Last year was a really difficult time for our customers.  I’d like to note that during this difficult economic time for all of us, “Vico did the right thing.”  We upgraded anyone who had invested in our solutions to our next generation platform, Vico Office, for no charge!

 

What? A software company that did not charge anything for a significant upgrade and enhancement to their solution?  Wow!  Take a bow Vico R&D!
 
The purpose of this memo is to clarify the evolution from Constructor/Constructor Pro licenses into Vico Office Licenses; furthermore, to clarify the option of moving from Single User Licenses (SUL) to floating licenses.
 
Background
We originally distributed our software in two primary packages:
 1. Constructor Package included:
     a. Constructor modeling program;
     b. Estimator;
     c. 5D Presenter
 2. Constructor Pro Package included:
     a. Constructor modeling program;
     b. Estimator;
     c. 5D Presenter;
     d. Control scheduling program;
     e. Change Manager  (Doc Set Manager)
In addition we offered Vico Control  and Vico Change Manager as standalone products.
 
Vico Office Strategy
About five years ago, we began to develop a BIM-neutral platform that would enable our users to generate 3D – 4D – 5D output from numerous modeling platforms. A significant aspect of the plan was to:
 1. Provide our customers more flexibility by integrating with multiple modeling platforms,
     as well as the current estimating and scheduling technologies they have in place;
 2. Break up the multiple capabilities that had been wrapped into Constructor and
     Constructor Pro into a modular system so that our customers could customize Vico software
     to fit their needs;
 3. Increase the ease-of-use of our products by providing a user-friendly interface and clearly
     outlining a step-by-step model-based workflow in the solution.
 
The Upgrade to Vico Office
As the Vico Office platform began to take shape, we decided to offer the Vico Office solution to our existing customers at no additional cost.
 
How Did It Work?
Any customer that was up-to date on their annual maintenance would automatically receive the appropriate single-user licenses of Vico Office as a free upgrade.
 
With that said, Vico Office will have significantly more functionality than provided in the 2008 Vico Constructor Suite.  In addition, Constructor, Constructor Pro, Control, and Doc Set Manager were only available in SUL format, and our customer base was demanding Floating License capabilities which we introduced in Vico Office.
 
Converting Licenses
The schematic below depicts the conversion of Constructor and Constructor Pro licenses into their equivalent Vico Office modules:

 

Converting SUL to Floating
All 2008 Vico products were only offered as a single-user license structure. Vico Office provides our customers the opportunity to support multiple users with a floating license structure. Moving from a single-user set-up to a network (floating) set-up requires  a upgrade/conversion fee.

Establishing the right mix of Floating Licenses is directly dependent upon the number of users expected at any given time. We recommend starting with a conservative amount and then adding Floating Licenses as they become needed.
 
Accessing the Vico Office Modules on the Network
The Vico Office Floating system relies upon the client piece of software, called Vico Office Client.  The Vico Office Client is a desktop piece of software. Each user who would like to access the other Vico Office Modules on the network will need to have the Vico Office Client installed locally on their machine.  As the user accesses specific modules, the Client “checks out the licenses” for those modules. When all Floating licenses for any given module(s) have been “checked out” the user receives a message from the system indicating a license is not available.
 
Wow, free!

It is a known fact that Virtual Construction, also known as 5D BIM, will help you win work.  It is well-documented and can be read about in this year's "Getting BIM to the Bottom Line."  This report, produced by McGraw-Hill Construction, has two salient points that we at Vico have been telling our customers for years: 

 

First, when marketing your firm's capabilities to an Owner or a selection committee, "98% of BIM users say that having BIM capability is having an impact on their companies winning new work." (page 18, BIM SmartMarket Report: The Business Value of BIM) 

 

Interesting enough on the same page it says, "Only 31% of your competitors are marketing themselves as having significant BIM capability.  At Vico we have a new expression, "Do you walk-the-walk, or do you just talk-the-talk?" 

 

With the availabilty of free modeling systems such as Google's SketchUp allowing anyone to build some nice visual models of a project you have to ask the question: "What constitutes significant BIM capabilities?" 

