Transcript: Understanding the Building Information Modeling Paradigm Shift

The owner is going to set that tone to say, here's how we want this to work, and here are the things that we're not going to accept in the process. Well, we could never do that here, because we need to change that mentality to be, OK, let's look at what they're doing and figure out how we can apply pieces or the best parts of what they're doing somewhere else to what we do here. It is going to take some appetite for risk. Additionally, risk has been managed by separating or compartmentalizing.

I think that's where design bid build came from. We're going to competitively bid that design information into construction and make sure that we're getting a fair price for construction, taking that risk to say, hey, we're going to go through this a different way. We're going to be much more open. There's so much information available today. I mean, the world has changed a lot, where there is so many metrics that they can use.

We know what an actual fair price to build an asset. We've seen this happen over the years now, negotiated fees and negotiated contract values. So there is some precedent and some room for that. But to sit down as a team and say, here's how we're going to separate the responsibility, and here's how we're going to be willing to pay for those responsibilities, we can get there. Hello, and welcome to the Constructor Podcast, the best way to build it, episode number 73.

I'm your host, Brittany Campbell Turner. And this podcast is dedicated to helping property owners have certainty in their decisions about their construction projects. We talk about fostering trusting relationships, help you to understand how to lower risk, be under budget and on schedule, and most importantly, exceed your end user's desires. Last week, we spoke with Brian Platts, the co-CEO at FlurryDB. FlurryDB is a scalable blockchain database that combines enterprise capability with blockchain proof and security.

We spoke about how when working with the Flurry blockchain database, it makes it easier to define your own blockchain. The type of data it will store, its information, its transactions, and its products. Think about any information that stored on the database now that you use, you can store it on the Flurry blockchain database, even your BIM model. So we discussed how that can help streamline litigations, thus reducing the timeline for the discovery period, so you can more clearly understand what happened and when. So if you haven't listened to that episode yet, check it out at constructor.com slash ep71.

In today's episode, we are interviewing Michael DeLacy, principal and co-founder at Microdesk. He assists companies in overcoming the challenges of implementing and utilizing technology for design, construction, and facilities management. As of the end of March, Microdesk was recently named an Autodesk Platinum Club Award winner for leading the Americas in the sales of Autodesk Cloud Software at the Autodesk One Team Conference in Las Vegas, Nevada. And earlier this month, Mike and I were panel moderators at the Built-Rilt Summit here in Chicago. Mike is contributing to the cause for change in the industry to ensure we're using technology, specifically BIM and VDC innovation, and integrating with other technologies to promote collaborative approaches in the AECO industry.

With that, let's get into the interview. So we are interviewing Mike DeLacy, principal and co-founder at Microdesk today. He assists architecture, engineering, construction, and owner companies in overcoming the challenges of implementing and utilizing design, construction, and facilities management technology. So Mike, welcome to the Constructor Podcast. Thank you.

It's great to be here. Great to have you. I wanted to ask you a question about you. Were you always interested in the sort of AEC industry? Because your background's in computer science, right?

Yeah, I do. I have a background and studied computer science in school. I always was a bit interested. Roommate at school was in the architectural program. I got an opportunity to watch him working in the dorm room doing things like perspectives by pinning strings to the wall to look at sight lines.

And I think anybody who studied architecture 20 years ago is probably familiar with the process. And being a computer science guy, I thought to myself, there has to be an easier way to do this, using a computer to figure these things out. Luckily enough, right out of school, I ended up working at a civil engineering firm. And I got introduced to AutoCAD. And having the background in software development and programming, was able really early on to create a little bit of automation inside of AutoCAD to speed things up.

I think my career kind of took off from there, working to apply technology to design, construction, operations, and maintenance to add efficiency into the process. I think that there is a lot more of that collision happening, obviously, in this day and age. But I can imagine just sort of at that time, seeing the potential and wanting to sort of take hold of that. And you had the opportunity to. I guess that was 1986 when I started.

So 30 years ago, it's been just a continuous evolvement that has been really rewarding for me. We will discuss here about process improvement and reducing uncertainty, especially for owners. I wanted to just kind of hone in on what you focus on at MicroDesk, building information modeling, virtual design and construction, and asset management tools. But just a baseline, is BIM the same thing as VDC? Perd it used interchangeably.

Is that your same perspective, or is it different? I think that when many people use it interchangeably, they're probably correct in some ways. The way that we kind of view it is that building information modeling is the process of developing and analyzing the model. The goal is that at some point, we have a virtual asset that represents real world asset that we're constructing. In my mind, that is building information modeling.

