BIMForum on your discipline. Munro says archi- tects have the highest costs and the greatest cost recovery challenges be- cause of their practices’ traditional time/fee-based compensation model. Architects need to invest in the technology, training, and overcome the learning curve, and they don’t nec- essarily see payback in project wins and billable hours immediately, he said. Contractors can see more imme- diate benefits – BIM allows for more efficient estimating, reducing drawing conflicts and speeding up the project planning and work cycle. BIM software costs are declining, and problems of integrating systems are also dropping, but the early adap- tors still have a market leadership ad- vantage and undoubtedly have less stress in seeking IPD/BIM projects be- cause of their experience and expert- ise. This is the case for Chamberlain Construction Services Ltd., an inte- grated architectural and contracting business with offices in Canada and Scottsdale, Arizona. Chamberlain president Brian Cham- berlain discovered the advantages of BIM and IPD earlier than most – 25 years ago -- in part because the com- pany both designs and builds its own projects (but unlike a general contrac- tor promoting a design-build service, Chamberlain is rooted in an architec- tural practice that successfully added general contracting capacities.) Chamberlain has discovered much of its business in the hospitality and hotel sector, with private ownership and fast-track construction require- ments. IPD and BIM are natural fits in this environment, where contracts are negotiated and Chamberlain can see projects through with long-repeat clients from beginning to end in-house. Project architects and con- struction managers and site superin- tendents collaborate effectively under one corporate roof. However, Chamberlain says his practice still bids and wins public work, and responds to RFPs when they occur. “There hasn’t been a lot of IPD RFPs out there, but in general, an RFP for an IPD is more extensive than what we would call a standard industry RFP,” he said. “To try and quantify that, on an RFP calling, your response might be from 15 to 40 pages. On an IPD response, your response might be in excess of 100 pages.” To put this into direct dollars, Cham- berlain says a normal RFP could “take us a week or two of time,” and the “av- erage cost for a normal RFP to put to- gether might be between $8,000 and $10,000. On an IPD RFP, you could quite easily double that – and that doesn’t count anyone’s time in the pre-RFP pursuit.” But these somewhat-higher pursuit costs are not a big issue for Chamber- lain and other architects, engineers and contractors familiar with IPD/BIM. They apply the same best practices to manage pursuit costs as for conven- tional RFPs. Chamberlain sets go-no-go rules based on whether his organization has relevant experience, knows the client and has enough connections and ref- erences to make the project worth pursuing. If so, then the pursuit cost isn’t terribly meaningful. The slightly higher pursuit costs are recovered in the win-rate and contract- ing efficiencies, and the greatest sav- ings (when things work properly) is at the ownership end, when the collabo- rative design and construction process through IPD results in buildings that meets owners’ needs – and, says Munro, have all the data and “knowl- edge” to allow for effective ongoing maintenance and management. The challenge for traditional indus- try practitioners is that “BIM and IPD are raising the bar to entry,” says Seat- tle-based consultant Ted Sive, who wrote a pioneering white paper for the SMPS Foundation in 2007: BIM - A marketing primer and call to action. “The barrier to entry is that the company has to have in terms of inter- nal resources, intellectual capital and technological capability internally, a whole heck of a lot more than before,” Sive said. “Broadly, this issue is less about the pursuit of individual projects as to what it takes to have a strategic marketing and business development effort in an AEC company.” As the recession bit, “bigger com- panies (started) competing aggres- sively for smaller projects, and that has just raised the ante for small to medium-sized firms – that has in- creased their costs,” Sive said. These costs and the potential com- petitive imbalance for practitioners who are late to embrace BIM and IPD will likely increase in the near future. While most work is still bid and con- structed conventionally, as owners dis- cover the lifetime savings through BIM and start insisting on it in the project documentation, the pressure to apply the technology – and then to collabo- rate more effectively through IPD to exploit its advantages – will grow, and practices and businesses that aren’t up to speed could be left behind. “This is part of a bigger trend that in general I think owners are looking for more and higher quality of informa- tion and ideas in the marketing process,” Sive said. “The expecta- tions that owners have consciously or unconsciously” have increased. “We’re going to see this in the pro- posals and interviews – we’re always raising the bar, not only in the quality of data and how it is presented, but also the amount of professional thought and design and as well as how the graphics and presentation” are displayed. “These are increasing both be- cause of the owners and what we are doing to ourselves,” Sive said. “It’s part of a greater trend.” So, if you are already working in the BIM/IPD space, you’ll most likely find that the cost of pursuit is a non-issue. You’ll simply adapt your go-no-go de- cisions to the RFQs that become avail- able, or continue working with satisfied clients on a repeat sole- source basis. “Yes, for most of our projects the cost of pursuit is effec- tively zero, because we are maintain- ing our current relationships,” says Chamberlain’s Brian Chamberlain. If you aren’t there yet, be prepared for some overhead costs and a learn- ing curve – and gather all the informa- tion you can to stay abreast of the process. The cost of pursuit, in this situation, is the cost of keeping apace or getting ahead of owners’ expecta- tions and evolving industry practices. The actual dollar figures will depend on your strategic direction and imple- mentation decisions. Florida Construction News — SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2015 – 7