540,000 hours

I was chatting to one of our large AEC customers last week. They have about 1,000 CAD, BIM & Engineering software users around the group. During our chat, we discussed the fact that they are putting together a business case for management, aimed at securing additional budgets for investing in new training & learning tools. As part of this process, they worked out that they spend approx. 540,000 man (or woman) hours EACH YEAR, producing CAD drawings. And that's just in the UK, which is only part of the wider group!

I don't know what their hourly charge-out rates are, but let's say, for argument's sake, that the figure is £100/hr. That's a cool £54M per year on CAD production alone.

Now let's picture the impact of a 2% improvement in productivity across the year - that's over £1M in savings, or half a million quid for every 1% increase!

Suddenly, spending a few grand on testing and training tools starts to make a lot of business sense!

Let's look at some more numbers;

Take an average salary of £25k p.a. and a 225 day working year.

For every 1% improvement in productivity, a practice will save £250 or 2.25 days per person per year. Targeting a 5% annual improvement in performance, this is worth £1,250 or 11.25 days per person per year. (11.25 days = 90 working hours (average 8 hour work day)).

For a firm with 20 staff, this is worth the equivalent of a new member of staff! (20 x £1,250 = £25,000).

Now let's look at hiring; how much does it cost to employ inappropriate personnel for 3 months?

Assuming a £25k annual salary:

15% agency fee = £3,750

3 months’ salary = £6,250

Assuming £18/hr:

7.5 hrs x 5 days = £675 x 12 weeks = £8,100

These examples don’t include advertising costs for staff employed direct, or the cost of re-working for drawings which weren’t done right first time.

R

Daisy-chain

This month, we are introducing a change to the way assessments are authored, based on the idea of linking separate modules in a 'daisy-chain', to create a longer test.

In essence, the KS system breaks down like this;

- A test is one or more modules linked together.
- A module is comprised of typically 4-6 questions, covering the same topic, i.e. Families in Revit or UCS in AutoCAD, etc.
- A question tests an individual's understanding of a particular software feature or command.

Questions and modules have training tag keywords (meta tags) associated with them, which makes training needs analysis, post-assessment, much more relevant.

Questions can be "task" based or "knowledge" based.

A task based question has files associated with it. The user has to do something to the file, in order to work out the answer, as follows;

- Task (interrogate) - the user has to open the file and find the answer, but they don't have to modify or change the file in any way.
- Task (modify) - the user has to open and modify the file, to work out the correct answer.
- Knowledge - this type of question does not require a file to be associated with it.

Test administrators can present a single module as a test, provided they create a new test from the module first.

A 'daisy-chain' happens when an administrator links a series of modules together, to create a longer test.

This concept allows us to create a wide range of test material, in bite-sized blocks, which map closely to corresponding training and learning material.

Daisy-chains go live next month.

R

MCMC 2010

It's that time of year again! One of the year's most enjoyable events takes place on August 10-11; the Mid Continent MicroStation Community User Conference. The venue is once again the excellent Overland Park Convention Center, in Kansas City.

The organisers have pulled out the stops, with an agenda packed full of high-quality speakers, over the course of the two days.

See this link for full details:
http://www.tmcmcmc.org/meetings/2010/Onsite_Agenda_2010.pdf .

Tuesday night's entertainment includes dinner and a repeat trip to Power Play, for another high energy Whirlyball contest. (For the un-initiated, Whirlyball is a mix of lacrosse, basketball - and bumber cars - not for the faint hearted!).

Tickets are just $95 per day, including lunch and snacks throughout the day.

The theme for this conference is Versatility. Covering multiple tracks, including, MicroStation, Civils, Plotting, CAD Management, Collaboration, Building, Structural Analysis and US Army Corps projects.

What happened in Chicago...

A brief postscript to my recent visit to Chicago, where I attended the inaugural KA-Connect Knowledge management conference. The team at Knowledge Architecture have been posting some of the presenter videos recorded over the two days, onto their website.

Here is mine: http://ka-connect.com/talks.php?vdx=48.

The funny thing about my presentation was that I had the very last slot on day 2. It's fair to say that of my Pecha Kucha session - 20 slides, 20 seconds per slide - about 75% of what I had to speak about, had already been covered at some point during the previous 35 talks! So much of what you see here is delivered on the fly. :)

There were some terrific presenters during the course of the 2 days. Here are some of my favourites:

Laurie Dreyer, head of HR at US design firm Anshen + Allen (34 mins long, but frankly unmissable viewing!): http://ka-connect.com/talks.php?vdx=40.

John Moebes, Director of Construction at Crate+Barrel, with a fascinating insight into what owners expect from their design, engineering and construction partners:
http://ka-connect.com/talks.php?vdx=2.

Michael Kilkelly, Associate at Gehry Partners, gives us a look behind the scenes of one of the world's leading design firms: http://ka-connect.com/talks.php?vdx=57.

KA-Connect 2011 takes place in San Francisco, in April 2011.

R

EYC CAD Managers Forum - summer 2010

I'll be joining the EYC team at this summer's CAD Managers Forum in London, later this month.

