What makes a good BIM Manager? Some may say an aptitude for technology. Others may say training and standards management background is a good place to start. Or implementation skills with a specific technology comes to mind.

I believe it is more about understanding people and how they think, act and learn.

Learning Styles

Learning styles that people use effectively are different for each individual: Some are visual learners, some audible via story or lesson, others through repetition of tasks.   While a BIM Manager may have a great leading style, they may not have the skills to teach to all learning styles.

In most cases, the BIM Manager teaches the same way they learn. Employing more than one learning style to a firm large enough to have a BIM Manager is ideal. This is one of the most productive elements for developing employee skills and re-training employees you want to keep.

Conflict Management

Anyone who has been employed in the AEC industry for more than a few years in a small or large firm will start to notice there are connection within design teams and extended design teams. There are people who love to work on projects together and others that work better independently.

In some cases, the last pick doesn’t work well with a team, has attitude issue or has a low skill level compared to other team members. I call this conflict in both scenarios because it tends to cause avoidance rather than teamwork.   In larger firms, you may be able to get a HR representative to address the attitude problems. However, on the skills side, you need to intervene and provide mentoring and/or skills assessment to advance development.

Understand Your Own Limitations

You are a human resource for your company: you bring skills and ideas to the table that others likely don’t have.  Some of your skills may also be under-developed, and that is ok.   No firm brings on an intern for the summer and expects them to work without supervision. So, someone starting in BIM Management should be allowed to learn and grow into their position.

There is always something new to learn. Many places learn from resources such as Autodesk University, help from software vendors and industry technology reps. While personal growth is happening, if you don’t have a certain skill, leverage outside resources to fill the gaps. It may be a new budget item necessary for rounding out skillsets for you and your team.

Focus of a BIM Manager’s Role

If you only focus on technology and not the human aspect of your work, there is likely a massive gap in the vision of success for your firm. I believe that human resources and culture are more important.  These aspects generate higher production levels than any technology that your company produces.

When you lose a good employee and have to hire a replacement, it takes many people to fill that void. This is due to onboarding, training and learning to work with new people on a team. It is especially difficult if the person you lose is a key player in a significant project. The replacement(s) have to learn the project(s) and get them out on time.

In my current role as a reseller, I regularly talk to many IT, CAD and BIM Managers. In smaller firms, a power user tends to wear a BIM Manager hat and may even eventually get the title. However, the role is mostly technical stuff: managing libraries, adding some standards and best practices under supervision of the person stamping drawings.

In most cases, I see many intelligent people that don’t necessarily have people skills to execute immersive training. Most don’t have authority to make changes to standards and enforce them.

Conclusion

In Conclusion, this blog post sheds some light to owners, BIM Managers and others wearing those hats. The purpose is to peel back another layer of thought about the way your company works, what it values and why.

If you focus on the success of others and really understand the people you work with, there is always work to do. A smart employer will take notice that you care about the welfare of their teams.

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This blog post is written by Bruce Johnson, a Senior MEP Technical Specialist at ATG USA. Bruce has 27 years of experience with training and consulting on Autodesk products and 13 years in CAD/BIM Management. If you need help with any of your service or production needs, please contact us at whyatg@atgusa.com.