 

In a recent decision by an owner to build a new hospital his selection committee said that significant BIM capabilities included:

• - A systematic method to make conceptual pricing and schedule assumptions and evolve them (manage them) as the design progressed. Using Vico Office Cost Planner and Cost Explorer the GC said, "I can do that," and he showed them how!
• - Is there a way you can de-risk the 12 month schedule so that we are highly likely to complete this project on time? Again, using Vico Control the GC was able to pinpoint 2 critical risks to the proposed 12 month construction schedule. Control's optimization capability allowed the GC to lower the risk of a delay from those 2 items from 90% probability to below 10% probability.
• - Finally, the Owner was shown a better way to have the project team collaborate on cost and design together as the Vico Cost Plan can quickly "compare and show" the cost impact of a new piece to the design.

 

Finally, another quote from page 48 of the BIM SmartMarket Report, "BIM users would rather work with strangers who know BIM than with friends that don't."  This is significant in an industry where repeat business is based upon good working relationships with the many partners in your area. 

 

To learn more about the latest BIM SmartMarket Report and how you can inspire your firm to "walk the walk," join us on Friday, January 29th at 12 Noon Eastern for Getting BIM to the Bottom Line, a special Fridays with Vico webinar featuring Steve Jones from McGraw-Hill Construction.

 

In another blog we'll explore the Vico Model Progression Specification which is a another key capability to get your firm setup with significant BIM capabilities.

During our recent trip to visit customers in the Nordic countries, we produced a Fridays with Vico episode on how many of our customers are rolling out BIM across the enterprise.  This video clip is excerpted from that webinar.

 

 

I'd like to steal from David Letterman and give you the top ten reasons to use 5D BIM.

 

Number Ten:  Certainly your competitors are saying that they are using it.

(Page 33 of McGraw-Hill's BIM SmartMarket Report cites that the most important benefit for Contractors is to market BIM capabilities to win new clients.)

 

Number Nine:  Certainly the owners are asking for it.

(Page 34 of the same report states that "Owners who use BIM see a very high rate of ROI."  If you'd like to hear Steve Jones talk about this study, please tune in on Friday, January 29th at 12 Noon Eastern: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/295608280 )

 

Number Eight:  I know that many of the young smart personnel that run your projects want to use it because we talk to them frequently.

(Vico Software is a proud supporter of the Associated Schools of Construction Management's Reno BIM Competition.  Last year, the first- and third- place teams used Vico Software to prepare their projects.)

 

Number Seven:  The subs want to use it; they want a better and more organized piece of the pie.

(Research shows that optimizing your schedule with Vico Control decreases schedule duration by 10% without exposing the project to any additional risk.)

 

Number Six:  The CEO of your company wants you to use it. 

(Your CEO wants to win more business. Period. With most GCs putting together a model for the bid, your firm can stand out from the pack when you explain to the owner that your model is not just for marketing - it will drive the schedule and keep the project on budget.)

 

Number Five: It would be really great to know if the subs' quantities are actually correct.

(Vico Office Takeoff Manager extracts the construction-caliber quantities from the model geometry from which the schedule and estimate are derived.  When a sub-contractor submits a bid, you can check their quantities against yours.  This then ensures the labor assumptions and productivity rates are correct.)

 

Number Four: You could actually use unit prices from your subs that are loaded and you could fill in the quantities if you had a great and very exact model and quantity takeoff from it.

(See above!)

 

Number Three: You may want a Trimble Total Station and the partner software that Vico has to layout your MEP, as well as your concrete, formwork, and anything else using the robotic Total Station and LM80.

(Seismic bracings and hanger placement can be modeled, transfered to the LM80, and shot on-site with the Trimble Total Station.  For more information, check out the Trimble eipsode of Fridays with Vico.)

 

Number Two: you may want a flowline schedule to help you finish early. We've been talking this week in Helsinki to very large companies like NCC, Skanska, and Hartela. These are all very large construction firms that are all completely standardized on Vico Control. So flowline schedules really do run the projects over here where scheduling is so important because of the long and deeply cold winter.

(Mark Sawyer answered his own blog post, "Who Is the International Leader in Virtual Construction?," at the BIM for the Enterprise webinar.)

