Posts Tagged GSA

Freezing the Federal Footprint #gsa #bim

redtapeThe Subcommittee on Economic Development, Public Buildings and Emergency Management meets this morning to discuss ‘Freezing the Federal Footprint’.  This comes from an Office of Management and Budget memorandum that stated “ all Chief Financial Officers (CFO) Act Executive Branch departments and agencies (agencies) shall not increase the total  square footage of their domestic office and warehouse inventory compared to the FY 2012 baseline.”  

The memorandum also states that “Each agency should work collaboratively with other agencies and GSA to find opportunities for smarter space usage through co-locations and consolidations.”  Ha ha ha, woooha, maybe it doesn’t mean anything, and I can’t say how much power a memorandum has vs. an office action, vs. an order but certainly can effect those depending on the largess of the GSA for a living.  One wonders if the GSA ever moved forward with the GSA BIM IDIQ, that could have given them a solid assessment of properties they have etc. BTW did anyone ever make a dime off that?  I found out the hard way that getting the award and having it funded are tow different things, so I guess it looks good in a frame.

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Business of BIM v. Practice of BIM

I follow a discussion on LinkedIn within the BIM Experts Group titled the Politics of BIM that has provided amusement, as much as following a discussion on BIM could possibly provide, as well as being highly informative.  Two of the combatants (sic. collaborators) could not reconcile their 2 positions.  One was a BIM/CAD manager that coordinated very large projects, the other was a service provider for the industry.  The point of the conflict?  Revit.  The BIM Manager did not see Revit as a robust enough program to deal with huge projects and the needed coordination between programs, etc.  The service provider highlighted Revit’s abilities and Autodesk’s suite of products.  What I saw was the difference between the Business of BIM and the Practice of BIM.

What I find most exciting and frustrating about the industry currently is it is wide open. The business of BIM is looking at high level needs and creating deliverables, whereas the practice of BIM is trying to coordinate large models, 4D, 5D applications etc. and getting all the disciplines to be integrated. The business and practice silos do not seem to always be to integrated and or coordinated and I can see where this causes frustration.

The BIM field is still so wide open so it is open to define in the terms of deliverables and process. For example, a Texas firm asked us for a BIM model; their only interest, as best I could decipher, was to deliver one to fulfill the Texas mandate and wanted to know little about it except for the tail light guarantee they were going to leave with their customer.  I also have been asked for a Revit model by clients who have never used Revit and negotiated the contract without fully understanding what they wanted.  General Contractors as the McGraw Hill SmartMarket Reports allude to and as is evidenced in the field have seemed to embrace it more quickly and understand it better and from my conversations have seen it quickly pay for itself many times over with just collision detection.

The GSA BIM Program may be the most highly documented and while government mandates can create jobs, not sure how well they can define the process and if the industry would want them to.  Meanwhile we have BIM mandates while the deliverable is still being defined.  In the ideal world the industry would use a centralized BIM that gets updated during design by all the disciplines so that the owner gets a true ‘as-built’ BIM at the end of the process, however, we are still a long way from there with the majority of projects, couple with the face the majority of construction is done within the built environment.  What will happen is that companies will use the parts of BIM that immediately provide value whether it is energy analysis, collision detection, scheduling or just visually communicating with the client.  Those will start to grow and cross pollinate each other until we have are fully realized 3D object oriented BIM universe.  Use the tools you understand, the ones that make sense for your company, improve your workflow keep an open mind and don’t let the good be the enemy of the perfect.

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Government Green : Sustainable Retrofits Redux : #BIM #AIA #LEED

So post yesterday was how I and I am sure everyone is starting get bombarded with this message so today in my inbox from USGBC I get these stats.

  • Much of the $787 billion in federal stimulus money supports green retrofits of publicly owned buildings at the local, state and federal levels.
  • The federal government alone owns and operates some 500,000 buildings.
  • The federal government has a 28 percent greenhouse gas reduction target for federal operations by 2020.
  • 30 percent of all LEED projects are government-owned

And they are holding the USGBC 2010 Federal Summit, May 18-19 2010 in DC

Ronald Reagan Building & International Trade Center -   Washington, DC

Next thing I will look into are the top 10 items in sustainable retrofits.  As always input welcome.