VDC, in our minds, and again, I think a lot of this is subjective, and there's probably a lot of debate going on about it. But in our mind, VDC is the process of once we take that model and we actually go into constructability, when we start peeling that model apart for fabrication, when we start using that data out in the field to inform and add efficiency into the construction process, is what we consider to be virtual design and construction. So I think it's nuanced, but I think we can separate the two as being separate things.

One is, how do we get the model to actually represent real world conditions? And then the second one is, how do we use that model to aid and increase efficiencies in the construction process? Another more controversial question, in my opinion. Do you think that the industry is really adopting BIM? How well are we doing so?

The world is adopting BIM. There is absolutely no question. I think that we're still in transition, right? This is massive, massive change. And I do think of the transition from board drafting into CAD.

I think you look at that transition as you are moving what we did manually into a computer-aided, assisted environment, provided some benefits. But I don't think it was a paradigm shift. I think we were still designing in 2D. We were still creating overlays. In hand drafting, it was Mylar on top of Mylar.

In the computer, it was one layer over another layer or an external reference. It was very synonymous. And now as we move from CAD into building information modeling, we're making a major paradigm shift, and it's going to take some time. I would suggest that the vast majority of both design firms and contractors are taking advantage of building information modeling at some level. Some are doing better than others.

Some are pushing it further than others. I think in the developer community, the owners, they are interested. They are pursuing it. They are still trying to figure out what it means to them and how to ensure getting the best possible outcome from enforcing a BIM process. But there's no doubt in my mind that it is the direction of the future.

The owners will start to understand how they need to reorganize their development staff, their instruction management, their instruction inspection to ensure that they are directing a BIM process that is in their best interest. I think that as design build becomes more popular out there in the industry, we're going to see that there's many more opportunities to take advantage of the BIM process and the way the data moves between design and construction. If you were to ask me for percentages, I'd say that we're probably halfway there, meaning that we're halfway to the point where BIM is delivering on its promise to drive the efficiencies that we want.

Oh, great. Now, you mentioned design build, and I wanted to dig into the contract types and delivery method. And one thing that we talk about quite often on this podcast is lean construction and naturally the integrated forms of agreements associated with that delivery method. But of course, design build is also a very lean way of working. And I'm curious about all the nuances that you're seeing as it relates to BIM and the setup of, say, a BIM execution plan when you're starting a project and any of these different contract types.

You already mentioned design build. How would you say that's different from the traditional method, design build build? From a design build perspective, the owner or CM or owner's rep takes a lot of the responsibility, and they go out and they hire a design team that is tasked with generating construction documentation, typically with very little input or no input from the construction team or the subcontractor team around constructability. And you mentioned the BIM execution plan or the BEP. That BEP is going to be developed typically as primed by an architect.

The architect will have a template, and they'll get input from the collaborating engineers and such. It's all really geared to what is the contractual requirement of the design team, and that is to deliver construction documents and potentially a quote unquote conflict-free building information model that will be then distributed to a series of contractors for bidding. The contractors, in many cases, don't get the building information model during the bidding phase. They only get the drawings. They review the drawings.

They put their bid in, and the awarded contractor will receive the model as a courtesy, and they'll start picking apart the model to figure out what they want to do with it. Hopefully, the contractor will put together their own BEP with their subcontractors to go about executing the shop drawing process and figure out how their actual equipment is going to go into the building and redevelop the model around that specific equipment and then go about the construction process. So the BEP is still very important in design, bid, build environment.

It's important that the design team have a well-detailed BEP, identifying who's responsible for what, what versions they're going to use, when things are going to be delivered, what level of detail they're developing to, and even more specifically, what does that actually mean when we talk about level of detail around specific components or specific areas of the building. Same thing on the construction side, having a well-detailed BIM execution plan to guide the subcontractors on what their responsibilities are. But I think when we go into design build, we're in a potentially very different world where we have the contractor, maybe some of the primary subcontractors on the team very early, which means that we can start incorporating much more detailed or constructability information into the model much earlier in the process.

So a BEP in a design build environment is actually a single document that's encompassing all participants in the project, meaning the entire design team, potentially the entire construction team, or at least the major subcontractors that are putting equipment into the building. And I think it should compact the schedule and potentially save a tremendous amount of rework, certainly significantly shorten the shop drawing process. Everybody's on early. Hopefully, everybody's working in the model early. I think it improves subcontractor education in the BIM process and understanding why it is we're going through this modeling process and this conflict detection or coordination process.