 

And Number One: The number one reason to really understand this stuff is you've got to win the project. There are many companies bidding for every single project and it's very clear that companies that deeply understand this and can explain to the owner how they can remove risk from the project, how they will better manage the project, will win. And while I can't mention names right now we have a few projects that are north of $100,000,000 that have been won recently because of this very reason. We have talked with the selection committees and they have said that the difference between the winner and the loser was not all the other items they considered, but it was their ability to use and to bring to bear this 5D methodology to de-risk the project.

 

What is your reason for using BIM?  Or perhaps a better, more pointed question: why aren't you using BIM?

Yesterday I had the good fortune to meet with a Vico customer in Finland who is working with us to deploy Vico Office as a key "system" to run their company.  We were talking about how to help his company change their estimating system and what a challenge that would be. 

 

It is amazing how big a challenge change can be if you try to do it yourself.  For example, the other day I was playing Wii with my son and for about 5 minutes I was holding the remote control in my left hand and the nunchuk in my right hand.  It was the first time I had used both controls and I was learning to play a Star Wars game where you have light saber battles while trying to navigate an obstacle course.  After the first five minutes I noticed my son (who is right-handed also) was using the controls in the opposite hands so I switched....  

 

Well, you would be surprised after only five minutes of learning how my mind and fingers resisted this change!  I was unable to be effective because I had become used to doing it one way and now I was trying to change.

 

My point about change is that it is not easy and it is a process.  There is a great proverb: "A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step." -by Confucius.  What this means in regard to improving your ability to utilize Virtual Construction is that it will not be easy and there will be doubters but the benefits you can achieve are huge and valuable.  Perhaps it would be good to examine or study how to accomplish change before you begin using Virtual Construction technology, there is a lot of great material out there to assist you.  But remember, if you and your team are properly motivated, that is to say you are doing it to improve your business, then you can and will succeed.

 

Good luck, and "may the force be with you."

OK, how many times have the Sales and Marketing folks told you that something is easy to install, easy to learn and powerful?  A few times I bet! 

 

Well, I finally loaded the Vico Office software onto my standard sales issue email laptop (no special graphics capability) running on Windows 7 and within 10 minutes I was looking at quantities in my first project.  Within an hour or so I had explored the Client, Takeoff Manager and I was trying to figure out the Constructability Manager.  Rather than reading the manual I called one of my colleagues and in a 15 minute web session I had figured out the basics with a little coaching.

 

What is incredible about this is that I had never been able to operate Constructor or Estimator because the pre-cursor to that was learning how to run Archicad, the BIM modeling system that all activities were based on.  But now, with Vico Office I can load models, mix models, compare versions from Architects and Structural engineers, run clash detection, evaluate quantities and run reports.  All learned on my own from watching the Fridays with Vico webinars and trying the software myself.  Next I'm moving on to Cost Planning and Location Based Scheduling, after all Vico Office makes it easy!

 

The big differentiators available from 5D Construction Management teams are transparency and accuracy and the companies that master this methodology will clearly win more business.  I hear Owners constantly loving 5D BIM, especially location-based scheduling and think the health care market will be mostly using line of balance within the next few years since the cost of those projects is so high. 

 

If you want to differentiate your firm consider outfitting a project team (including the people resisting change) with Vico Office.  Hopefully, you'll find it as easy to use as I have.  AND, if you have a question about the software call me (978-882-0170 x101) or email me and I'll show you the answer, I'm a demo fool now!

 

If you want to try it yourself, here are the Fridays with Vico webinars to review:

Introduction to Vico Office

Vico Office for Preconstruction and Estimating Teams

 

Please join us for a special Fridays with Vico "unplugged" edition and learn the backstory of Vico Office.  There's still time to register before the October 2 @ 12 Noon Eastern broadcast: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/457254289

IPD, Design Build, GMP with open books.....All of these progressive and collaborative forms of construction contracts have shown great promise to minimize the difficulties typically encountered in construction projects.  However, the momentum of these contract types to displace Design Bid Build has slowed down due to the realities in today's market.  In speaking with many GCs lately, it is common to hear, "We don't like doing hard bids, but feel that we must as most of the opportunities are being offered this way."  Not only is it mostly hard bid, but as many others have noted, there are often 20 or so bidders for each job ensuring that the price will be rock-bottom and margins for the winner will be non-existent or razor-thin.

