Episode 1 | The Evolution of BIM: 35 Years of Knowledge

Welcome to the BIMTech Podcast. In this episode Adam sits down with Matt McGuire (The Director and Co-Founder of BIMTech) to talk about his 35 years within the engineering and contruction industry and the evolution of BIM from the early days of CAD design to now. What was it like 35 years ago in this industry? How has technology progressed in BIM? Will AI take over? This and more on Episode 1 of the BIMTech Podcast. Enjoy!

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction
• 0:52 Matt's rise to BIMTech Engineering
• 9:23 The BIMTech Office
• 9:37 The Evolution of BIM
• 11:48 This is Never Going to Catch on
• 13:07 The Benefits of BIM
• 18:29 Was this Always the Plan?
• 19:43 The Path to BIM
• 21:58 The Future of BIM
• 27:26 Outro

Transcript

0:00

Give me the nod. Action. Right. Okay. Welcome to the first official episode of the BIMTech Podcast. I'm Adam. And with me today is the boss himself, Matt. And do you want to introduce yourself Matt a little bit. Yeah, I'm Matt McGuire, director and co-founder of BIMTech Engineering. We started BIMTech in 2015 and it's just gone from strength to strength ever since. Yeah. So today we're going to focus on BIM itself because the last podcast was more on why we're doing this and this one's sort of tailored towards BIM and the company itself and Matt’s journey through BIM. I mean, when you started off it was called CAD back in the day, wasn't it. Yeah, Well. Yeah. So we had a business before BIMTech called M&E CAD Design but my journey started way before then as well. So I started back in. What year was it? 1989. Yeah, showing your age there. Before you were born. So I started off as an apprentice draftsman on a drawing board. Right. I worked for a small sheet metal work company. Who did ventilation ductwork systems. But it was a great way to get into the industry for me. Because it was such a small company and because they actually fabricated the ductwork and installed it, very quickly, you were kind of thrust into running your own projects, which is kind of probably what’s pushed me to want my own company eventually. Yeah. Because I felt like from an early age I was kind of doing a lot of things that you'd end up doing, running your own business, although obviously we're not in manufacturing of ductwork or anything like that. But it just give me the feel for it. And sort of the drive to want to do that sort of thing. Right. And you did CAD(Computer Aided Design) design in that job before and then sort of thought... So that, I started on the drawing board and as anybody who works on a drawing board will know, you start off drawing in pencil to make sure you get everything right. And then you have to go over it in ink pens. You have different thickness of ink pens and that to make different things stand out and your ink pens would dry up. And everyone who's worked on drawing boards, you know, you’d be there shaking your ink pens to try and get the ink going, dabbing it on your tongue, dabbing on your hand to try and get the pen going, so you could write with it. So that's kind of how it started off. Like I say, I worked for this small company and then eventually, unfortunately, that company went into liquidation and I moved on then. And I went to a company called Senior Hargreaves, which at the time I think they were the biggest ductwork manufacturing company in Europe. And it was when I was there that I went into CAD. Because I worked at Hargreaves, they already used a product called CAD Duct, which has evolved over the years and become fabrication MEP, etc. And it's even now brought into Revit as a bolt on to Revit that's been eventually bought out by Autodesk. And so I went straight into modeling in a 3D environment. But it was just air conditioning and ventilation systems. So I was always producing 3D models. The problem was we were working in isolation, doing 3D modeling because the architects were still producing 2D drawings. So we'd drop a 2D background in, but we're working in 3D, which obviously doesn't work very well. Yeah. All the other service packages were still working in 2D, so we're trying to coordinate our 3D model with 2D drawings and again, none of that worked too well. Eventually I moved on from Hargreaves to a company called Thermal Transfer. The reason I went there was that my wife was pregnant and we needed more money and it was like a bit of an advanced role. It was another one of these moments where it was just chucked in at the deep end and it's worked out great for me, really. So yeah. So I've never had to look back really. And so you formed M&E CAD Design in 2005? 