Sign Iowa Electrical Services Contract Fast

Document type sign electrical services contract arkansas now

i am emily clark i am the director of architectural services here at atg and i am donner rasmussen the uh director of mep services here at atg and i'll kick it to bruce we'll go to sam and then mark how's that sound sounds good i'm bruce fenderson i'm the technology director at uh hartman g speed design group in albuquerque new mexico um i've been in the industry for about over 20 years now coming from cad architectural desktop if you didn't actually use those going into reddit back in 2003 or so before it was purchased by autodesk and have been part of the a 505 been users group here in albuquerque for the past almost uh 11 12 years now and locally getting all our industry uh consultants and owners to work together in some sort of incapacity i've also worked on with a contractor in the past four years or so so i also have experience in working the vm on the contractor side coordinating and working with subcontractors out in the field so i have a lot of experience in the bim working on the contractor and architectural side i'm now able to work with a few owners um with them as well and how do you push that on the operating side so it's great great stuff i'm glad to see it moving along the past 15 years or so yeah and it's really good to see that um you're you do bring some experience from the owner's side because that's one uh aspect that we don't necessarily have represented here so thanks bruce okay and i'm sam kian i work for myron construction we're a large construction company based out of nino wisconsin we've got offices kind of all over the midwest iowa and illinois stick out to me but um so i actually have been working in the design and engineering side of the field for about 25 years and very recently in fact this summer um took on a java over here at myron construction in their virtual construction department so they've been working in the bim forum for a while um it's it's been kind of pushing the design side of things for a long time so it's really interesting now to to get back on the construction side and see things from a little bit different lens um and kind of made some things a little more clear to me and some things maybe a little less clear so be interesting to hear what people have to say and and i'm mark morgan chair so i actually work for autodesk but for 23 of my 25 years i was in the mep design and engineering and subcontracting side of things here in little rock arkansas so now i work with facilities work with owners i work on you know with been 360 ops and helping implement that um you know my previous experience with mep i was actually part of the lod spec committee at one time for the bim forum so hopefully i can add some value today absolutely lots of lots of knowledge here and experience so go ahead and start typing in those questions and we'll get get some of those answered so i'm going to start with um the first question here what is the value of lod to owners and facilities teams well i'll take that yeah bruce you can follow up how's that so so with with the lod and how it's specified you know in coming the elements as they come through the process as they come through the models and then taking them to owners and facilities what value is that you know and it all depends on what that that owner facility team truly needs you know the lod is amazing for construction getting it through the process but then what do we actually hand over and how do we hand it over and that's that's where the value can brings if we truly bring in that facilities team into the discussion and in my job now with bin360 ops that discussion seems to be missing so we're not necessarily getting that value for facilities we're handing a bunch of data over to the owner but necessarily that value isn't flowing down to the maintenance and construct or maintenance side of facilities so that's where i can see the value of lod really increasing is bringing that discussion into the the bim execution plans into the bim development plans and having that team so that we're not there's not a bunch of wasted effort bruce what do you think about that yeah and i think it's uh it's our job as the designers um instructors to educate our clients and our owners building owners they are it's one of the lowest budget items on their operations is the facility and maintenance um so how do we help them see that value that you spoke of how do we how do we give them that information so that they can engage the design teams not at such a high level yes they want a building or they want to add on to a building but what does that really mean to the facility people and how it's going to be operating for the next 25 years so i think it's really on our shoulders provide that education if you are leaders and they're asking for it um and why we have this conversation right now i think it's picking up for the past 25 years we've been doing them on the design side and the construction is finally getting into it hot and heavy um it's time for the owners to kind of step up and be part of the solution in how we move forward with the technology and the data yeah i guess i just piggyback on that a little bit with the fact that even before you get to the operations of the actual facility we're certainly seeing um on both the design and the construction side that talking about that lod up front and utilizing what that can mean from a communication standpoint in other words you know how far are we going to develop this model and if we're going to do that can we use that to facilitate better communication of how things are going to be laid out how things are going to be designed and how things are going to work once they're there you know in the past we we've kind of left that all to the end and we've gotten sort of spreadsheet feedback from owners and facility operators and that doesn't always translate to a really well functioning layout you know taking these types of things and if we say we're gonna you know take that lod on certain elements of the building to a much higher degree and then bring those owners in and use things like virtual reality and augmented reality to be able to communicate what's going on in their building