This post is our first submission from BIM McAuditor who shares a particularly ghastly example of another multi-national design consultancy trying to weasel out of their contractual obligations on a project because “too hard” presumably.
Everyone with kids knows the situation, you want your kid to go to bed and they will use everything in their arsenal to get out of it so that they can continue destroying the world with Batman Duplo. “My bed is too cold”, “I don’t like my bed”, ” It isn’t 7:30, it’s 17 o’clock”, to be fair that last one is more a reflection on my inability to teach them how to tell the time but still you get the point.
So here we are halfway through designing a massive extension to a hospital and the client is wondering how the consultants are doing with the preparation of the BIM models, in particular, they are keen to understand if the models are ready for use in 5D analysis?
Now I am assuming that if you are on this website you have a base understanding of all things BIM and as such would probably understand that 5D means using the BIM models to do Quantity take-offs and cost estimating. You would also expect a leading multi-national design consultancy to understand this too (it even states this on their own website).
But apparently no, their response to this request on an update “we raised that 5D is not stipulated in the consultancy agreement, therefore, we would like clarification about the additional scope of works”.
What it states in their contract states “To improve speed and accuracy on quantity take-off (QTO) and cost estimating through the use of the digital 3D BIMs.”
At which point I think the only rational thing to do is to treat them like children and tell them you’ll take their TV privileges away, or in the consultants’ case payments for deliverables. But of course, this will unlikely happen because people seem happier arguing about it for long enough that nothing really happens until tender at which point the QS has to rush through their work the traditional way and the whole thing becomes an anecdote about how shit such and such is rather than deliver what you promised you would.