2005. Yeah. So going to Thermal Transfer was about 2000. I left there in 2002, went to NG Bayleys in Salford. It was a great move for me. I was nearer to home. So by this time I had two young kids, I could get home better and everything. See the kids. And my boss there was a guy called Paul Marsland, one of the most intelligent guys I've ever met in my life, and he was kind of fundamental in me setting up M&E CAD Design. Because my kids got to an age where, well they were going to school and they needed to be dropped off in the morning and picked up in the evening and there were no before school or after school clubs. And I spoke to Paul and I said, look, I'm going to have to reduce my hours because I was working on contract at NG Bayleys. I said, I'm going to have to reduce my hours because I can't pick my kids up do the hours and whatever. And Paul's response was, well, do you want to work from home? He said, will that make life easier for you? So I said, that be ideal for me! So he said, well, we trust you, we know what you can do. So as long as you can come in for meetings. He said, I've got no issues with that. So I started working from home and then when I was working from home, I ended up with a couple of projects that Paul had where they needed doing quick turnaround. One of them was over an Easter weekend, so I picked it up and I put in stupid hours over this weekend and I absolutely smashed the job and got this full floor co-ordinated, drawing sheets done, everything for him. And when I gave it him back on the Tuesday morning, he couldn't believe it. And he said this is brilliant this. He said, like, this is how we need to work. So I said, well, I said, going forward then rather than paying me hourly, if I give you fixed prices for jobs. I said, it de-risks the job for yourself. I said, I take on the responsibility of getting the job done on time and making money on it. And we kind of agreed on that. And that was the start of M&E CAD Design then because once I had that off Paul, I decided, well, I can set company up here. I could offer this service to other companies as well, which I did. And then I started picking up other work. I was working from home at the time. I was probably doing 12 hour days, six days a week, and what I was doing, I was building up like a bit of a slush fund that I could use to then invest into getting my first office and then look at recruiting people. So that's kind of how it started. I got a very small office, recruited a couple of people. That's one of the most worrying things I've ever done. Right? Knowing somebody else is kind of relying on you for their wages and everything as well. So that was a bit of a panic station at first. But yeah, it went well and we sort of grew. We got to a stage where we needed to move office, went to a new office and it kind of just ticked over for a few years. But we went through the recession then and it was once we come out the other side is when BIM started coming into the forefront. People were talking about BIM and the introduction of BIM and being a bit naive at the time. We were like, well, we do 3D modeling, so we do BIM. Because it seemed to be that's what BIM was because it was Building Information Modeling. So we knew there was this opportunity to sort of grab hold of this BIM keyword that people were chucking around and grow something good on the back of it. But because we come through a recession, we didn't have a lot of money behind us or anything we’d kind of expended all our sort of backup money and everything. Yeah. So I went to a couple of people who I knew and I spoke to them and said, like, how would you like to invest and get involved? And I had a couple of them people were Rob Speakman and Shaun Lappin who are my current partners now. Yeah. And when I spoke to them, they were all on board pretty much straight away. Seemed dead keen on the idea and everything. But they wanted to do a bit of a rebrand of everything because they wanted to introduce the BIM into the title of the company. To make it a bit obvious what it is we do. So we kind of had a bit of a rebrand. We went with BIMTech engineering. Having the guys behind us and a backing of a company that they also work for. It gave us the financial backing to be able to move into Central Manchester and open the office that we're in today where we're sat now. Yeah. Which for people who haven't seen our office, if you follow us on LinkedIn, you've probably seen plenty of pictures, but it's a pretty smart office. Yeah. I think anyone who ever comes in here is always pretty impressed by it. Yeah. I mean, I suppose, going back to BIM. When you were in 2005 and you were starting up M&E CAD Design, I suppose the question is, obviously it's called BIM now. Yeah. But at the time was there any difference between BIM as it is now and then the transition to BIM from when you started M&E CAD because was it just CAD then and then occasionally processes came in that built BIM? So yeah. So back in 2005 at that stage we were working in a 3D environment. Yeah. The architects and structure were moving into that 3D environment as well. But you had a lot of and even to this day you probably get one or two but you had a lot of CDP. CDP? Yeah, the CDP, because I always get it mixed up with CPD. Because ones continued professional development and the others... Well you say all the time acronyms... Yeah....are probably the Achilles heel of BIM. They are. There’s so many of them. Yeah. But the CDP packages, which are people like your sprinklers and that. They've been further behind getting into the 3D world. So back in 2005, we could be working in 3D. The architect could be, the structural team could be, but you'd still have all your little bolt on bits... Yeah....That were still working in 2D just because for them I don't think the investment, sort