 

Who is the winner in this hard bid environment?  Well, the owner surely is getting a great price from the bidders, a price that can be as much as 30-percent below projected cost.  But experienced owners know that these hard bids come with hidden costs including change orders, delays, and claims that end up costing them additional money.  But even if that additional money were to add 20% to the cost of the winning hard bid, the owner has still realized a 10% saving over the original projected cost. 

 

What happens in a project like this and how can a GC run a good project with general conditions and their fees needing to be "razor-thin" or possibly lower than their actual cost to win the job?  And what is the potential for losing money or having other project problems such as schedule delays or safety issues with such a small crew managing the project?

 

Let's talk about what frequently happens in construction projects in general.  A project runs along with close management and monitoring from a complete project team - PM, supers, field engineers, etc... until "crunch time" when they find that some aspects of the schedule were either not well planned or have been impacted by events that have occurred during construction. 

 

Typically, subcontractors are arguing scope everyday and submitting work slips before agreeing to complete required activities.  These events could be the usual, such as weather delays, a crew not showing up for work for a week, or a change order being processed due to a part of the building not being able to put together according to the design documents.  Most often these issues can be fixed with manpower, so the GC  beefs up the team on site to cover extra shifts and weekends.  The subcontractors are convinced to increase crew size or work extended shifts and weekends and show up with bigger crews and work longer hours to try to finish on schedule.  

There is a good deal of the "Three S's of Construction Management" (Smoking, Shouting and Swearing) going around until the project is completed.   However in this environment where fees and general conditions are so low there may not be additional manpower to help the GC finish, and while the owner may give an extension of time, they are not likely to extend coverage of general conditions and now that small fee starts to get eaten up.    

 

Another problem with this last minute rush of crews, materials and equipment is maintaining project safety when there are multiple activities going on in the same location and everyone is under a tight deadline.  Adjusting the schedule by stacking the trades as the completion date nears looks easy on paper but can have disastrous consequences on site.  Planning and logistics typically do not account for this as part of their baseline schedule plan and things can get bad fast!

 

What can 5D BIM do for the GC here to help them win?  5D BIM is a highly visual and integrated method of planning, communicating the plan, and managing construction projects.  The constructability of the job can be greatly improved by having a full model built immediately after the bid is awarded, or for more progressive firms, they can build a model and produce a constructability analysis from the design documents prior to the bid so that they know where the problems in the project are before they name their bid price.  The model ensures better scope identification and coverage and reduces the common "work-slip" problem between the GC and the subs.  Then, a detailed review of quantities and schedule durations (based on crews and productivity) from the subs involved will allow the GC to hire subs that can get the job done on time and on bid.  In addition, should the GC be forced to supplement a sub, he will have control over the T&M billings as he knows precise quantities and locations for the work let out to the supplementing subcontractors.

 

Subsequently, using 5D production control the GC field crew can easily produce a weekly progress report that allows senior superintendents and managers of the GC to understand where the problems are occurring or will occur in the future based on the current production rates.  This allows them to take pro-active measures, as well as visually communicate to the subs the problems they are creating for all the other crews if they cannot keep up with the planned schedule for work in place.  

 

Finally, a well managed 5D project has a complete set of highly visual documents that can support their request for change orders and claims ensuring that the cash flow from the project continues and allows the small profit to be realized.

 

The savings inherent in an economy such as we are in today make it impossible for owners to ignore the hard-bid methodology for procuring construction services. However, the development of Virtual Construction and BIM capabilities provides a new and proven strategy to avoid many of the common pitfalls associated with hard bid construction practice.

 

To learn more about this subject, we've put together a special Fridays with Vico series about hard bid scenarios.  The first episode explores the role a 4D BIM schedule plays - join us on Friday, Sept. 11 @ 12 Noon ET.

 

The GSA has had over 100 BIM models on a single project according to ENR -- and the count may reach 220!  I have been in more than 100 meetings over the past 4 years where people at the conference room table just wanted there to be 1 model that did everything and wanted me to say so.  But true to my beliefs, there is a need for more than 1 model.  There is also a need for a Services team to assist the customer in achieving his or her Construction Management goals, particularly when firms are tooling up their BIM skills and/or when an Owner mandates a project must be done in BIM.

