BAM Ireland, part of the Royal BAM Group, is a large multi-disciplinary construction business. One of its subsidiaries, BAM Facilities Management Ireland (BAM FM), has been delivering facilities management services in Ireland since 2010. BAM FM use BIM 360 Ops for operations and asset maintenance.
In Part II of our posts, Micheál Keohane, BAM FM Ireland’s general manager, and Paul Brennan, BAM Ireland’s VDC Department Lead share lessons they learned.
Lessons learned
Given the success of BAM FM’s implementation of BIM 360 Ops, BAM FM has some critical advice to offer other companies who are considering implementing BIM 360 Ops.
You need to document and clearly communicate your information requirements
as early as possible, certainly before construction delivery.
“To make sure you’re getting the asset information you need, you need to document and clearly communicate your information requirements as early as possible, certainly before construction delivery,” says Brennan. “The longer you delay, the more expensive it becomes to get exactly what you need.” A project’s supply chain is where the majority of operational data is produced. Engage the designers and supply team in the requirements process early on by demonstrating the product to them. This will help them understand how it will be used—eliciting their early support and tapping into their expertise as to what information will (and will not) be useful to the operator.
Too much information can be as bad as not enough.
Information requirements should be very precise, all the way down to nomenclature for naming and identifying assets. “Early in the process, you have to identify exactly what assets you want to track and what information you need for that,” continues Brennan. “This also determines what you don’t want. For example, a designer may have dozens of data points for a door. But you’ll just want a few of them, like size, material, and fire rating.” Too much information can be as bad as not enough.
Engage the experts to understand what is useful (and not useful) to the operator
Don’t worry if your company doesn’t have standardized information requirements—you’re in good company. “As we started to implement BIM 360 Ops, we tried to generically define the operational information we needed for any given project,” says Keohane. To that end, BAM FM Ireland met with other BAM facility teams to create an information requirement template for a ‘standard project’. “We discovered that no matter how hard we tried, there was always someone who could make a case for why this asset or this piece of information should be included,” says Keohane. “In the end, we concluded that requirements will vary project by project, and even any standard template will have to be customized.”
And the final piece of advice from BAM FM: Don’t be nervous. “BIM 360 Ops is easy to use,” says Keohane. “Just jump in…it’s worth it.”
Learn more about BAM FM.