And I think it's even going to facilitate better installation by having those people participate in the process much earlier on. Subcontractors are going to understand that there's a reason that they're installing things in the places they're installing them. And it starts to alleviate that first-in-winds mentality around going in and installing equipment in a building. What would you say, based on your expertise, how do you ultimately maximize the value of BIM? You talked a little bit earlier about owners meandering through the path of understanding the value and how they're going to use it.

My curiosity is, how do you set it up right? How do you ensure the best value is going to really shine through? That's a big question. So one of the theories that MicroDisk as an organization has been working for some time now is the idea of beginning with the end in mind. And the question of, how do we set up BIM right?

That's almost a misnomer in that, what are our goals around applying BIM to any given project? And there's widely varying ideas of what that is, based on whether it's the owner's first BIM project, the design team's first BIM project, or their 15th BIM project. I think it is about sitting down as a group. It also varies based on whether it's design, bid, build, or design, build. There's so many things that can change what the success metrics around applying BIM to a project are.

In my opinion, if we were to talk about the be-all, end-all, the perfect project, we have an educated owner who understands what the BIM process is in both design and construction. The owner understands how they want to use the building information modeling data beyond construction. They have set clear expectations as to what they want to gain from this process. That that information is then communicated to the design and construction team in a design, build type of environment. So everybody is on the same page right in the beginning.

And that collaboratively, whether working with a consulting firm like MicroDisk or not, the team itself identifies what the standards are, what the BEP looks like, what the design team is going to be responsible for, what the construction team is going to be responsible for, that there's open communication around fees, that the design team isn't being pressed to put fabrication information into the model, that they are not being paid for, that they contracted for or should not be responsible for, that the contractor isn't the same like being pressed to complete design work that the engineer should have done, dimensioning drawings that came in from the design team, not dimensioned.

The contractor should get a dimensioned set of information or it should be agreed that we're not going to dimension certain things, and those dimensions are going to be pulled directly from the model. All of those things are things that need to be discussed. But in the perfect world, if we could sit down as a project team on a large project, go through, answer all of those questions, identify what the specific goals at each of the milestones are, have somebody that's monitoring and measuring the success of the deliverables in each of those phases, and then in the perfect world, to move all of that information.

And we're talking about design information, construction information, commissioning information, how is the building actually performing at turnover, all of that information into a maintenance management system on day one, this idea of day one operational readiness. So as the owner takes receipt of the building, they have a working, preventive maintenance and operations and maintenance system that allows them to more efficiently, if not very efficiently, operate that building. That's definitely my thought process about it as well. And I think that there is resistance maybe to adopting that.

I'm curious as to your thoughts about what it will take to educate the owner to get to that level, right? I'm always thinking about what are the steps that we need to take in consulting roles like yourself or mine in order to create the right space for that to happen. I can throw out some ideas. And this isn't something that I have been shy about communicating in the past. I think that there's a couple of areas of responsibility.

One of them heavily falls on the owner side. And certainly, the institutional owner is a big area. It is going to take some appetite for risk. Traditionally, risk has been managed by separating or compartmentalizing. I think that's where design bid build came from, is that they can compartmentalize and they can say, OK, we're willing to pay only this amount for design.

And then we're going to competitively bid that design information into construction and make sure that we're getting a fair price for construction. I think that there's so much information available today. The world has changed a lot, where I think at the institutional owner level, there is so many metrics that they can use to say, OK, we know at an actual fair price to build an asset. I say asset because it could be a bridge, a tunnel, a building. We can identify what that is by using the information that's available today.

I think taking that as a baseline, going and forming a design build team, and taking that risk to say, hey, we're going to go through this a different way. We're going to be much more open. We've seen this happen over the years now, negotiated fees and negotiated contract values. So there is some precedent and some room for that. But to sit down as a team and say, here's how we're going to separate the responsibility and here's how we're going to be willing to pay for those responsibilities, we can get there.

You're going to have to have an enlightened design team, forward-thinking design team. You're going to have an enlightened and forward-thinking construction team. But I think the owner is going to set that tone to say, here's how we want this to work. And here are the things that we're not going to accept in the process. I'm going to put my sales hat on a little bit.

