The ROI of Revit

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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