and what the designers are talking about from a constructability standpoint how this is going to be put together you know from a millwright standpoint how this this equipment is going to be installed so i think taking that lod and actually providing some meaning back to these owners and facility operators i'm seeing a lot more of that now and um i'm seeing that push come from the owner's side of it so us on the design and construction side of things need to start facilitating that better and having these discussions about what that means to the whole team and i just wanted to follow up on something that mark had mentioned that it's not really rolling down to the you know the facilities team that is you know would benefit from that why do you think that is well where is the missing gap that it's you know we're taking it to a certain point but we're just not you know getting to the finish line so so for me it you know we have this amazing led spec you know what it's 200 and over 250 pages now it's got lots of great data you know and it's lots of great data for design and construction but then when we look at facilities are they talking bim language or do they talk facilities language and how is how is all of that data structured is it structured for construction design and construction or is it truly structured for a facility use and you know a couple years ago i was at ashy and i asked you know i asked the owners there was over 400 healthcare facility people in that room i asked them go when do you get your data and the common answer was between 12 and 18 months so if we're structuring this data if we can get this data structured we can hand over that data earlier and in a better way to help them maintain it and that's where i see some of this lod really really providing some extra or added value or even even you as a construction company or design engineering that could be another revenue source for your firm yeah and i think the the other big problem with that is that there we the construction and designs that have a lot of standards telling us and guiding us how we should be able to work together communicate together um the facility side doesn't have a lot of standards on between all of them that's right to help them facilitate and understand how to get that data each one is unique from what i've seen they all ask for very unique information and as a design and construction team we're not used to even asking for that how do you want your data yep um and half the time whenever i do ask an owner they just want please just give me some good cad files that i can work off of for the you know for the next 25 years um and they don't want anything more because it's just so much information they have no idea how to use that information and the ones that i've been involved with that have been successful we're having that operations conversation at the beginning of the project yes we know what's we know what the end deliverable is going to be so many times we don't have that conversation until handover happens then say well what about operation well guys time to have that conversation was a year ago so whenever i hear operation one of the first questions i have is okay what what do you have in place right now as the building owner for automation where are you currently at because if you have nothing i know that i have a long way to go i have to educate you quite a bit and if you have something now i know what kind of uh shoe horn i need to use for lack of a better term to get my data into your system yeah i get excited whenever they seem to know at least something then perfect there were a couple um good follow-up there and answered a couple of the questions that were in the in the chat um how do you inspect models and validate lod requirements from each discipline at deliverable milestones and is that something that you are actively doing that one's hard that one's a hard one to do i've had to do that for government projects because you know gsa's the corps of engineers they have some very um detailed in the va as well and they you know they use kobe is the standard that they go to and kobe is still a very huge tool process to get your head and wrapped around especially when you're working with so many different entities that is that are creating that data and making sure that it's something that the owner can use and push into another into their piece of software or whatever they're going to be pushing it into um so that's that's typically the stems right now i'm sure mark you might have some meaning sam you ran into something as well so so i've been i i have a really manual process it needs to be better um it really does uh because you know it is most of y'all know a lot of it is is data that is repeatable data but one string of bad data can really cause a lot of uh heartache and so in that that's easily missed so we've we've got to find better procedures to validate the model you know there there are the validation tools you know that come with the kobe toolkit that type of stuff they work you know if you know how to use them you know how to use them correctly but we that is something i feel like we as a entire industry has got to get better at i think we're up against it a little bit though in just the terms of our our design and engineering industries are still working under the offices of you know we have schematic design design development and then cds there is no really nice clean correlation between lod and those different phases so before we even go in and analyze what those lods are at different milestones in a project we have to get away as an industry from trying to associate our traditional you know phases or stages of the project with a specific lod because it just doesn't work you know so i think one of the things that i'm seeing and certainly on larger projects you know is sitting down at the beginning of a meeting and taking that bim execution plan and going through that responsibility matrix and talking about specific elements you know and how far they're going to be developed at each stage that seems to be more successful if you just say you know what at this such and such a date you know when the design and engineering documents come in we want everything to be at led 200. well