See link for full details: http://www.eatyourcad.com/resource.php?resource_id=1676

The meeting takes place on June 30, at Buro Happold's Newman Street offices, from 10am to 4.30pm.

There are two main topics on the agenda; I'll be talking about the effects of the recession (isn't it over yet??) and what lessons we may have learned. The afternoon session looks at BIM contracts, technology and deliverables.

All in all, it promises to be an excellent forum. Tickets are just £50, to cover EYC's costs, so be sure to book your slot - and I look forward to seeing you in London.

R

Coming up in KS..

Just back from a very enjoyable few days in Philadelphia, attending an excellent Bentley conference, Be Together. The keynotes were thought-provoking, the seminars plentiful, the after-hours activities stimulating and the live zone format worked a treat. Slightly earlier promotion of the event next time, coupled with a bit more time between sessions, and it's a winner.

Anyway, I digress. The point of this post is to shed some light on what's coming up on the KS dev side over the summer period. Our technical roadmap has always been, I think it's fair to say, a somewhat fluid affair. We regularly receive tremendously bright feedback from our user-base, which has a direct impact on our delivery schedules. (Especially the really good ideas, when I ask the team, 'Why didn't we think of that!?' ;) ).

So, here's what we're working on over the next 2-3 months, in rough priority order;

System architecture

- Options for admins to deploy test files locally.
- More searching fields in the results look-up area of the dashboard.
- Additional charting options and export of results feature.
- Individual dashboard login for users to track their own test history and results, training recommendations and coaching notes.
- Improved content management tools, for accounts with large question libraries.
Additional benchmark data and statistics for OTS (off-the-shelf) tests.

We're currently working on the following test modules, which will be going live between June and September;

Test Libraries

- MicroStation v8i 2D for occasional users
- AutoCAD 2D for occasional users
- MicroStation v8i 3D fundamentals
- Design Review
- Bentley View
- 3ds Max 2011 (4 modules; Fundamentals, Rendering, Modeling and Maps & Materials)
- Revit MEP (1st of 3 modules)
- Bentley GEOPAK (1st of 4 modules)
- Bentley InRoads (1st of 4 modules)
- Rhino
- Adobe Photoshop
- Google Sketchup
- Bentley ProjectWise
- Bentley Navigator (1st of 2 modules)
- Bentley Structural Modeler
- Civil 3D (1st of 4 modules)

Towards the end of the year, we'll be turning our attention to analysis tools, including; Navisworks Manage, Ecotect, GBS, Hevacomp and IES VE. Bentley RAM and Bentley Map are also coming up more in conversation, so we'll endeavour to squeeze those two in somewhere as well!

As with all technical wish-lists, it's a constant juggle of time and money. With respect to our content libraries, I fear we might have a job for life in attempting to deliver quality test material across such a broad product base! Our challenge is principally that of, 'do we go wide or deep?' i.e. do we attempt to add a wide number of test topics with relatively small question libraries, or do we offer less topics, with greater numbers of questions for each? In truth, there is no right or wrong answer, hence the perpetual juggling act. As in all things we do, the answer ultimately lies with our customers; 'What do they want us to do?', is the question which shapes our ultimate roadmap.

As anyone who develops software or learning material will attest, the job is never truly finished. There will always be a new product update, or a change in technology, or a change in industry direction, or a change in vendor strategy, or yet another acquisition, the list goes on.

Whilst we're pleased with the progress we've made in the arena of CAD, BIM & engineering software skills testing, over the past 7 years or so, I sometimes feel that we're just getting started! The industry has changed rapidly over the past couple of years, impacted in considerable fashion by the twin effects of BIM adoption and economic hardship. And so, inevitably, the technology roadmap for AEC firms has been impacted.

As always, if you have any suggestions, ideas, requests for test content or general feedback, we'd love to hear them. Our own roadmap is, after all, in your hands! :)

R

KnowledgeSmart sponsors Be Together

KnowledgeSmart have signed as Associate sponsors at the Bentley Systems' user conference, Be Together, which takes place in Philadelphia next month.

This is a new format for Bentley, with multiple session tracks, covering a variety of AEC and Infrastructure topics; www.bentley.com/en-US/Community/BE+conference/Agenda.htm.

Sponsors find themselves in new territory this year, in the form of a series of exhibitor 'Zones', each focusing on a different area of technology. These are; Modeling & analysis, Visualization, Intelligent Deliverables, CAD Management, Technology Futures and Knowledge Resources. All zones are linked by the Collaboration zone.

KnowledgeSmart will be featuring our new online skills testing tools for CAD, BIM and Engineering software, situated in the Knowledge Resources zone.

In particular, we'll be presenting tools for skills testing across the following Bentley Systems' products; MicroStation 2D fundamentals, MicroStation for occasional users, MicroStation 3D fundamentals and Bentley Architecture v8i fundamentals, plus a preview of our new Bentley InRoads and Bentley GEOPAK assessments, which go live in the Fall.

Come and say hello to the team, if you're planning to attend. We might even treat you to a Philly Cheesesteak!

Rory