Revit and Profitability - How has your firm changed their business model?

[adh]

Hi.

We are a small mechanical firm doing a little research on how we can/should be changing our business model in accordance with a number of projects that are now being completed using Revit MEP instead of AutoCAD. My question is how have other consulting engineering firms out there found the transition to Revit with respect to profitability? Have you found your Revit jobs to be more or less profitable than your AutoCAD jobs? Have you raised or lowered your fees, and what has the reaction from Architects been to this? How have you changed your business model to accommodate this new software (or have you at all)? Do you feel that you have taken on more responsibility or more coordination efforts from the Architect than you would have if the project were to be completed in CAD? What level of detail have you found to be most appropriate in your Revit model (to connect to fixtures or not to connect to fixtures and stop modeling at drops in the wall, for example)?

Thanks in advance, your input is very much appreciated.

 

[wilheldp_PE]

Based on my limited exposure to Revit MEP that ended about 2 years ago, here is my opinion. Architects whole-heartedly embraced Revit because it was a polished product that let them produce pretty 3D renderings of their designs without completely re-drawing everything.

Then, Autodesk bought the product, slapped a half-assed MEP design program on top of it, and forced it down the engineer's throats. The first few versions of Revit MEP were completely broken, and they forever tainted my opinion of the program. It never should have been released in that form for Beta testing, much less sold as a full-feature, complete product. The file sizes were huge to the point of unusable, even with state-of-the-art desktop computers. The conflict resolution algorithms didn't really work, and when they did, they were unreliable. Therefore, you would have to double your effort by trying to get it to work in Revit, then re-do it by hand to find the stuff that Revit missed. The circuit diagrams did not provide the information in the format that we were accustomed to, and there was no way to change the way the information was presented. Therefore, we duplicated effort by making the circuit diagrams in Revit so that the model would work, then recreating the diagrams manually in AutoCAD to get the formatting we wanted. Also, adoption rate by vendors was very slow to begin with, so all of the fancy rendering stuff wouldn't work because there were no vendor models of the products used. We ended up having hundreds of versions of generic blocks with different vendor information so that the BOMs would generate properly.

I don't know if any of those issues have been fixed by product revisions in the last two years, and I don't care because I'm out of the MEP world now. I'm not sure my firm raised fees when they switched to BIM models instead of AutoCAD, but they should have. If I had to guess, I'd say they didn't because the place was run by architects, and they loved the software. They just passed us off as bitchy engineers until they saw the size of the MEP model on an average sized hospital. I believe it was upwards of 60 GB, and completely shut down your computer for 15 minutes every time you opened, closed or saved the file.

 

[willsee]

Revit sucks

 

[adh]

Revit sucks

Would you mind elaborating on this sentiment?

 

[roadwreck]

Revit sucks

Being unfamiliar with what Revit is and based solely on the above statement I must conclude that Revit is some sort of vacuum.

 

[RIP - VTEnviro]

I'm a site/civil. The only time I ever deal with Revit is on larger multidisciplinary projects with architects. They love it and rave about how awesome it is.

We run Civil 3D 2010, it is totally incompatible with Revit.

I have to save as a dxf, save back to ACAD, then send it to them. It blows up surfaces, alignments, etc. and turns them from something dynamic into a useless block.

 

[willsee]

Wilheld summed it up really.

It's an Architecture wet dream yet a nightmare for other disciplines. I don't even believe the plumbing is 50% functional yet. You can't "fake" stuff like you do in AutoCAD to keep the project moving, you have to check different elevations to make sure you're receptacle isn't mounted upside down/on a ceiling/underground, you have to rely on the architects to be further along before you can start than usual, and in the end I don't understand the purpose it serves from an MEP standpoint.

 

[wilheldp_PE]

you have to rely on the architects to be further along before you can start than usual, and in the end I don't understand the purpose it serves from an MEP standpoint.

Oh snap! That's a huge problem that I forgot. The architects have to be virtually done with their floor plans before you can even start MEP design. If they go moving walls, you better hope that Revit decides to move everything in the MEP model. That means you have to have them oriented correctly and attached to the right surfaces, the architects can't screw anything up in exporting their model, your import of their model has to be perfect, AND Revit has to be in a good mood. If any of those things are off, be prepared to re-do your entire design. It's an effin' nightmare if you are on a compressed schedule.

It didn't help that the biggest project I designed in Revit was a complete remodel and addition of a dental school. That makes it worse because the architects have to complete their site survey and existing design before you can start on demo plans. That project damn near missed it's design deadline just because we were using Revit. The package we sent out for bid still had several "faked" designs in AutoCAD.

 

[adh]

... AND Revit has to be in a good mood...

Haha!

 

[blybrook PE]

Willheld brought up several good points concerning MEP; however, the most recent version (2012) completely revamped the MEP side of things and it's "supposedly" 1000% better than what was seen before. The mechanical department in my office is pushing everyone to use the 2012 line of products so they can actually use revit for a change!

For our revit projects, the fee does go up because only a few people are trained to utilize it and there is a steeper learning curve than with ACAD. Revit does talk with the other disciplines and everything will syncronize properly IF you are using the proper worksets, central file and are on the same network! This means that everything has to be setup properly from the start when "someone" creates the central file. Good luck trying to keep things updated if your central file only gets updated once a day, it needs to be available for constant syncronization; which doesn't always happen when you have multiple firms working on the project. It's hard enough to have this done when everyone is under the same roof!

There are problems with every software package; it is how the company deals with them and completes the project that determines the true bottomline.

I like ACAD for the reason that you can bluff your way through a submittal when required. You can't do that with Revit. However, I like Revit in the sense that when I change one item that affects 5+ individual details, they are ALL updated automatically (sure you have to check that it took, but you don't have to do any additional drafting.)

Coordination issues are about the same, regardless of the software, you'll still be fighting them over changes. And you have to hope that they actually modeled the wall correctly (I've seen a 6" wall modeled as a 4" and it screwed up most of the other disciplines).

I don't think my office has really revamped our overall business model just because of Revit, but there are only a limited amount of projects that will get revit from the start. It typically has to be requested by the owner/client for it to happen.

I know that I havn't covered all of your questions, but I hope it helps some. Good luck.

 

[pbrme]

.... and it's "supposedly" 1000% better than what was seen before.

Sounds like the sales pitch I was used to hearing, every year it's supposed to get better. IMO Revit MEP is good if you're already familiar with Revit and MEP software. There will always be a better software for running either but ACAD has a market and it trying to spread it too thin.

 

[wilheldp_PE]

If there is room for 1000% improvement, they are admitting that it was shit to begin with. That was the thing that made me the most angry. The site license was upwards of $10k, and the software was completely broken. Then, they'd try to sell you upgrades every year so that it would work as they originally advertised.

 

[blybrook PE]

It was crap to begin with, the original version of MEP was no better than the smell of raw sewage. From what I've gathered from the folks in the mechanical department, they are starting to enjoy Revit as it lets them do what it was originally supposed to allow them to do. It has gotten better for Autodesk, but I agree, they are spreading themselves too thin.

Our licensing system is fubar and there are times where I can't get a Revit Structure license as it's in use by someone in ACAD. Usually ahve to go find the right person to have them bail out of their drawing until I can get into my model. It would be nice if things worked the way they are advertised, but at least Autodesk hasn't openly admitted purposely putting bugs into the software to get the end user to buy a maintenance contract like PTC has done with Mathcad!

 

[willsee]

Well we have another Revit project coming up (our largest yet) so I'll let you know how it goes then.