Skilled BIM workers

Skilled BIM workers 

In discussions about BIM I often hear complaints that to use it properly we need extensive cultural change, especially concerning the habits and capacities of people who should work with it. People are accused of being negative and incompetent concerning innovation. It seems that it's quite hard to find people willing and capable of fully utilizing new technologies. Where does one get the skilled BIM users?

My reaction is that they should employ postal workers. When this is met with puzzlement, I explain that postal workers are fantastically good with new technologies: when I receive a package, they not only ask for confirmation of reception by offering me a mobile digital device to sign on, they also manager to process the confirmation in real time, on the cloud and in real time: within second, my confirmation appears on an online, shared information system that connects the postal services of different continents and notify every stakeholder of the action and of the new state of the project. Could one wish for more?

I hope they get it: the answer to most of our problems with new technologies and their utilization lies not in imposing new obligations and additional processes on people but in creating new, natural working environments, where on does their usual stuff with more ease and without confusion. The postal workers just deliver the package and get my signature. What happens with the delivery confirmation may be beyond their comprehension but by using the right tools, they ensure that the right thing happens. And it happens because the overall system, including the parts about human interaction, are adequately designed and implemented in an effective, efficient and generally reliable manner.

Had the postal worker been obliged to print paper forms according to some standard from the beginnings of the previous century, get signatures, dates and other processing or delivery data on them, then transcribe the data from the forms back to a computer system, we wouldn't have real-time postal tracking systems on the Internet. Many more mistakes would have been made, the personal capacities and habits of each postal worker would bear on the operation of the systems and there would have been widespread complaints from every stakeholder about the technology and its deployment.

So, how about freeing ourselves from outdated conventions and focusing on doing our jobs beyond such confines? Surely these conventions had been established to ensure that these jobs were properly done with the technologies available back then. Shouldn't we now examine what these jobs entail and how they relate to the new technologies and the societies that are already accustomed to them?