of, they couldn't see a return on that investment. But I think as BIMs grown and people have become to sort of understand what the return on that investment is, I think everybody is kind of jumping on board. I think the government also had a big help in that. When in 2016, April of 2016, they said that if you were not utilizing BIM, you wouldn't be considered for a government project over the value of I think it was any projects over the value of 10 million. So anyone who wanted to work on them government projects, they had to sort of get on the BIM train. Right. So considering what you said about when you were sort of young and starting off and there were drawings going on, hand drawings. So I'm more curious on what processes there are now in BIM that are compared to the processes when you were younger and how they’ve improved those processes and if there's any specific bits of things you used to do when you were younger that you do now and you think bloody hell, it takes me like 5 minutes now. Well, one thing I do remember is when I first started, the first time I started using CAD, like I say, I went straight into working in a 3D environment, although because other people were working in 2D, you had to have 2D knowledge as well. Yeah. But the day I started working on it, I went home and I said to my wife, because I'd been used to working on a drawing board and I think I was pretty quick at producing drawings on a drawing board. When I got on a computer, it was all new to me and it just kind of went over my head a little bit. I was trying to find my feet and everything. And I went home to my wife and I said, this CADs never going to catch on, I said, it’s just, it takes you so long to do anything. I said, It's just going to be one of these fads that's going to be around for a year or two and everyone will get sick of it and we'll I'll be back on the drawing boards and just shows you how wrong I was. You know, I mean, I think when you're talking about the process of BIM and then your sort of progression through it, I suppose in sort of encapsulating all that, what to you are the benefits of BIM? I think probably the biggest one that for every client anyway is that they say that used correctly on a project BIM saves about 20% on the overall construction of a building or a project. So that that's the big key one. But, what contributes to that? There’s all the different things that contribute to it. So it's all your collaborative working. You get more visuals now on what's going on in a project than you used to. Everyone used to work in like silos, they’d just work on their own. And going back to like when you say about comparisons, we used to have this phrase when I was first in the industry, first in best dressed, and basically what it meant was you can get your drawings done first, get them approved, get them in manufacturing, get them installed on site. If you get yours in first, you're in and everyone has to work around you, Right. And they’d just resolve clashes on site. So we'd put the ductwork in. The pipework guy would come in and then go, I can't get my pipework in. And we’d go well our stuffs in now. So then they'd have to go up the chain to the builder and they'd have to say we can't get our pipework in because of the ductwork. So then they’d come to us and they'd say, you need to take the ductwork out so we can get the pipework in and then you're going to have to offset your ducts around it. Yeah. So some of that would then have to get stripped out, then we'd have to go to the site, site measure it and we'd have to make new pieces and then it’d go back in and all that was at a cost that eventually goes up the chain and goes to the client. So all things like that are now all resolved in a 3D environment with all your clash detection and everything else. So you've got all that where that's part of your collaborative working, but it's also just being aware of what other people are doing and working together just to make the process run smoothly. Just coming down to things like builderswork. Working with architects and getting agreements on builderswork details and when it comes to the fire walls, getting fire officers involved and understanding what's the rule sets around the builderswork. Yeah. Just all things like that which can be done in this virtual reality before it gets to site and you realize it's a major problem. Another one that we'll probably do another podcast on, I'm sure. But is, we call it DfMA, which is designed for manufacture and assembly. Other people call it prefabrication, pre-construction, things like that. And the opportunities that are there now for prefabrication due to using BIM because we can get the accuracy so much better. We know what we're dealing with, we're working in this environment where we can see what's around us and we know what we're fixing into because we've got the structural models, we’ve got architectural models. So we can coordinate it all and we can get it all built in a virtual environment that can then be sent to a fabrication shop. And it can be fabricated and it can be brought to site. So when you're looking at programs on projects, the length of programs are getting shorter, so your window of opportunity for installations