KNOW WHERE I CAN GET AN ITALIAN MARKER BOARD?

Yeah we had a great marker board we used on our last project….I think we used it in Building C in the 5^th floor classrooms…..and it still might be in Italian……..and it’s floor based……..but you can tweak it!  Ever try to reuse information from a prior project?   BIM has gone beyond the CD set and we are now working with a rich set of data for a multitude of uses from fabrication to facilities management and more.  Not only is it important to pass along good clean usable data to the other teams, but to pass it on back to your teams.  How are you keeping all the good stuff from your most recent project while making sure that those “what the…” moments don’t rear their ugly head again.

All too often our nemesis in completely a quality post-mortem on a project is time.  We never have enough of it and we are off to the next project.  But without doing so, how do you know if you were successful?  How do others in your firm know where all that good stuff is.  Certainly another team can use those placeholder doors that have all the clearances marked out.  Couldn’t someone else use all those Sherwin-Williams paint colors that you set up?  How about the new process you developed for bringing in a data set of room requirements from clients?

By creating a feedback loop,  new objects, materials, presentation styles, processes, ideas, and more can be reused in future projects.  Taking a few hours now will certainly save you and others from reinventing the wheel later on.  The time spent will be well worth it, even if it may even have to be considered (gasp) nonbillable!   You can share this new good stuff with others by establishing a system of review and updates.  These may include updates and additions to files, directories, templates, and documentation.  Not only will it make you more efficient in the long run, it just may save you from having to look up “length” in Italian.