i that just doesn't cut it and it really confuses people more than i think it helps things we just we have to as a group on a project or as a group in the industry have to work on figuring out how we can correlate that development and i think more importantly what are the end goals you know what are we trying to achieve at each of these milestones and again that's unfortunately that's going to it's going to require a paradigm shift in how we think about these different stages of the project because again you just can't keep going back to the same schematic design design development construction documents and make sense of any of this led stuff it just won't work yeah it's not applicable right right thinking a little bit about making comparisons and mark you you brought up a really good point about you know it's a manual process at this point we need it needs to be better we need to automate that um shameless plug time the express tools there's a model compare tool that works on element ids guys and so you can run that model compare tool and your element id base if they're swapping that element out for a more developed element that would show up in the reports as something that has changed so it's something that you can at least use to start it maybe guide you in the right direction but yeah it's not going to be the end all be all it's still going to be a manual process you know mark you're unfortunately correct in that wow did he say i was correct i did i heard that wow wow it's going to be a good day i'll throw your bone every once in a while mark you know you're right and and it and i'll tell you it's so much fun reading those booies you know yeah numbers are just not boring at all they make so much sense yeah one letter changed so how can we as an industry make this this better i mean sam you kind of alluded to we we need to have a better solution for this um you know how how can we make this better so one of the challenges i faced on the design side was trying to correlate contract language with lod and that's a it's a really challenging topic to get engineers and architects to understand that you can't just say i'm doing lod 300 and call it a day because it's just it's not it's not achieving anything by doing that i mean sure it covers you and at the end of the day you can say i got my model to lod 300 overall and we're done but we need to again go back to the beginning of that project and figure out what are our goals what are we trying to accomplish you know and that's different for every project type industrial projects where you have a lot of heavy equipment in that that lod is going to be drastically different than an office building it just is by the nature of it so i think what i'm driving it there is that as a project team at the very beginning of these projects you need to really understand what those goals are going to be so that when we apply these lod responsibility matrix to things they make sense and they're all trying to help achieve that goal if you just go out there as an industry and just pick a number and that's what we're going to stay with because that's our that's where we feel safe it doesn't do anything for you for the owner or for the project team as a whole so it's it's moving back to we got to try and push these conversations and somebody alluded to it earlier it has to be almost before these contracts get put together when you start putting proposals together for projects you need to start talking about that you know and that that's challenging for our industry that's just not the way we've operated in the past so we as as individuals need to to kind of sell that to everybody and that's doesn't matter if it's on the construction side of the design side i see it in both worlds you start talking about bim and lod after the contracts are already tog ther you know when you got subs calling up and panicking but what am i supposed to do for this well nobody's talked about it right so that they don't understand what the requirements are for them the owner certainly doesn't understand what they're getting out of it then and that's all communication it's just so we gotta we have to we have to push the envelope to try and get these discussions and these conversations going at the very very beginning or genesis of these projects rather than waiting until contracts are already out the door and then trying to fit it to make it work that comes back to the education but we have you know as an owner of a building who's saying hey i need a new building i've got this pile of money here um i'm i'm asking these people who are the experts to educate me on the best way and process to get me my building you know and what are the cost implications you know that's a big piece of the puzzle um even on the design side where we've implemented them almost the last 20 years i'm still getting questions of from my consultants well that wasn't part of my scope of cost so for this design subcontractors we were constantly asked what puts it in my scope um what is that gonna you know how do i where do i get that money where am i getting that stuff from training all sorts of software costs it's a big deal and it's in like i said it's our job to help the owners and navigate that and understand that value that this data is bringing to their building the next 25 years 50 years that was actually brought up in a couple different questions so if anyone wants to elaborate on that is you know how do you justify the extra expense of you know taking bim to a higher lod beyond the construction model and when you're you're you know kind of a two-part uh question um the expensive training you know maintenance software on the facility side you know that that's an extra expense so you know how are we addressing that or how are we convincing the owners that this is the right way to go until they finally make that you know mind shift to realize that it's beneficial long term but not everyone really thinks that you know we're in this industry where it's just get it done move to the next so you know how are we addressing that cost and what are we seeing happen there right i'm working with an owner now that their value that they're looking at it from their point of view is a value of safety for their facility staff