's a light fixture right there, and now you're crossing over the light fixture.

This is in the grand entrance to the building. Everyone's going to see it. Now we have to lower the ceiling down, and it's going to look like complete crap because you guys couldn't follow the model that I gave you that was coordinated with everybody else. When people try to grow brain out in the field, that's when a lot of this bad stuff really happens.

KATELYN SANCHEZ: You have those old school crews that think that what you're doing is worthless.

MATT STACHONI: Yeah. And they look at it-- well, here's the situation. Every weld, every turn of this pipe-- this is very heavy schedule 40 pipe-- they had to pay for. Because they didn't do their own welding either. They had to subcontract with one of our mechanical subcontractors to do the actual welding.

Well, each one of those welds cost money, and they could save two weld, two fittings, by going straight. And that's what they did. I could see it. I'm like, OK, you guys tried to save some money by not following what I told you to do, and that's what happened.

So we ended up having to lower the ceiling. And it looks OK. But we're all like, this is stupid. And that's the reason, you know?

SHAUN BRYANT: Rina.

RINA SAHAY: OK. My example goes back to graphic standards. Now, when I was working in a smaller firm the title block was-- it was just a done deal, right? It was just for architecture. We had our own title block.

We loved it. The title block was smart. It talked to our project information-- fun stuff like that. And then I came into a situation where all disciplines were in house.

So guess what? Some of the title blocks ended up looking different. And so every department has got a BIM lead and sat down, had a meeting-- how can we make our title blocks identical, because we look stupid. Our set goes out and mechanical's title blocks is kind of sort of different, and electrical's is too, and process looks different too. So how can we make everything look the same?

So now we are in the middle of actually for maybe the past year-- we have been in the process of developing a seed template. Boy, did I have to push that through. It took a lot of talking to actually sell the concept of coming up with a template. We just had the graphic basics. We've got all our textiles, dimension styles, all of our view titles, the title block, of course-- all of that is already in there.

And once all the disciplines have come to a consensus on what works for them-- believe me, we were going into line weights because our line widths had to match our old AutoCAD line widths. We went into stuff that in previous lives I had never done before when I designed a project template. So there was a lot of going back and forth on that, getting test prints, making sure the test prints worked right, things like that.

So now we are at a stage where the seed template is actually in a palatable form. Do we farm it out to all the disciplines? All the disciplines will get the template. The template is just graphic standards-- no views, no sheets, no nothing. And each discipline will have to go in and they will need to plug in the views that they need, the sheets that they need, the view templates that they need, the filters-- that's all up to them, until, of course, they go ahead link their model into ours, and nasty things happen. But we'll cross that bridge when we get there, right?

SHAUN BRYANT: Katelyn.

KATELYN SANCHEZ: OK. So I'm almost 14 years into the industry. I know I'm a baby compared to all the amazing people up here. But my career has gone in many different directions over my 14 years.

So I've gone from mechanical design to doing the BIM coordination, and then working for a GC, and then working for a subcontractor, then working back at an engineering firm but for the construction side, and then now back to a subcontractor doing the VDC stuff. So I've seen something in every section of what my career has held so far. So let's talk about the dude that used to clip his fingernails at my desk.

[LAUGHTER]

No, I'm just kidding. No, I kicked his little ass. I still have a complex over that. I can't stand when somebody clips their fingernails around me.

It was funny. Because the reason why it pops into my head is because we were having this discussion last night with some of my colleagues. But no, OK. So everybody's had these problems-- everybody is trying to find a solution.

But I kind of want to talk about a situation that I feel was of benefit and what I felt worked. So I worked for-- this was my previous company. I'm starting to lose track. This was my previous company. Our team was contracted with the owner to run the coordination from design before they finished their CEs.

So we brought them onto our platform. So we brought the design side onto our platform. We produced and performed the coordination through design, which it took a lot for a lot of the architects and engineers to be like, what the hell is this chick doing in my models, and I hope she doesn't mess them up.