But I think by having an independent third party consulting group that is not interested in the design fees, we're not interested in the construction fees, we really are only interested in measuring the performance of the project essentially as the owner's rep to ensure that things are coming together. And if there are sticking points, we're kind of the referee to say, hey, here's what's causing problems within the process. And going to the owner and saying, hey, from a technology perspective and from a process perspective, here's what we recommend we do to solve these hiccups or these hurdles.

I'm also thinking about resistance from the design side. And I'm curious as to what you've been seeing. There are a lot of architects, I would say more smaller size companies, that are saying that they're not ready to transition to BIM. And at least some of the owners that I'm directly speaking with, they recognize that the architecture firms, they're not ready, they're not adapting, or they engineers themselves. And it's also funny that global architecture firms that I'm encountering have similar challenges in certain groups within the organizations or at certain locations.

Do you think that the owners are going to be the ones to push this? Over the long haul, absolutely, yes. It's going to be the owners. I think that it's not a Chevy versus Ford issue. It's not a preference.

It's a case of building information modeling, virtual design and construction, is plain and simply a better way to go about the process. It's not like, oh, I would just rather use this tool versus this tool. It's an entire process, it's an entire way of approaching design and construction, and it's a better way. So it is going to go that way. When you talk about firms that are slow to adopt or have said that, look, we just don't want to adopt, I think that's OK.

I don't think that every project that happens from this point forward is going to be building information modeling. There are going to be owners that are OK with and are willing to accept the traditional process, people working within those owners' firms, the design firms, the construction firms that are just comfortable, they're happy. And as long as they're willing to accept a less than the maximum efficiency, a less than the best OK, but I think that some people wanted to continue riding horses rather than buy an automobile.

They really enjoyed having a horse and riding a horse. And I don't think that anybody should go in and say, OK, all the horses are gone, everybody has to drive a car. But I think that we're going to continue to see, and we've seen it happen on a global basis, the bigger projects, the more complicated projects, they are going to go this way, and that's going to continue to come down into the smaller markets. I think you can draw synonymous ways of moving when we go back to board drafting versus CAD.

There were plenty of firms that stayed on the board for a long time and then ultimately decided to move to CAD. I don't know that there's many board drafting design firms out there today, but I think it's OK if firms want to stay as long as they can find good work and develop good companies that are continuing to do the traditional 2D design process. Yeah, fair argument. Well, I do want to give you the opportunity to share some of the examples of maybe some specific clients that you've worked with and how you've been able to carry out BIM or VDC and some asset management as well, and maybe some of the challenges that you faced and how you hurtled them.

Sure, I can give you a couple. One of the ones that we've been talking about lately is Columbia University's Manhattanville. This goes back to the conversation we had about, how do we get to this point where we have executed the best process and have a perfect BIM project? The Columbia Manhattanville on phase 1, phase 1A, was definitely not the perfect BIM project. It was an environment where we had an owner that was very forward thinking that really wants to ensure that they are certainly at least attempting to use the latest technology in the most productive ways, the most positive ways to drive a better design and construction process.

On those projects, we had strong design teams, strong construction team. And ultimately, we ended up with the first two buildings, first three buildings at Manhattanville, being developed as very high quality, as-built building information models that were then moved relatively seamlessly from construction on handover into the operations and maintenance group. And all of that data from the model was relatively instantly moved into their Maximo V-Rized or enterprise asset management system. I think that's a really good example of what we talked about around having an owner that is forward thinking and willing to take, I don't want to say take the responsibility, but they were certainly willing to put the effort in.

And there is effort, right? There were meetings that probably would not have happened if they weren't going BIM, if they were going a more traditional 2D design and construction method. They were willing to embrace those meetings. They were willing to attend those meetings and to really foster the communication and drive the process forward. That was fantastic.

And I think that as they continue to build out that campus, they're going to see a lot more value, right? The first couple of buildings went pretty well. The next building is going to go better. And they're just going to see continued improvement as they go about that. And time flies by in a hurry.

By the time they get to the 17th, 18th, 19th building, I think they're going to be leading the way and setting the trend for how to execute that process. There's a host of others. Denver International Airport has done a great job working with very forward thinking construction around how they've gone and built out the airport. Again, a forward thinking owner that's really looking at, how do they start consuming that building information, modeling information post-construction in their operations and maintenance practice? What were the delivery models for both Columbia, Manhattanville, and the Denver Airport?