so working with a model the documents having the latest and latest information on hand for their staff to be able to make decisions while they're in front of a piece of appointment is the value that this is bringing to them as an operation so maybe you look at it from a different point of view from the owners you know try to help them look at it from a different point of view safety understanding um the um the users of that building in an office building being able to have the lights on and off no not so much from a cost but maybe from the users being able to use the building more efficiently seeing how the building's being used um different points of view i guess and how that owner values sees the value well so in the first year of operation if you're not maintaining your equipment properly properly what's the operational efficiency that you're losing on that piece of equipment i mean that's because that first year you're going to get the maximum efficiency out of it so you need to maintain that correctly and then another thing to help with cost is how much or how long does it take a facilities team to input data into a building management system or how long does it take them to set up their preventive maintenance program where if we structured the contracts and lod to get that data to them earlier then they're going to be saving steps they're actually going to be able to maintain the building rather than go search for all this data or filter through all of this handover data that is sometimes unusable for them you know i uh one of the projects i worked on they estimated that it saved over 2 100 man hours in the first year of operation because they had all the documentation before they ever went live with the building and so that is the type of what you sell is if we give you this process and you pay this little extra much what is the value of your technicians maintaining the building versus having to search for documentation and that's a tremendous value well and mark to your point i i think there's a couple of things happening that one the software has gotten better and it's gotten it's provided easier access for anybody to get at this data right you know 10 years ago if we were going to talk about doing some sort of facilities operational type plan with this data you were literally requiring that client to get a license of autocad or revit and understand how to operate in that software well well that that was an impossible setup it really truly was i mean to tell an owner that they have to hire somebody to really come in that facility just understand that software to be able to provide that value and data back to the to the company that that doesn't work well now having everything web access and be able to see all these metrics right away with all this data from you know the start of the project on i think that it's going to start changing how these requests come to us instead of us on the design and construction side of things having to push this to owners and i'm already seeing it on some of these larger projects owners are pushing back and they're saying i want this data i have to see this data so i think some of that is gonna you know it's still you're always gonna have those challenges from a design side how do i justify this extra cost right right well i think now having that data out there and there's so many roi type cases you know and um autodesk is certainly a good resource for a lot of that stuff if that's kind of what the conversation is with your client i think that's where you go with that you know here's here's the types of things that that data is going to be able to provide and here's the benefits that that's going to give to you those are tangible things now it's a much easier discussion i think they have now than it was even five years ago totally correct absolutely so when structuring um lod into the contract do you feel that lod on the owner's side affects just basic services if you're taking it to that level and how might you structure your fees to be more in line with lod requirements are there any changes to your fee structure have you seen that from a from a design portion of it i don't really see it changing on the fee side we put that information in and and from a model standpoint of the data in there we take it to the level of the contract documents which is the original you know that's the contract deliverables um rarely do we have to move forward in some respects with the with the owner to move forward and with that data further unless it's uh the client is actually specifically asking for gsa projects or va projects and even then our because we're a service based industry that is probably it is taken into account we do put those fees in there but at least it's understood from the owner that those fees are there if the owner's sophisticated enough and in the rfps they'll state that and understand that those fees get brought in um they understand why we're asking for them but i have been on projects where it wasn't understood most of them we do have a good execution plan to help with our consultants working together collaborating um but there is no requirement to go beyond them and so whatever we put into that model is on us and the liabilities on us to have those that information in there and we usually have some sort of indentation to inform whenever we pass the model into whoever is going to use it down the contract reality that's the big challenge that the design side faces um bruce you hit that right on the head you know we see all these cases about how the software is going to work and how this process is going to work on a true ipd type project you know where everybody's kind of got that shared risk but that's from my experience on the design side those contracts if they exist were very few and far between so to try and put that type of structure around your typical contract from a design side you're right it doesn't doesn't leave you with a lot of options as far as how far you take things because that word you mentioned liability that creeps into everything that you know the designers and engineers are looking at how far am i going to take this thing and how far can i contractually take this um and still have my wrist cover you know at what point does