 

The snippet below is excerpted from Nadine Post's 4-29-09 ENR article, "Digging into 3D Modeling Unearths Many Worms."  The article illustrates that user experience is exactly as I have been portraying it for 5 years.  It's good to hear someone else say it!

_____________________

 

BIM veterans also agree that modeling changes the design and construction process. The idea is simple: eliminate redrawing the drawings by putting information in once and using it over and over again; catch conflicts before construction begins rather than in the field, when construction dollars are being spent; and use VDC for estimating, scheduling and fabrication. The execution is difficult. BIM veterans caution rookies to hang on tight and expect the unexpected.

The redesign of the design process needs to take into account the order of construction and model content. It's important to resist the urge to model until protocols are worked out and the program is set.

 

Sources have learned the hard way that there are no minor design changes, especially if models have already been coordinated. For example, if an engineer moves a beam it can affect other systems, and their models, down the food chain. Models then have to be reviewed, adjusted, checked and re-coordinated.

 

In the best of all worlds, the contractor and prime trade contractors should be in the room during design process redesign and at times, during design. Input on cost, constructibility and schedule can save model rework and field problems.

 

Design-construction collaboration is not as easy in a traditional design-bid-build environment as it is with integrated project delivery, design-build and construction management at-risk. For an IPD hospital project for Sutter Health, 30 leaders of the building team spent nearly six months redesigning the design process, moving sticky notes around on a wall (see p. 28).

 

BIM means more time is spent on design. This can be irksome to designers if they are not compensated. Many maintain they are doing the contractors' work, without reward. Designers also find that to produce 2D drawings from BIMs they must revamp traditional in-house workflows to align with 3D model conventions.

 

BIM rookies should get help, define a process and expect the unexpected.

At BIM's conception, many expected there would be one BIM per building. The lesson learned is most BIM-enabled projects have myriad models. Many times the design model cannot be used by the trade contractor directly, thanks to software incompatibility or set-up, or both. Most often designers won't give their models to the contractor for fear of liability if there is a computer glitch or a dimensional inaccuracy. Those that do share usually issue a disclaimer, "Use this at your own risk, for reference only." That means the contractor has to check every detail of a design BIM. Often, the trade contractor's detailer finds it easier to create a model from 2D drawings produced from the design model.

 

On the courthouse project, there are more than 19 design BIMs and more than 60 construction BIMs. On the hospital, so far there are 125 models. That number is expected to grow to 220.

So much for the idea of one model per project. So much for the idea of entering information once and using it over and over again. So much for reducing the likelihood of human error while remodeling.

 

Sources advise that if BIM is a mandate from above, be sure to nail down owner's expectations for each building team member-especially if they are not outlined in a contract. Speak up if the expectations seem unreasonable or unreachable. Owners can be naive about BIM's capabilities.

When you look today at all the publicity, news, and information about BIM and Virtual Construction it can be overwhelming.  Questions like, "What should I do first?" or "Is model-based scheduling really important?" are usually asked.  In order to make sense of all this perhaps you should go back to basics.  A Construction Manager or a General Contractor is in business to build and manage on behalf of the Owner.  The manage part is important here because what you are really managing is RISK!  Almost any company can put up an office building or even a more complex laboratory or medical building, but what is the difference between a good project, one that generates more business, and a bad project?  Most of the problems that escalate to hurt Owners have to do with the risk of managing change during the project, and although contracts and insurance spread the pain the Owner typically remembers one thing, "We got hit with an additional 3% of the total project cost in last minute Change Orders. Why did this happen again?"

 

BIM for Coordination is good for any Construction Management business and it helps to mitigate risk, but the real risk to Owners is meeting Cost and Schedule. So as you look at including BIM in your companies arsenal ask yourself why you are doing it?  Frequently the answer will be, "To win more business and improve project results."  If this is the case then Virtual Construction is not just Coordination but a Quantity and Location driven management approach to limiting risk by creating high quality engineering information to help make informed decisions and keep the project on the right course.

