MANAGEMENT TOOLS, BIM AND THE "BUILDER"

Wednesday's Financial Times contained an interesting book review by Morgan Witzel titled a "A plain-speaking guide to modern management". The review starts off with:

"Key performance indicators. Balanced scorecard. Customer relationship management. Dynamic resource management. Most of us know these management tools and many of us use them every week, even every day.

But how effective are we at using them? Not very according to consultants Jeremy Hope and Steve Player. They estimate that these tools deliver what they promise and yield real benefit to companies in only about 30% of cases. The rest of the time, they say, we are merely spinning our wheels - or going into reverse".

Interestingly enough, on Thursday, I met with the 46 year old Vice President of one of the nations larger general contracting firms - a man whom I have known for more than a few years. Within that discussion, the VP lamented that, while there were many people actively embracing new technology, such as BIM, there often seemed to be a greater focus on working the technology to produce loads of data than on harnessing the technology (and its outputs) to produce positive results in the field. After all, says the self-described "builder", the objective is really getting the project BUILT and if the data does not effectively aid that then the effort spent in generating the data is wasted.

I hear a lot of hype about BIM and, while I am great believer in its benefits as a whole-of-life tool, I am afraid that what I actually see more often than not is more "smoke and mirrors" - glitter if you like - than substance / really useful output to help the projects succeed. I suspect that what Messers Hope and Player say about management tools generally applies equally to construction….."these tools deliver what they promise and yield real benefit to companies in only about 30% of cases. The rest of the time …. we are merely spinning our wheels - or going into reverse".

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posted by The QS

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