me modeling things more start conveying means and methods right and and not just my design intent so that's another thing i guess we have to kind of wrestle with as an industry is that the the underlying risk and liability on what we put in those models it's really scaring a lot of especially smaller design firms from taking things to that next level and certainly on smaller projects you know large projects i think you have an easier time especially industrial projects of having everybody buy into this but unless you're doing those on a regular basis that's not your typical setup for a project so i don't know that i have a good answer for how you you make those designers and engineers necessarily feel better about taking those lods to a higher extent because as they do that you know to your point bruce that they're bringing on potentially more risk more liability um even though we try and put language in there you know that the model can only be used for xyz it's still a model it's still there and there's still content in it so um that's something i think we have to start talking about and having more candid conversations about how do we protect those individuals then you know if you're not going to be paid a ton more for that shared risk then how do you protect that designer or that engineer and still have them you know collaborate with the rest of the team especially with with our crazy contracts that we have we have cmar in a design field it's blurring those lines of our contracts and how we work with each other you know from and i feel on sam you know as a contractor we were constantly having to do more work to make sure that the model was correct before we actually did any work out in the field and that was a lot of work and who's paying for that is that something that as a contractor you see value in just to make sure that your field teams and your subs are working and collaborating together um so yeah it's it's not just on the design side it falls to the contractor now even more especially whenever you get weird odd requests buried in respect saying have a class free model what does that mean exactly yeah so it's interesting both of you brought that up is i almost got in trouble with that by agreeing to have elements of a certain lod in a model and it wasn't covered by our our insurance liability it exceeded what we carried in as part of our package for our engineering firm is that something you've got to know and got to understand before you do agree something as a bim manager because that can get you in a lot of trouble if you put out design documentation that your liability insurance doesn't cover so due to a scheduling conflict i'm going to have to draw i apologize great conversations though thank you for letting me be a part of this and questions that come up feel free to shoot them my way i i really appreciate it great job appreciate a thank you usa mark that was actually one of the questions that uh was uh brought up early on in in the chat is you know that legal uh responsibility and how are we addressing that and you know uh mark alluded that he had some issues with that and when he was at the firm he was at but uh sam bruce don had did you guys run into any issues um legal issues that you can speak of and maybe just any advice i think a lot of people are looking for guidance on that i i think having it in the contract i i say this so much i think my 505 users are tired of me hearing it from me but putting in the aia documents the e-203 and putting in the those protocols up front you know just put them in there they're built their aia's got them their legal documents um really as a if you are a firm you are who is doing them whether it's just for construction documents or not those documents should be part of the the overall agreement from the owner to the architect as well as the uh owner to the contractor before i left the contractor that i was working with previously i was working with them to get the aia documents to reflect in their subcontractors before one i remember which one they did with the subcontractor to have that in there and also to be part of their rfps whenever they ask the sub to be part you should bring in a bid let them know that this is a bim project there's going to be fees and costs associated with that so like it's like what sam said it's communication with your teams this is the way we're working now and we can't keep putting our head in the hole and ignoring it it's something that you need to be fully aware of bruce that's a great point on some contracts are fantastic so there's the e202 there's the g201 and the g202 i think not only you know include those documents in there but fill them out there's a really good responsibility matrix you know who the model author is going to be well and i say that kind of jokingly but kind of not i mean i've had engineers throw that contract language in there and then never go through the process so just tab adding the contracts there doesn't necessarily protect that team if you didn't do the work to go through it and figure out who's doing what at what stage um and you can make that really simplistic you can use just the chart that's in those aia docs and just go through that i mean it could literally be a half hour meeting and just establish that at the front end of the project and be done with it and know that you've at least had that discussion and there's a better understanding of all the team members of what it is you guys are going to be responsible for producing in terms of your model and those protocols are designed to be living documents that's that's what's the beauty of the aia e203 is they those protocols are living documents so it's designed for the team to always be engaged and always updated as as things happen and things change yeah absolutely i want to go back to the questions here did don did you have a follow-up on on that as well i just just wanted to kind of stress a point that that bruce brought up which was a great point um because i deal with this all the time in the consultant role here at atg it's really imperative that everybody understands lod at the firm not just the designers not just the project managers right when someone says lod 200 you should have a general idea what they're