is getting shorter. But what you can do now is you can be getting everything fabricated whilst the building is being constructed and then as soon as that building is ready, you can be bringing in big fabricated modules and just putting them into place. If you look at like a hospital corridor and you’re putting a row of modules down that corridor, you could probably get a full corridor done in a week, just bringing modules in and lifting them into position and just doing those final connections. Whereas back in the day you'd be waiting until that building's constructed and then you'd be bringing all the materials to site, you’d be cutting them up on site. You'd be doing welding on site, which again, then you’re looking at health and safety aspects, where you’re saving on that. Yeah. And all that's going on, on a building site in a uncontrolled environment where it could be wet, windy, whatever and you're trying to install it all and to do that same corridor, doing it in a traditional way where you've got different tradesmen trying to get in at the same time, clambering over each other, trying to get up scaffolding, blocking access routes, everything else. It’d probably take you. I don't know. What’d take you a week would probably take you eight weeks something like that to do the same job. So it's weird because it all sort of molds together and it's hard to pick out one exact thing and say that's what the saving is or that's the best benefit because they all sort of intertwine together. Yeah. And all sort of benefit each other. Right. So keeping in mind you've discussed a lot of tech specific things now considering the idea that it was drawings when you were younger, now it's just computer based all over the place. There’s coding involved in some of the processes now. So I suppose the question is when you were younger and you were going into this industry, was it something you always wanted to do? Was it something that just sort of took your fancy as an apprenticeship or? Yeah, I'll be honest, it kind of felt like one of my only options. Right? Probably like most people I was leaving school. I didn’t have much of a clue what I wanted to do, sat chatting with my mum and dad like, what do you want to do when you leave school? And I was like, I don't really know. And then my mum was like, not that there's much art involved in what we do because everything's computerized now and it's pretty automated for you. But my mum was like, you’re good at art, you’re good at Maths, you should be a draftsman. And I was like, Okay. Yeah. I'll do that then. Yeah, I mean... So I'll give it a go. I think people now can pretty much. Yeah. Same thing isn't it. But I suppose now with the amount of tech that's involved it's a bit of a different path to this industry now. Now it's probably more like, you like gaming? Yeah, well that's it. Alot of people don't know that, though. I mean, when I came into the business, I was doing digital media stuff in university and I didn't think that there was anything like this. I didn't know about construction, I didn't really ever think about it. But, I think that is a thing now. You can come in from so many different angles because there’s people who work in technology who you probably want here for the tech reasons but won't have the engineering knowledge or it’d be the other way around where someone loves engineering, but it is a tech dominated world now, so you kind of need those young people who grow up with it and are more savvy with it. I think the thing is, like we were saying before about programs shortening. So the pre-construction phase is getting shorter, which is what we're mainly involved with. That you need these people who are good at the technology side. Who can find their way around a computer very quickly. They can adapt to new software releases. Old school people and I’d include myself in more old school, get a bit terrified when new releases of software come out. Yeah. Because they're kind of thinking, I've just got my head around this and now I've got something else to learn. Whereas the younger ones, they're like let me at it, I want to see what it can do. Yeah. And push it. And as a business we're trying to stay on the forefront of technology and to do that you need to have people in the business who can grasp that and they can push it and develop it and kind of help the company grow using that software. It's easier to get the techie people and teach them the engineering side. Yeah. And give them sort of the experience through our training scheme than it is to take someone with all that experience and try and teach them how to use a computer and how to be a techie sort of person. Yeah. It's a gap that needs to be bridged, but it seems to be easier to bridge it from one side rather than the other. Yeah, I think talking about the future, obviously when BIM started becoming a bit more mainstream in 2015 you said, when you started BIMTech Engineering. Obviously it's been ten years since then, nearly. Yeah. And obviously there's been stuff that's moved forward like coding and I mean we've used Hololen’s tried those out, which is augmented reality showing the model on site. Yeah, brings a bit of fun into construction. And we've used Trimble