When your organization has decided to start Virtual Design and Construction (VDC) or a BIM Team, you will be confronted - or you have already experienced - the need to plan VDC content to achieve the best model-based estimating and scheduling results.
In my previous post, I wrote about Vico's Content Plan concept. With the Content Plan, you define all elements and their requirements for modeling, estimating and scheduling, before creating the building model.
Defining a Content Plan is a team effort, and by thinking about the information that should be included in the VDC model with the project team, the first benefit of creating integrated project information is already obtained: all team members involved have to define which information they need in order to make the decisions that they need to make in the current project phase. By doing this before everyone starts working on this information, a shared ‘To Do' list for the team is defined and requirements are communicated!
The information, demanded by team members, can vary from "visual study of the façade" to "the net volume of concrete on the 3rd floor;" each requirement results in a level of detail for a part of the project, for example per "Uniformat" category.
The proactive approach of information management with a Content Plan helps the project team to really focus on those parts of the project that matter most for the current phase of the project. Those parts of the project that require detailed decisions or value engineering, for example "the concrete structure in the lower floors of the building," should be included in the model with a higher level of detail then, say, "floor finishes," because detailed decisions don't have to be made for those, yet.
By capturing the requirements per project phase using a Content Plan, the team can get a better understanding what information is needed (the concrete structure design needs to be finished) and which information has lower priority (basing the cost of floor finishes on an average cost per square foot is acceptable).
Formalizing the content per phase also allows for defining the actions, required from each team member - more about that in my next post.
The Fridays with Vico archived webinar on the Content Plan and Model Progression Specification contains more information.