The Manhattanville was designed bid-billed. And to be honest with you, at Denver International, I'm not sure whether it was designed bid-billed or designed billed. It was just an owner that was willing to invest in. And interestingly enough, another way that we can differentiate the two is that Denver International Airport, they went out and they hired their own BIM experts to be part of the DIA team. And at Columbia, Manhattanville, they outsourced that expertise and had a third party owner's rep program manager that brought in the BIM expertise.

So they used two different methods of how to have the expertise on staff to allow them to execute the process. But again, the organizations, another interesting differentiation is that one is public and one is private, but forward thinking, and they found ways to say, hey, we recognize the importance of this and we're willing to invest, if not the money, in certainly the time and effort to fight through the challenges associated and get better with the next project. Well, they saw the value in the upfront investment and then also taking the time out.

There are a number of upfront calls that have to be considered when you're transitioning, especially over to BIM. Number one, there's the software. You have to understand how many people are actually gonna be using it within your organization. Make sure that once the model is transferred over, that someone can actually manipulate and use it properly, right? I'm always curious as to what your experience has been when laying out sort of the fees associated with implementing BIM and what their responses are.

Not at all, I'd love to. So comment that you use, there's certainly some upfront cost. Absolutely true, there's no way to sugarcoat that. But I think that what we try and talk about is the fact that you're shifting some of the costs, right? You're front loading some of the costs.

And whether we're working with a GC or a construction manager or an owner, and that's typically where we look at costs. There could be potentially increased costs on the design side. Can talk about that a little bit if we want to, but the most significant costs are typically in the construction phase. And we try and focus on whenever we can, we try and use historical data with the actual organization that we're talking to. One major problem in the field typically is four times the cost of implementing BIM on the project.

What I mean by that is one area where we didn't catch the fact that the valves that were specified in the engineering design, and then were switched out through the shop drawing process, we didn't catch the fact that they don't fit in the wall. So now we fit out the building with valves, we go in to put the sheetrock up, nothing fits. That's a multi-million dollar mistake. If we could have avoided that in the BIM process, we've just covered all of the costs of building information modeling on the project.

Everyone has a horror story. You can look at vertical transportation as the building goes up, things shift, all of a sudden it doesn't fit. How could we have alleviated that? That's how we kind of approached that talk is, look, we're gonna ask you to invest, depending on the scale of the project, let's say a million square feet, we're gonna ask you to invest a half a million dollars in the BIM process through the course of the project, but one change order could be easily four times that.

It's about shifting risk and putting certainty into your investment. I think risk mitigation, everybody's heard the sales pitches for BIM. That's one of their key topics that they talk about risk mitigation, but it is very real. If you sit down and you have real conversations with an owner or a CM, if they've been through even a moderately successful BIM process before, they're not going to go backwards. Totally.

I do wanna get your thoughts. This is a topic that I've been talking about briefly, particularly around BIM, but there is the PAS 1192-2 governance document that lays out how BIM should be executed in the UK. I wanted to understand what your perspective was on that. In my opinion, it's sort of a summary tool that covers a lot of what we discussed already here, looking at things from early on and then doing that sort of soft landing. What's your experience been with that?

It's a lot of documentation. PAS 1192 is very comprehensive. I think it's a great effort. It's interesting that you asked, we do have an office in London and the bulk of my experience has come from working on projects in the UK and through that office, you don't really hear about it that much in the US. I think that might be somewhat unfortunate because I do not expect the US at the federal level to adopt PAS 1192 or to adopt any national standard just based on the makeup of the US, how we operate.

But I think it's a great informative document. I think there's a lot of legwork that went into it. Right now, my impression is that it heavily focuses on infrastructure, that it's a great start, but there's still a lot more work to do. It also is heavily focused on design and I think that there's more work to build it out for construction and then for actual as-built deliverables and how the owner-operators will take advantage of the information. I think any effort that goes into trying to document both the technical aspects of BIM, but also the process and workflow of BIM is a good one.

And I think it ultimately turns into more of a rigid mandate of how they expect design and construction to work together to kind of get out of this idea of, we're gonna have construction documentation that then goes to the contractor for bidding and then the contractor tears all that apart and puts it all back together again for construction. I think that's a really positive. In a way, it sort of forces collaboration, although it may be seen as checking a box, if you will, at this point in time, but it certainly can help.