talking about or what that means for a lot of different reasons it seems that when i go around and i and i meet with clients and the lod conversation comes up you know people are so calling it a level of definition or you know make up your favorite acronym they don't even know it's level of development and so uh i i guess there's a question that i have coming off of that guys is that in your experience and emily you can feel free to chime in on this too how many people do you think actually understand the lods as a percentage in what and what we do and where we work because we still have these conversations about what does 350 actually mean all the time i don't think the percentage you know just based on my experience um and my industry experience was probably uh you know a few years back when this was a little bit newer and it was something that we were continually pushing we had internal uh presentations education series to get people to understand it but you know the people that really needed to be in the room were too busy and not there to necessarily understand what we were really doing so i think it's an uphill battle and uh just that education piece but i think now you know people are talking about it more there's you know we're having this conversation right n w so that means it is important we have people on the call who you know are asking questions getting engaged so we have these thought leaders who are pushing this forward and we just have to to keep moving but it is it's a you know the couple things that i've really picked up on everyone's feedback so far is education you know getting people and the right people educated on what we're doing and planning early and the key is to get this conversation started at the very beginning and that is how you're going to be successful but you know we're hearing more about it and it's definitely something that the conversations are happening there's some great resources out there too emily i know eia's got some good stuff bim forum that website has some great visuals on kind of what that lod means it for each individual element that can be a really powerful teaching tool i know when i was at the engineering firm previously that's the document you know whatever the current year was i think they're up to 2019 now but whatever document they had out that's what i use basically as my teaching tool um because a lot of times it's just easier to get a visual and led 200 means different things you know for different elements of the model um you know that has a way different dynamic to it in a structural model than it might in an electrical model so it's those types of things i think it's a again i know we keep harping on the education but you have to kind of push those materials and um just be doggedly persistent in in putting that information in front of the people that are going to be putting those contracts together and making those types of decisions definitely i think something that is that could help further the lod and i haven't looked at it in a while but the understanding understanding the data that is needed so you know from a contracting point of view for just being construction documents having a door marked um having you know that simple information that requires the construction documents having that in the lobby and it might be in there now i put that in a while but um that that one thing we're all visual of being to see it very visual but as we move forward in this whole data-centric world having understanding what data is required for a construction document set of documents it's using a film is somewhat important i think that would help the industry move forward a little bit better you know in understanding what that means from a data-centric point of view i don't know that's just my thought of how we how can we get there a little bit better and it might be in there now i haven't looked at the 2020 stem forum um where they're at they they come out with everything every two years or something like that yep i think it's really just taking the time to dig into it i'll go ahead yeah it's an interesting point bruce because that data part of it is going to be another conversation our industry needs to have i know on industrial projects specifically contractors are asking for parameters to be put into these model elements to help with that facility management at the end and they're asking it simply because they're not the author of those model elements right there's the contractors coordinating it coordinating the model but they're not necessarily creating the models well the designers and the engineers are a little apprehensive in putting that type of facility type information in there so it's going to be a whole nother set of dynamics you know i see some of the things you're talking about as far as door information and that coming into the bim forum spec now but that's going to be another whole arena of where where is that data you know just part of the construction documents and where does that data actually tell you what's being installed and does that make it a means and methods so we'll have to start understanding what that's going to mean from a contract standpoint and again you know having those conversations at the beginning of the project so that we don't have these conversations at the end when it's not that it's too late but now it's going to create it's going to cost time and money right so how does um how does kobe requirements play into lod this was talked a little mark mentioned kobe earlier um les has a question i have not seen this implemented as much as i would have thought since this info is is already in the model so is there a correlation do they work together uh lod and kobe my experience is that it it really doesn't work really well together okay yeah the point mostly because the kobe becomes a static piece of document it the kobe is just the translation piece of software and it's an excel file is the format and so every time you export it out this information it's now static it's it's not a tool to push or pull data so you can say that the data within the kobe is at some sort of log but again it's a manual process of going in and looking at that information at those milestones and how you whenever you export that data