This article is intended for the CEO's, Partners, and CFO's of firms using Revit. If you are a BIM manager or an employee that works with Revit everyday this article is about you, but not really for you.

Dear CEO, Partner, CFO:

You are wasting your money! If you have 40 employees using Revit you are most likely wasting $4,000 a day, that's over one million dollars a year!

Do not jump to the conclusion that Revit is the problem. Revit is a productivity tool of unprecedented proportions that will lead to better designs, lower construction costs, increased architects' and engineers' fees and better buildings. Revit is not only a better way to create contract documents it is the foundation for analysis, simulation and facilities management that will lead to significantly better designs and building.

Revit is an "object oriented" software application. This means that to create a Revit project you need a library of thousands of objects (3D models of doors, windows, plumbing fixtures, pumps, furniture, etc.) with data attached. At Reed, we refer to these as SmartBIM Objects. From this library, you should be able to find the exact object you want to insert into the project. No longer can you draw three lines on a couple of lines (a wall), add a window target and move on. Every architectural and engineering firm needs a library with every object that can go into the project and a management tool for keeping track of the objects. Until you have that library, object creation and object management are costing you a tremendous amount of money.

Five thousand dollars per day cost to your firm is significant, but can be surprisingly unnoticeable. Wasting money, in small increments, everyday on every project, without thinking about it, is just like using too much gas because your tires are underinflated, or wasting energy because you have not converted your incandescent lamps to compact fluorescent lamps. This is the type of wasted money that does not usually get accounted for, because many, especially at the executive level, do not even know it is happening. This article looks into how much money is being wasted and why. I will then show you how our SmartBIM products and services can quickly help you stop wasting money.

The problem is:
1. Objects are needed - Most offices do not have a comprehensive collection of the quality objects that are needed for insertion into their projects.
2. Objects must be found — Most firms keep the objects in folders, sometimes each employee has their own folders. Firms have thousands of objects. When an object is needed it becomes a daunting task to find the object you need. (Offices are spending money building objects, but how many versions of a hollow metal door and frame have been created within the firm?)
3. Objects must be managed — As objects are created they need to be vetted to insure they meet your office standards and then need to be put in an easily accessible location. Furthermore, the objects should be organized by project types to allow faster navigation to what the designer needs (ex. hospitals have a different collection of doors than an office building). Completed projects should have specific catalogs created to make it easier to manage changes, substitutions and discontinued products.

Reed is in the object creation (SmartBIM Objects) and object management (SmartBIM Library) business. We provide our SmartBIM Objects at no cost to architects. We license our SmartBIM Library for a modest fee. The combination of our massive library of objects (both generic and manufacturer specific) and the tool to manage them will provide a Return On Investment (ROI) can be measured in days.

Objects
It is intuitive that if a firm can get excellent SmartBIM Objects for no cost is; it better than creating them at the office. Reed creates excellent objects. We take the time to make them parametric, when appropriate, so a few objects can replace hundreds of static objects. We attach data to help in schedule creation and the data needed by analysis programs. We include Uniformat (Assembly Codes) to help link to RSMeans Cost Data (A Reed Company), and to e-Specs. We create SmartBIM Objects for manufactures such as Kolbe, Nana Walls, Karona (doors and windows), Hager (hinges, exit devices, closers), Da-Lite (projection screens), Armstrong Ceilings and many more. We are constantly adding objects to the SmartBIM Library.

Object Management
It is also intuitive that these thousands of objects need to be managed to insure the correct ones are being found and used. We have all experienced the frustration of looking for a spreadsheet or word file in our folders, but this is simple compared to looking for an electric drinking fountain. Most often the file name is not enough information to find the correct object. For example, the file names may look like EDF1, EDF2, drinking fountain wall, or best fountain. You will usually need to see the object and the data to insure this is the object you want. The objects may be spread over multiple folders, each employee may have their favorites. When you need that electric drinking fountain, our survey (see below) indicates it takes several minutes of looking to hopefully find the object you need. Our survey also has found that about 40% of the time it is not found, so it is created or recreated by the Revit user at a cost of several minutes or hours.

This may all sound like an "infomercial", however, we have begun collecting data which paints a picture more dire than even we had anticipated. We asked architects how much time they spend finding and creating Revit objects. At the time I am writing this article, a survey has been out for only two weeks and we have received hundreds of results.

Survey Highlights
1. Employees using their office library average over three minutes a search.
2. Employees using internet collections such as Autodesk Seek, Revit City and the AIA site average over six minutes a search.
3. The average number of searches per day for objects is ten.
4. Over 40% of the time, after spending this amount of time searching, the employee does not find the object they need in either the office library or on the Internet.
5. When the employee cannot find the object they need, it is split evenly between building their own or modifying an existing object.
6. The average time to build or modify an object is 6 minutes, some modifications are quick, but over 30% of the time employees are taking over 1 hour per object.
7. 60% of the employees build or modify objects less than 10 times a week, 40% of the employees build or modify objects over 20 times a week.

Desired Results (we can help you get there)
As an owner or manager, you would want to see the following results from our survey;
1. The objects were found in less than a minute.
2. The catalogs of objects contained in the office library were well built and the library contained most of the objects needed.
3. When the object was not found, an excellent object was found over the Internet in less than a couple of minutes to locate and download.

When the survey records these results you will no longer be wasting money.

The chart below translates the survey results into dollars, your wasted dollars. For these calculations, it is assumed the employee is costing you $40 and hour (fully loaded, salary, benefits, occupancy and taxes). Soon, Reed will have a tool on our Internet site where you can plug in your specific office numbers to see what objects and object management are costing your firm.

If you have 40 employees modeling it is costing you about $4,000 a day finding, modifying and creating objects. Your office situation will most likely not be exactly the same (I used the average numbers from the survey), the question, is it worse?

ROI
The license fee for the SmartBIM Library is $500 a Revit user (less, as more copies are licensed). The searching for objects in your office library takes seconds, not minutes. The savings equal $15 a day. Currently, 40% of the time, objects are not found. Most often these objects exist someplace in the office but the Revit user just gives up looking. Assuming this is correct half the time, the savings on Internet searches that can be eliminated save another $10 a day. Stopping at this point, the SmartBIM Library is paid for in less than a month. Using the same assumption of 50% of the objects not found are actually someplace in the office and with the SmartBIM Library they will now be found, the $60 a day for object creation and modifications will be cut to $30 a day and the SmartBIM Library now pays for itself in 9 days. After paying for the SmartBIM Library in 9 days you will then save $15,000 in wasted time over the rest of the year. This is a ROI of 3,000%.

Conclusion
Our SmartBIM Objects are free, they come with the SmartBIM Library when it is licensed, and as of today, this combination of tools is the quickest and most efficient way to get Revit Objects to your designers. We will continue to monitor the survey, refine the questions and periodically update the results. We will get to the desired results soon. Please encourage your employees to take the survey. The more data we collect, the better the products and services we can provide. It will take only a couple of minutes. Click here to start the survey.

This article talks about the SmartBIM products but it is intended to help the owners and top managers stop wasting money. In the case of the 40 employees using Revit, what would your firm do with over $1M in increased productivity this year?

To find out more about how to start saving money, contact us at smartbim@reedbusiness.com.