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Compiled List of GSA BIM and Laser Scanning Award Winners and Partners: #BIM #GSA

Here is a compiled list of the winners and partners/sub-consultants of the GSA BIM and Laser Scanning IDIQ  found by digging through press releases and the web.    It is by no means exhaustive as not everyone releases the names of their partners and/or sub-consultants but will augment the list if/when I find anything more.  I wanted to get a bigger picture of those participating and those who will be helping mold the Federal BIM and Laser Scanning Programs. Feel free to post if you got more info.

BIM IDIQ Winners

  1. Beck Technology, Dallas, TX 75201

    1. Raymond Goodson
    2. CADForce
    3. Langan Engineering
    4. Onuma
    5. Digital Alchemy
    6. Solibri
    7. Purdy McGuire
    8. Simpson Gumpertz and Heger
    9. Apex Cost Consultants
    10. Bohannon Huston
  2. Applied Software Technology, Atlanta, GA 30329

    1. DC Strategies
    2. Draper and Associates
    3. EDI Ltd
    4. Georgia Tech Building Lab
    5. Integrated Environmental Solutions, IES
    6. Lord, Aeck, and Sargent
    7. Neenan
    8. Optira
    9. Pruit Eberly Stone
    10. QientiQ North America
    11. Retrieve Technologies
    12. Smith Seckman Reid
    13. US Cost
  3. DPR Construction, Inc., Falls Church, VA 22042

  4. Ghafari Associates, LLC, Dearborn, MI 48126

  5. Hallam Associates, Inc., South Burlington, VT 05403

  6. KlingStubbins, Inc., Philadelphia, PA 19103

    1. Tocci
    2. Autodesk
    3. Bentley
    4. EMCOR Group
    5. Faithful & Gould
    6. JC Cannistraro
    7. Metco Services
    8. Raymond L. Goodson
    9. Simpson Gumpertz and Heger
    10. WSP Group
  7. HNTB Corporation, Kansas City, MO 64105

    1. Dimensional Innovations
    2. InterioReview
    3. Hinman
    4. M.E. Group Inc.
    5. MidWestern Consulting
    6. RCMS Group
    7. Regal Decisions Systems, Inc.
    8. Sanborn
    9. US Cost
  8. ONUMA, Inc., Passadena, CA 91106

  9. View by View, Inc., San Francisco, CA 94109

  10. Kristine Fallon Associates, Inc., Chicago, IL 60603

    1. Primera Engineers
    2. Coast to Coast
    3. Faithful & Gould
    4. Solibri

Laser Scanning IDIQ Winners

  1. Stantec Consulting Services, Mount Laurel, NJ 08054

  2. Quantapoint, Inc., Pittsburgh, PA 15236

    1. Martinez and Johnson Architects
    2. EMO Energy Solutions
    3. Rolf Jensen and Associates
    4. Protection Engineering Group
    5. AMT Engineering
    6. Hinman
    7. Arnold Animations
    8. Certainty 3D
  3. Pharos Consulting, LLC, Orlando, FL 32835

  4. Coign Asset Metrics & Technologies, LLC, New Brighton, PA 15066

  5. Beck Technology, LTD, Dallas, TX 75201

    1. Langan Engineering
    2. Bohannon Huston
    3. CADForce
  6. Architectural Resource Consultants, Irvine, CA 92614

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#GSA ’s Mentor-Protégé Program Is Here!

Now if that headline didn’t grab ya you must be, well you could be narcoleptic from trying decipher everything the government kicks out because there are companies out there that all they do is decipher FedBizOpps and help you get on schedule, etc. and good luck trying to decipher it for yourself.  Maybe this program is a step in the right direction, maybe it actually gets business to small business and then again, maybe its another floor to the tower of babel, so in this case I’m not making the news I’m just reporting it.

GSA’s Mentor-Protégé Program Is Here!

GSA Small Business Utilization :

www.gsa.gov/sbu

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GSA Awards BIM IDIQ: #BIM #GSA

The GSA announced the awards for the BIM IDIQ.  I am still trying to unearth the complete announcement but one of them is HNTB Federal along with its team of subcontractors which were awarded all the zones.  As I find out more information I will update the post and announcements.  Still don’t know how many firms were awarded which zones, etc.

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GSA BIM & Laser Scanning : Firms Short Listed

The GSA continues to move forward with the BIM Services and Laser Scanning.  Participating firms have been notified if they have been short listed, however, this has not been made public yet.  I’ll post when I find out, if anyone else knows, please follow up.  This move, with Wisconsin on board, energy analysis becoming required with construction, points well for those involved.

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