Absolutely, yeah, I agree with you. It all depends on how people receive it, right? If they receive it and they see it's a contractual obligation and we're gonna do the absolute minimum necessary to meet that requirement and to get on with doing our project the way that we're comfortable, then you're gonna have challenges. If it's consumed by design and construction as a guideline, how the owner, the UK government, wants us to work together and they're open and communicative about it, it's gonna be a great guideline.

Well, I think there's certainly something to learn from that document in addition to some of the other European countries that are pioneers as well. It's always interesting to see how different technologies are valued in different countries, just based upon the culture and maybe what's going on there politically. Yeah, I think when you look at design and construction on a global basis, right, my experience tells me that there's largely three big geos about how design and construction happens and that is whether the architect and the design team is seen as kind of the master and the lead versus whether the construction team is the trusted advisor and seen as the controlling entity.

And even over in Asia Pacific, many times the contractor will actually hire the design team. So the owner hires the contractor, the contractor hires the design team and that's the way that the business flows. And so depending on which geo you're in and which model you're using is varying ways to apply the technology. There are also all kinds of rules and codes and different things in different places of the world that are gonna affect how they apply technology. The one piece of advice that I would have is that it's never, well, we could never do that here because we need to change that mentality to be, okay, let's look at what they're doing and figure out how we can apply pieces or the best parts of what they're doing somewhere else to what we do here.

And when I say here, it could be, if I'm working in the US, there's a lot of creative ways we can do things in the US even with the regulations and requirements we have. Or if I'm in South America, I'm thinking the same thing. Or if I'm in the UK, I'm gonna be bringing ideas and ways of working in the US to the UK and saying, okay, I get that you guys do things differently but let's look at the best practices, the best ways of things that are happening in the US and how we can apply it to where we're working today.

No, that's great. I also wanted to pick your brain a little bit about since we've been talking about application of technology and because I've been talking about my favorite subject lately, blockchain, do you think there's some opportunities to utilize blockchain, particularly with BIM technology? I do preface it by saying that I hope that there's some much, much smarter people thinking about blockchain and how to apply it to the design and construction industry than I am. And I would advocate and encourage anybody in design and construction to be paying attention to blockchain, reading up on blockchain.

I think if anybody's reading up on blockchain right now, they're probably reading up on cryptocurrency and how they can invest in it. But getting beyond that and thinking about, okay, how can we apply this to our industry really is not just for banks and for eggheads, it can be applied in a lot of different ways. One example and one thought that I have is it was just announced that Kodak has come up with a new offering, essentially a cryptocurrency or a blockchain environment for photographs. And they're gonna call it Kodak Coin.

And the idea is that they will create a brokerage for photography where they will apply blockchain technology, uniquely identify a photograph, and then be able to essentially scan the internet to find anywhere where that photograph is potentially used without having paid for through the blockchain environment or through Kodak Coin, the photographer, right? The author of the photograph. I think about looking at something like that to get around the fact that right now the legal record for almost any design is a stamped and signed drawing. Years ago, we talked about checksum.

State of Florida, the state of Utah, were coming up with methodologies by which we could digitally sign documentation that would be seen as a legal record at the state level. I think that blockchain could very much be applied to building information models or DWGs or DGNs or any electronic information to give us a way to ensure that we have an official electronic record that can sustain in courts and ensure that the author of that information is attributed in a proper way, whether it's compensation or in any other method.

Yeah, I like that example. And I think that's something that we may have touched on. Not exactly the way you've described it. I think there has been a slight discussion about that recently. I'm always happy to hear ideas as they're brewing.

Talking about BIMBDC, always curious about, you know, taking it to the next level of design technology as well. Your thoughts about the utilization of virtual reality, augmented reality, Dynamo with any parametric or generative design. You said earlier, it may be about 50% adopting right now, BIM itself, but you know, there's a whole lot more innovation that's taking place. What are your thoughts here? My opinion is that the innovation and continued development and building out of the BIM technology that supports the process is probably going to speed up the second 50% on the adoption curve.

I think one of the things that you left out is the cloud. We have the cloud there, which I think is a foundation element to everything else that you mentioned. So the cloud environment is heavily going to support VR, augmented reality. You mentioned Dynamo, I think maybe even more powerful than Dynamo will be things like Forge and Quantum coming out of Autodesk, which will allow us to put a model in the cloud and then start picking a part and writing small applets of code against specific pieces of that model.

One example they use is that the fabrication level for a curtain wall, maybe all the fabricator really wants to know is the connection points of the components of the curtain wall. If the model is sitting on the cloud, they can sit there with Inventor or whatever they're using for manufacturing design and simply reach out to that model in the cloud and say, okay, bring down all the curtain wall connection points and let me connect all those up, the aluminum or the components that we're going to use to design our curtain wall out.