field points in models where robots are literally plotting the points of anchors and I think with all that going on and that's obviously adding to the worth of BIM, is there any parts of it that still need some development to push out to even further people, or is it where it needs to be right now? There's still aspects of BIM that aren't being utilized as well as it could be. I think 4D, which is the planning side of it, where you can connect your program into your 3D model and you can watch how the model should progress or the construction should progress alongside a program, and it helps you iron out sequencing issues and things like that. And what I found with 4D is, people are interested at the start of a project, so the initial program, they'll attach it, they’ll link it with the model, but nobody maintains that link between the model and the program. So the program will be getting updated on a weekly basis on a lot of projects. No one updates that link between that and the model and reviews the model. So it’s almost there, it feels to me 4Ds used a lot of the time more as a bid winning tool. People like to show off, oh look, we can use 4D, we can attach it to a program. This is what it will look like. But when you actually get into the running of a project, they don't use it. Right. So I think that's one of the good benefits there. If people would sort of invest in that, I think it probably needs a bit of training for... You've got planners at the minute who look after the programs, they probably need a bit of training on software to understand how it links together and they could do the updates so that would be good. And then you've got your 5D which is bringing cost into a project where you can monitor cost, you can use it initial for pricing up a project, you could use it for that. The thing with 5D is although people talk about BIM being transparent, people don't want to be too transparent and they don't want to share a model with anyone that's got costs attached to it. So I think that's a bit of a stumbling block. So I think people for the 5D side of it are not using the model where they are putting the cost into the model. What they're doing is they're pulling out the bill of materials and then once they've got it in a spreadsheet format, they'll attach costs to that. So they’re still using it, but not where I think it should be being used. And then I mean, like we all know with AI, nobody knows. Well yeah. Nobody knows where that's going. And I don't particularly want to think where it goes. Whether this time next year there will be two robots sat here. Yeah. Just giving you a basic chat on BIM. Yeah well but... Seen as though we've said it was ten years from when you opened M&E CAD to then opening BIMTech Engineering. It’s been nearly ten years now so in your mind. There isn’t another company coming. No, no company. But is there anything in your mind in, let's say ten years down the line that you, I know you said AI and stuff, but is there somewhere you think BIM will be? Do you think it will be used in every project or Oh yeah, definitely. And I think a lot of it will become more automated. So I know at the moment we have people who can produce little dynamo scripts to try and automate things. Where you've got repetitive sort of actions within a model that you do on a regular basis. Yeah. Rather than keep doing it over and over, you can create like a little dynamo program script, you can put that into Revit and you can automate those processes. I think there'll be a lot more of that in the future and I think that will grow. But yeah, I think the technology's going to just, I mean, what we've seen in the last ten years and it's just going mental isn't it. Yeah. I think it comes back to what you said. I think you'll find more games designers go this way because you know, the renders that are being created from models these days are getting more and more sophisticated, the software. And I think, you know, going about that training route of bringing people in who know that tech stuff and trying to give them that knowledge, I think helped me a lot. When I came in I think I was sick of what I was doing at uni a lot of the time. It burns you out, I think. So it's good to go down a different route with it and freshen it up a bit. So yeah, I think that sort of brings us quite nicely to the end of the podcast. Thanks for coming on Matt. No, it's been a pleasure. You sure? I’m not fired after this or anything? Not yet. Well, okay, so thanks for watching and listening. If you're watching this on YouTube, then please like and subscribe and hit the bell to be notified when a new episode comes out. If you're listening to this on Spotify or any major streaming platforms, please follow the podcast and make sure to follow BIMTech engineering on LinkedIn and Instagram for any future updates. And we'll see on the next podcast, which I think will be on... you’re bringing your PT in aren’t you? To talk about... Yeah, Well we thought we'd mix it up a bit. Yeah. Talking about, You won't be talking about BIM I can guarantee you that. No. It’s like health in the workplace, isn't it? And mental wellbeing as well. I told him i’d send him a copy of this when we did it and he said don't bother.