From the course: The BIM Execution Plan for Architects

Digital excellence - Revit Tutorial

From the course: The BIM Execution Plan for Architects

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Digital excellence

- [Instructor] Digital excellence starts with a good foundation, a good starting point. So far in our discussions, the choices that need to be made take a team to make them. As the architect, your role is to develop the team and guide the conversation to make these decisions. A good team making good choices builds digital excellence. In this discussion, digital excellence is considered as using the guidelines of best practices to intentionally design a digital file to support a process. One of the key words here is intentionally. But these choices take time to make, and work must begin. It is tempting to just get going and not consider the use of an architect's BIM Execution Plan, but the truth is that the document should be designed to structure the conversations of the BIM coordination meetings to draw out the decisions that need to made for an efficient and effective team. It is a living document that is developed and managed to structure the entire design phase digitally. By living documents, I mean that these are documents that collect decisions as they are made. They're not made to be filled out once and then ignored, but rather, initially filled out by the architect and then discussed and reviewed during the process of the coordination meetings. There is a document that has been developed in a grass-roots manner to attend to the gap between when a team needs to begin and when major modeling decisions have been made. It's called the Revit Startup Sheet. This document is very helpful for architects to effectively become the BIM leader of a project at the early stages, while allowing time for the team to gather the required information for a full-scale execution plan. The Revit Startup Sheet can be provided to a team prior to the design-based BIM Execution Plan. In a templated design-based execution plan, it can reside in the appendix, so that it doesn't take over the full-scale execution plan, but remains a part of it. For smaller projects, it could even take the place of the BIM Execution Plan. Keep in mind that these documents are all scalable, and they should all be considered living documents. By scalable, I mean they can be as detailed as you need for the project. Sometimes all you need is a Revit Startup Sheet, and at other times, you will need a very elaborate BIM Execution Plan. Filling out the Revit Startup Sheet and providing it to the consultants at the beginning of model development can get everyone on the same digital page quickly, allowing work to begin while the rest of the details get resolved during the coordination meetings. This is an efficient and lean means of providing digital leadership at project kickoff. A good BIM leader knows that there's not a one-size-fits-all approach to BIM. They will listen to others' experiences, and they will approach each coordination meeting knowing that digital excellence is created by a team and not a person.

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