Building on Egan: BIM and the three 'E's

In my last column I discussed the ultimate objective - to “make money from satisfying customers”.

To achieve this purpose, I said, requires a delicate balance of economy, efficiency and effectiveness across your entire business - in our case 17,000 globally and 2,600 in the UK.

We talked about needing to be:

• Economic: everything I procure must be the right thing at the right price at the right time.
• Efficient: everything I do must be structured and coordinated and managed.
• Effective: everything I deliver must be required, add value and inform.

So how do we achieve the purpose?

Being effective in the eyes of the client starts simple and then quickly ramps up

We need to reverse the list and start by understanding what makes us effective in our clients’ eyes. From there we can plan our works, refine our workflows and identify what makes us more efficient. Now we can invest and procure the right tools, as an intelligent customer, ensuring we attain the best economy. Then this becomes our cycle of continuous improvement.

Being effective in the eyes of the client starts simple and then quickly ramps up. You need to do your job, be predictable and deliver the goods; that much is obvious. But, in doing so you must be removing risk, searching for value and remembering that only the customer can actually define value.

So I must deliver my services in a manner that is clear and concise - and I need to identify the real issues. In fact I need to deliver information from fragmented data, in a structured, coordinated and managed manner to allow my clients to understand risk and make informed decisions regarding their business.

As a designer I am a knowledge worker, Bill Gates was right when he wrote Business at the Speed of Thought and this might be what BIM is really about..

Frank McLeod is UK head of project technology for WSP