So after my nice, squeaky, little voice was showing them that I'm here to help you, I'm not here to hinder, we performed a big coordination effort through design, found some really big problems that people weren't really thinking of. And through my experience noticing things, like, hey, this is going to cause an issue in the future if we don't try and figure out the problem now. This will help you with having to answer RFIs in the future and trying to figure out all these new things.

So we ran the effort through design, and then I re-established and I ran the effort through the subcontractors and the coordination. And it went so fast. And I don't know if I believe this quite to the T, but I was very connected with the GC and developed that relationship along with the subcontractors. I mean, they started calling me just to call me and talk to me that was not project related.

But when I would continually ask them, how's construction, what's going on, how are we fixing this or that, or is there a problem? And they're like, no. We installed per what we coordinated, what we modeled, the shop drawings that were delivered.

So I will also like to point out that not only were the subs involved with the coordination effort, I also did all of their modeling. So I did the electrical, the plumbing, the mechanical. And we did-- we ran into lots of issues throughout the life of the project, but it actually worked. I don't know if I believe them if they actually really installed, because they were supposed to do as builds. I didn't hear very much back from them.

But that was a good solution. And I'm a big advocate of starting that coordination effort if you can get the design with you to agree that that's your design. That's your design, your engineering/ You're pretty. Let's try and make it work. And then working with your field teams to show them, on the back end, that you're not here to hinder them either.

If you're not going to build it the way that we modeled it, then show me how you would like to do that, so then we can have that discussion. Because I want to model it how you're going to build it. That's the effort, right? So that's my opinion.

SHAUN BRYANT: Fantastic. Eric.

ERIC WING: Yeah. That's great. And I find too that we have all trades, right? So most of our projects are all in house. We have regional offices, but I find that when we get architects they usually will lead it. So if we have a project that we're not prime on, it's usually led by an architect. And a lot of times, I do find they're reluctant to do any new stuff.

So that BIM 360 comes into play, and that's where I want to get to with that. Because I've had projects where we do work for GSA, and they send us our models so we can overwrite them on our network. Well, everyone does that, right? I can't believe that's been the workflow for years.

And I once, on one project, accidentally put the architectural model in the wrong folder. I won't get into folder naming standards. I screwed this up, you know? And it's like, Jesus, this one project, I'm back in the '90s it feels like.

But to get back to my main point, I find that if I reach out and engage that person and say, listen, I want you to use our BIM 360 hub, and I'm going to train you on anything you need-- just as a courtesy because I can. And like you said, you get halfway through the project, and then they're calling me. It's like, hey, we don't know how we worked without this stuff.

Can you help us set up this frickin' BIM 360 hub? I'm like, I'm not Autodesk. This shit doesn't work for me either! So--

[LAUGHTER]

Oh! Oh, no.

RINA SAHAY: You said it.

[INTERPOSING VOICES]

MATT STACHONI: You do have to put that on the back end. Let me just say that this is being recorded.

[LAUGHTER]

So if we do accidentally swear, and there are little kids--

ERIC WING: Did I swear?

DAVID BUTTS: You did.

MATT STACHONI: If there are little kids present--

ERIC WING: I can't not.

MATT STACHONI: Just remember we have used these words in a sentence. So--

[LAUGHTER]

ERIC WING: Well, I always say, if South Park can say it, I can say it, right? So if it's said on South Park, I can say the word.

MATT STACHONI: It gets bleeped out on South Park though?

DAVID BUTTS: Yeah, you just got to bleep yourself.

ERIC WING: Not the channel I watch.

MATT STACHONI: You could've bleeped yourself, man.

ERIC WING: I'm sorry, I'm going down a rabbit hole here. Forget about South Park. But no, I do find that that's-- just don't be an asshole, you know? I think that helps a lot.

And I understand why I don't have coordination meetings. It's almost like, I don't want to sit here next to this idiot. Because I'm going to ignore it and hope it goes away. Literally, I'll say that to myself. It's like, I'm going to ignore this.

SHAUN BRYANT: Been there.

ERIC WING: And I just hope it goes away. I do that. Just sometimes I just don't want to engage someone. And I'm not the only one. I say that. Everyone's got a picture of someone in their mind right now probably. Because hey, we used to do it this way, and that's how we're going to fricking do it. Dammit.