How you keep losing time
This post is part of our Principal’s Corner series.
In our last few posts, we’ve discussed the importance of turning your product knowledge into a central, easily accessible resource for everyone in your firm. We hope you’ll agree that it’s crucial to treat your product knowledge as the valuable intellectual property that it is.
Part of valuing that information is making sure it isn’t costing you time along the way. You may have heard the term interoperability before; it’s become an integral part of the conversation around BIM and the Lean Construction process. In short, interoperability refers to attempts to reduce the losses that typically occur when data is handed off from one team or one digital tool to another.
Historically, interoperability has been a big problem for design professionals who are using different design software or formats, but need to share files and data — anyone who uses either CAD or Revit but not both will understand the frustration this can cause.
Problems of interoperability also occur during most traditional design-bid-build jobs, where the design team hands the CDs to the builders, who then essentially transfer the design team’s work onto their own BIM model and/or coordination drawings.
The bottom line is this: valuable (billable) time is frequently wasted redoing things that have already been done, just to get data in the right format. Over the course of each project, this lost time adds up — and eats into the intended profits of the design team.
Most firms unknowingly perpetuate this problem when it comes to their product knowledge, because they don’t save it in a format that can be easily re-accessed and easily shared. On every project, countless hours are spent researching and configuring products, which get saved into a schedule or spec book. But when another project team finds they need the same or similar products, they often doesn’t realize how much — if any — prior research was done, possibly reflecting products better suited to their project, because they can’t easily see that product history.
And since it’s just as time-consuming to dig through old file folders and e-mail your colleagues looking for answers, most simply choose to re-do most (if not all) of what had been done before. All the online search, review, and comparisons — repeated. All the RFIs to product reps, waiting days for responses — repeated. All the technical conversations with those reps — repeated. When you stop to think how wasteful that process is, you suddenly realize the negative impacts it has on getting your work done efficiently, not to mention the negative impact it has on your firm’s bottom line.
This lack of interoperability at the product knowledge level within firms is a major cause of wasted time, and that dreaded “always-busy” deadline feeling.
Barry LePatner, Hon. AIA, has worked with Architects, Engineers and Designers to make their businesses smarter and more efficient for four decades. Barry is the Co-Founder and President of Arazoo.
Originally published at arazoo.tumblr.com.