out um yeah i have not seen any really good correlation between the two it's more of a judgment call on the team that's putting it together okay all right so has anyone used the model development specification mds that james bedrick developed and if so what size a project does this pertain to i have not um but i am aware of it there's lots of different i guess standards that are trying to be developed by buildings far by the national bim standard these definitions for how we speak to each other to communicate to each other um it really comes down to like what sam was talking about the data and how do we as a industry say one element is this for all for nationally locally internationally what is that and it's there's so many different entities coming up with stuff it's hard to um standardize on one the us is actually not very good at having some sort of mandate to help us guide us in a direction we're broken up by states by counties like local cities they're codes um so it's very difficult for us to work together in that format and i think at the end that's communication with our teams um so it's falls back on to us and how we work together with these models with this data unfortunately i you know i've been looking at a lot of the the international stuff the iso that that came out finally the things that the 1950 which is uh the nextel evolution of the past which is all uk type stuff but it's actually more than just the uk it's australia there's a bunch of other countries that use this mandate and it really is a good tool to help the rest of the world kind of understand where to go with bim it's very well thought out how it works but it's not something that's here mandate that we have to follow in the united states yeah do you think we're heading in that direction or will that ever happen i mean i feel like we've been talking about this for years now and i and i don't even think we you know we don't have a standard that applies to everyone and now you know if we're talking about a standard for the design and construction site and standards for facilities um it's just we you know and you know kind of shocking that we're not there yet and you know looking at other countries that have been doing this for a while now yeah it's unfortunate but i think it allows us to focus on who we're working with and create relationships with the teams and i think a big part of it is we come up with something something like a you what you guys are doing now with this kind of conversation it just comes back to an education of how do we work together our our world's getting smaller smaller and smaller so the more we can work i'm working from home you're all working from home the more we can we are going down this path i think the more we'll have to have some sort of understanding of and it comes down to the data i mean where it's it's the next information is the next piece it's here it's now it needs to be pushed faster and communicating better so it will get there i will be retired because it's been 20 years and i've been saying the same thing for the past 20 years so the young people and i love to see the young people i think there's some great young people out there who have taken on the mantle of bim and and really pushed it the you know dynamo and scripting and you know having conversations where the design firms are actually developing and implementing their own software to get this stuff done is is very promising so yeah it'll get there at some point just i'll be retired there's nothing wrong with that at all there's one question in the chat as we just kind of wrap up we're getting at the top of the hour here um where does element rendering materials fall into the lod spectrum if at all clients commonly confuse lod and photo realistic uh presentation graphics yeah that's a big one i don't know sam do you have something you came from the design side well you know again it it first of all it depends on the project team i mean you have some people that want to convey information as much as as clearly as possible so it it's going to depend a little bit on that project team and the capabilities of that team ideally you'd like you'd like those things tied together so that whatever you're showing the client is actually the material that's there not just a you know communication 101 i don't want to be showing a material that i think kind of looks like it and find out that it looks nothing like it but as we both know from the design side you know spending the time and the effort to make those connections in the design phase of things there's not always compensation for that so you have to kind of weigh how much of that information needs to be there and um i guess i've experienced a lot of times where the owner's perception of what they were going to get might have far exceeded what they actually got you know based on what was originally set up in the contract well that's a communication thing an education thing and you can't always educate people to a concept but i think we have to do a better job of of putting that information out there you know we we get a little tunnel vision we're in this every day right we hear these turns every day we hear all these things and it just it's our language right well it sounds like a foreign language to most of the clients that we end up dealing with so if we don't take the time to take a step back and talk about what each of those things means you're going to get situations where you don't meet those owners expectations then um so that that's not necessarily a failure that owner or that owner expecting more than they're paying you for i think it's more of a you got to communicate what that means you know at the very beginning of things and if they want to see something more i i've had really good experiences you know when you explain that to an owner and say hey we can do that right we can take that to the next level it's just gonna cost us it's going to be more time on our part and it's going to cost more fee for us to get there if that owner really wants to see that typically that's not an issue then to get compensated for that where it becomes an issue is if you are just expected to do that and you do it and you don't talk about that from a contract standpoint and then you try