Data collected year over year shows a continual decline in available skilled construction labor. The construction workforce shortage is one of the most significant threats to the growth and success of the industry as a whole. According to a recent article in the Autodesk BIM 360 Newsletter, a survey conducted …
MEP to the Front, Pt. 3: Doing Things Right vs. Fast
Carol DunnMake sure you’re going in the right direction before you put effort behind getting there quickly. This was the advice from Corey Overton of Chick-Fil-A in the recent AEC Disruptors Podcast about the direction the architecture industry is moving. As the overarching processes of the AEC industry continue to be …
How Generative Design Fits Today’s Manufacturing Processes
Carol DunnIf you work for a manufacturing firm, the term “generative design” may conjure up images of bizarre looking metal-frame specimens with legs that only a machine would think are beautiful or thoughts of multimillion-dollar 3D metal printers. Almost everything about manufacturing automation is already expensive, causing the industry as a …
4 Uses for Dashboards in Construction
Carol DunnDigital dashboards are PDF-based document management tools that can be used across the entire construction project – from client presentations to closeout. As described in the Bluebeam StrXur article “A Digital Dashboard for All Phases,” project dashboards can be created that enable anyone on the job to find anything they …
The Joy of Digital Handover
Carol Dunn and Molly GunnThere are a couple of methods for project closeout that general contractors have access to these days. One is “the way we’ve always done it” – rolls of drawings and large notebooks containing warranties, instruction manuals, spec sheets, coffee-stained pages, and sticky notes. Another method is a clean, concise, text-searchable …
Technology Driven . . . Reality Based
Carol DunnThe process of creating highly detailed digital 3D models of construction projects is a process that’s relatively new – likely less than seven years old. By importing photographs and laser scans into reality capture software, a firm can preserve current conditions of every feature of a jobsite, whether it is …
MEP to the Front, Pt. 2: MEP in Project Planning – Does it Matter?
Carol DunnAs considered in the Applied Software blog article, “Mine All Mine: Can AEC Teams Play Nice?” the collaborative process can deliver profitable projects to satisfied owners ahead of schedule. This reality is driving more and more firms toward involving all project teams from the early stages of a collaborative design-build …
The AE Climb: Manual Design to Automated Design to Generative Design
Carol Dunn and Carlos LiceaDesign automation is the ability to script computational processes that reflect the creative and analytical methods of human driven design using specific rules and instructions. That’s a mouthful that boils down to taking a manual process and letting a computer help you do it faster. Time is spent up front …
How to Speed Up Your Design Reviews
Carol DunnBluebeam® Revu® speeds up design reviews by elevating paperless workflows to a new level. As Helen the Architect will tell you, Bluebeam has the right tools for the design review and collaboration job: Compare Documents – Automatically highlight and identify the differences between two drawing revisions with easy-to-see clouds, just …
Digital Twins
Carol DunnMore and more we’re learning that the future of business in the AEC industry is in the data. Gathering and analyzing that data are the new ways to keep a finger on the pulse of creating buildings that are smarter, safer and more efficient. When a building’s information is modeled …
Saving Time with Synchrony
Carol DunnFor a BIM manager, no matter how hard you try, there are just too many things that can waste your time. One of the major time wasters is managing documents and moving them around. And how about creating custom reports every time someone on the project asks for something kind …
MEP to the Front, Pt. 1: Can AEC Teams Play Nice?
Carol DunnCan the construction industry build and share knowledge and innovation? Aside from having dozens of iterations of an answer, it’s even more telling that the question isn’t asked very often. Construction companies and contractors have been engaging in competitive struggles for work for so long that it may be outside …