ROI of Revit (Return on Investment)
People like to move forward in life and
that includes moving forward in their work environment. Some people are not
comfortable learning new software and new processes but once we explained that
this is part of the company’s direction and part of the company philosophy and
that we gave them “Permission” to learn the new software we have positive
adoption.
In the economic environment we had a couple
years ago not moving towards full adoption of BIM would be a detriment to any company’s future.
Moving to a BIM environment It has not been without its challenges.
Early projects completed in Revit were challenging both in the sense of
educating the staff on how to use Revit as well as working with our consultants
and encouraging them to use BIM on our projects.
Early on I have found that after allowing for
the typical learning curve that projects completed in Revit were not completed
faster, in fact in some cases it took longer that it typically would if
completed in AutoCAD. What was found was that projects were “over-modeled” and
people were spending too much time detailing the model. It took some time educating people on
“Value Modeling”, which is where we model only to the level of detail required
by the project.
After we addressed the “Over-modeling”
issue, (which we continually monitor) we found that there still was no discernible
time saving benefits, using Revit. In fact we found that the traditional time
allocated for each design stage of a project changed dramatically. Early design took longer and working drawings were quicker.
What we have found is that by using Revit
we now can provide a better product. Our drawings are more concise, the people
involved in the project understand the project better which leads to a better
design. Less time is now spent on “Drafting” a project and more time is spent
on coordination of drawing elements and spending more time on building a better
building.
The “return on investment” goals now include the ability to be innovative in our design process and ultimately
innovative in our designs.
We now have the ability to run energy
analysis using cloud based software. The Majority of our Revit users are now
very comfortable in the software and are very proficient in modeling which
reduces a projects man hours. We now require less people on a project which
translates into less traditional staff fluctuations enabling us to retain and
develop our employees.
In my opinion it is not so much a case of
numbers on a graph stating the financial ROI, it’s more a case of using the
right tools enabling us to achieve our company goals and enable us to truly
embrace our company’s philosophy of innovative design.
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