I'm sitting in my hotel room overlooking a beautiful gothic scene of snow falling on the castle district in Budapest where the reigning Queen of Hungary had her Hungarian residence but she also (I've recently learned) had so much more as a key member of the Austria Hungary Empire which united the Austrian Empire with the Kingdom of Hungary. You can read more of this history by looking up the Habsburg dynasty which was descended from the Holy Roman Empire. Wow, that's kind of an impressive family!

 

I've just been to meetings and seminars in Finland, Sweden, Hungary and tomorrow I am meeting a Construction Management firm from the Middle East. What is truly fascinating is how important Virtual Construction has become to so many companies.  At a meeting in Gothemborg, Sweden there were over 40 members of middle management of Skanska who participated in a 2 hour discussion of Flowline Scheduling, Model based Estimating and BIM usage in general. In Finland there are departments which are responsible for moving the BIM use from the planning office to the construction trailer. They are also quite interested in what companies in North America are doing so we are beginning to investigate a way to have a "global forum" on Virtual Construction. Obviously this is something that could initially be done over the web and could grow into local chapters and meetings, it is my feeling that this could help spur partnership, cooperation and of course innovation. After all, these are all countries with very talented engineers who have produced many of the innovations that our industry already has. 

 

Virtual Construction is a rising tide that promises to float all boats, everyone stands to benefit, from the owner and designer down to every last subcontractor when buildings can be truly planned in great detail and less time spent fixing problems in the field. By the way, for those who read my last post this is another important element of the "Toyota Way" and is known as KAI ZEN "kai" which means "change" or "the action to correct" and "zen" which means good. More information can easily be found on these topics by performing a search on "The Toyota Way."  The Toyota Way is at the core of many things at Vico, we have a continuous learning culture and our Services Project Teams all work to Six Sigma documented processes and we have put a system in place that is internet based called Nexus that allows us to measure our productivity when modeling, estimating, coordination or scheduling and also requires others to review and approve the work. This injects quality measurement into our process and of course both Vico and our customers benefit from this. For our sales team we have created an online training system with a consultant that reinforces our process, our strengths, and how customers can benefit from working with Vico. We also continually coach them (on a bi-weekly basis) so that their learning will continue and the process of continuing to improve will not get stop. 

 

Well, I've got to go now, have a dinner at the Four Seasons tonight, as you can see life is tough here out on the road!

 

:)

Don H

What do great companies do during a downturn?  They turn to productivity and process, invest some time to figure out how to do things better so that when they get real busy again their process and their profits are better! 

 

There is a great Wiki site called "The Toyota Way" which does a nice job of giving credit to Toyota and to Jeffrey Liker, the Michigan professor and author of the book with the same name. If you have a few minutes today, read the 14 guiding principles to this powerful management philosophy and maybe the next time someone says, our Estimating database is no good," or, "It is impossible to keep the field schedule up to date with all the changes we have," you can ask them to share a little more information with you.  Then, after careful listening you can look for the root cause of these issues to see if there is something that can be done about them.

 

I can tell you that I was lucky enough to be a key technology partner of Toyota when they were first developing the Lexus car line. The company I worked for made software for designing the stamping dies for the body panels and every time we thought we had it right and it worked better than anything the Toyota team had used before they would come back to us and say. "Very good, very good, we really like what you have done but we will need a few small adjustments."

 

The literal translation was, "Good try, but you are not done yet."  And what I learned over the 4 years that I worked with Toyota was that no matter how good a partner you were, and no matter how perfect you thought you were they were always very politely asking you to do just a little bit more and be a little bit better.  Back then it was pretty frustrating as I kept pressing my team to "finish the project" but now looking back I realize that the project would never finish even though it made huge productivity strides for them and helped them automate a very critical process substituting advanced surface mathematics and equations for plastic deformation for craftsman type calibration. IT WOULD NEVER BE DONE!

 

Maybe that's one thing you can take away from reading the summary of the guiding principles of the Toyota Way is that if you wish to drive your department and your company to improve, you are never finished.  If your firm is looking for ways to "always be improving," might we suggest taking a look at the Fridays with Vico archived webinars, along with the BIM Master Class Series (BIM 101, 201, 301, 401, and 501).  You will find a wealth of information, jumping off points for great team discussions, and a convenient way to learn more about BIM and virtual construction.

 

We will turn the corner soon.  Make sure your team is ready to go with BIM and all the process improvements that it brings to the table.