and charge them extra after the fact so again right just have those communications at the very beginning and trying as best you can visualize what those expectations are going to be and document those expectations so that as much as possible everybody's on the same page from the start of the project yeah and it's things that we've always done in some form or respect you know if it's an interiors interiors would always lay out a board of all the different um samples that they are going to be getting and um if it was a contractor they do mock-ups right so there it was always kind of there we're just now moving it into a digital realm and i think it's a good point whoever asked that question that should be part of the the contract documents in that aaa e23 and those protocols if that's something that is coming down the pipe and you can see that instead of saying a mock-up which used to be in our specs or still in respects or a sound before we change it to be a virtual you know this is what we're gonna do and it'll be a virtual mock-up or a virtual board or something it's just a change in language and comes down back down to that communication so it's just the technology is changing it is going to be in a vr cool let's put some goggles on you and you'll be on your states um and you can actually show it and you can actually open up doors or whatever you know those are different ways of saying the same thing that we've always said um and understanding if we communicate with that owner that you know what you're going to be putting on some goggles and you might get sick or there's some drama you know i don't know just something that it kind of just changes the conversation but it's still the same standard of care that we've always had so before we wrap up um does anyone have any final last uh comments i really appreciate uh bruce sam uh don and also mark a lot of great resources uh valuable experience um you know we're gonna be doing more of these uh we we've got a lot of really great feedback that you know having industry experts as well as you know our local residents uh resident experts here at atg just to share and and and give people the opportunity to ask questions i know it's a little challenging because you don't know what people are going to ask but i think with with the group we're always able to handle anything that's thrown at us and to really just share and i think that's the key here as as industry leaders we need to be sharing what we're doing what we're learning uh to help others out there there were some people in the chat that are fairly new to this so gaining that experience from us and you know taking the charge and moving you know our industry as a whole all disciplines uh forward with this so any final comments and then we'll go ahead and wrap it up i would just say as you try and tackle lod of a topic at your firm just have a consistent approach you know have your resources aligned uh whoever your insurance provider is i'm sure they have input on this you know like if you have willis from an architecture standpoint or whoever it may be they've got information on this right make sure that you align their information with your resources and your contracts and your process those things all need to kind of line up um so keep it simple to start with but just try and make those things all be consistent so that it becomes something that your company and your group just understand that this is the way we're going to do things if you jump all over the board makes it really hard to get a product out there that's going to have the same results every time definitely you know most of us have worked with some sort of bim execution plan with the management plan and rarely do we apply that at a contractual level and there's so many good resources out there to help firms with the contract i think that's the scary part for most of them is just okay i'm comfortable with what i've always done it's worked well and then moving into something new and i think samurai is talking to to your legal and your insurance groups to make sure that you are on the same page and it works within your company we we're always having that conversation with our with our group and you know we're small enough where everyone has a stay in it but on large teams you know sometimes that's a little bit more difficult and but you know the larger you get usually you have more resources to do the play the game and so it is a balancing act and um you know we've been i've been doing this for uh 10 15 years now talking about bim and it's rare did we actually have it as a contract very rare hardly ever and i think it's important that we kind of step into that now especially because this is an lod for owners and contracts um you need to have that conversation now with our owners how do they how do they participate how do we participate with them whenever we start talking about this lod and it's not just visual it's all sorts of data be aware of those things excellent i just wan to thank bruce and stan for taking some time out of their day to join us and everybody else in attendance guys thanks so much for coming to the conversation uh like emily said this is where it starts and i think that's been kind of the theme that's been echoed here is is it we need to have these conversations and we need to have them across multiple disciplines across contractors engineers it doesn't really matter we all need to play nice in the same sandbox now guys because the tools are kind of forcing us to do so i appreciate atg for inviting me this is awesome um known you guys for so long so it's great to always be part of your team so great thank you all echo bruce's comments sir i really appreciate the invite this is this is great i'm glad you guys are doing these okay excellent and if there's anyone out there on the call right now that has a future ideas for uh these town hall events and would like to uh volunteer to be on a panel uh i've had i've had a couple of i've i've had a couple people or i've all and told them that they're gonna be next and but no it's your it's your experience and your knowledge that really makes this work so i i appreciate it and so does atg so all right i'll see everyone at the next town thank you so much hall thank you bye