I see that the ability of that type of capability or access is going to drive building product manufacturers to get much more involved in the BIM process. Fabricators to get, if not much more involved, maybe simplify their involvement in the BIM process. With that model, with that full fabrication and constructability model, living out in the cloud in a common data environment or in a central repository and then being able to use things, a firm that we're working closely with now is called DACRI, D-A-Q-R-I, which has the virtual reality and the augmented reality helmets and headsets.

Being able to not need a whole lot of infrastructure, I have the helmet, the wifi connection, I have the cloud environment and boom, I can now have a heads up display of my construction information. These are the things that are going to make it impossible to stay in a 2D world. When people get comfortable with saying, why can't I get my model in my headset? And the response being, well, all of the information is 2D. It's only going to fly for so much longer.

Virtual reality is catching up very, very quick too. I mean, there's just a tremendous amount of effort. There's a company in the UK that has received a billion dollars in venture capital, strictly around increasing the resolution of virtual reality headsets. And they think that they're talking about going to like 70 million pixels. It will be near indecipherable between looking with your eyes and looking in a virtual reality headset.

If it takes them a year to come up with this technology, which is they're touting it's going to be less than a year that you can put on a set of glasses and whatever you're looking at through your glasses, you feel like you're looking at the real world. Things are going to change very, very fast. And I mean, you think about gaming technology, just adapting that to the construction field. I don't think that it's going to take a whole lot for that technology to ramp up and honestly, to get it adopted as long as the price point makes sense.

Thanks for sharing those tidbits. I definitely learned something new. Well, with that, thank you so much, Mike. This has been a really awesome interview with you. So did you have anything else you wanted to share with the constructor audience today?

I think that we covered a lot. I think that if I had any words for the entire industry, I do think it is that my entire career, right? 30 year career has been built on the fact that I want to, and I've been able to look at technology and look for how that technology can add efficiency into the process. In some ways it works, some attempts it doesn't work, but trying, we're forcing innovation and we are going to make things better. It's not always going to work the first time.

You know, we're not going to hit 100% of our goals every time. But I think if we sit down and we set out very realistic success metrics, we can have varying stages. You know, we can consider this to be a success. Well, if we can go a little bit further, it's going to be a great success. And if we go a little bit further, it's going to be a massive success.

I think by approaching the application of either a new process or new technology to parts of projects, that's the right way to go. And I think we'll all benefit from it in the long run. Would you like to share with the audience where we can find out about you and get in contact with you? My email address is very easy. It's my name, M.

Delacy, M-D-E-L-A-C-E-Y, at microdesk.com. You can certainly go to info at microdesk.com, you know, general requests or requests for information. And obviously microdesk.com has a ton of information, all my contact information, and actually all of our people's contact information is right there on the website. Great. And I will include that in the show notes.

If anybody has any questions and wants to follow up. Thank you so much. This has been a treat. Same here. I really enjoyed this.

It's fantastic. Thanks for listening to this interview with Michael Delacy. Find out more about Michael and microdesk at constructor.com slash E-P 73. If you learned something valuable in this episode, share it with your friends and colleagues. You can also let me know if you've enjoyed our discussion by connecting with me on Twitter at Brittany underscore C-T or find me on LinkedIn, or you can just email me to at britney at constructor.com.

That's B-R-I-T-T-A-N-I-E at construct double R.com. Next week, we will be speaking with Mike Petruski, director of events and growth marketing at iOffice. He is also the host of the workplace innovator podcast, enhancing your employee experience. So next week's episode is actually a crossover episode with Mike, where he's releasing the interview he did with me on the workplace innovator podcast today. So you can find that episode on your preferred podcast provider.

Just look for the workplace innovator podcast. I highly recommend it. So next week, I'll be releasing my interview with Mike. You will enjoy what Mike has to say from the owner's perspective, as he has served in a variety of leadership roles in the workplace and facilities management world. His marketing expertise combined with the experience engaged with facilities practitioners, uniquely positions Mike to help organizations deliver workplace innovation to the built environment.

I really look forward to sharing this interview with you guys next week. So if you haven't already subscribed to the podcast, you can do so at your preferred podcast player. Please leave a review to show your support and let me know you're enjoying the podcast. I look forward to talking with you guys next week.