This article was first published on the Digital Construction Week blog July 31st, 2018. Here is an excerpt from the piece:
"We hold our first Speaker Spotlight for 2018, with Carl Veillette, Co-Founder at BIM One Inc, and CTIO of BIM Track. We get to know a bit more about Carl, his work and what he'll be bringing to Digital Construction Week 2018. You can see Carl speaking on our Tech Stage on the 17 & 18 October at the Excel, London."
Can you tell our readers a little bit about yourself, and your role in the built environment?
I’m a BIM, VDC and CIM specialist, with international virtual construction experience. I’m the co-founder of BIM services provider BIM One Inc. and co-founder of the issue tracking software BIM Track. I’m passionate about openBIM and am involved with the national organizations BuildingSMART Canada and CanBIM here in Canada.
What for you is the most exciting thing about working in the built environment?
The fast-paced environment and how quickly technologies are disrupting the industry. It makes us think in a different way. It pushes us to our limits from an innovation point of view. Connecting data, project and teams together is the most exciting opportunity from my POV. There’s also a big gap between the tools used in infrastructure and building projects and teams. I’m excited to bridge this gap and make projects more efficient overall.
What do you feel would help improve and encourage greater collaboration in the built environment?
We see a future where openBIM becomes more commonplace for transparent data exchange. As CTIO and co-founder of BIM Track, we’ve seen a lot of improvement in the way our clients are collaborating using cross-platform communication channels & in-context issue tracking.
What challenge in your work life would you most like a technology or process to help solve?
A cloning machine so I can do everything I want to do. At least 5 clones.
Tell us about a recent innovation or technology that you’ve been most impressed by?
Hypermodelling (the combination of 2D and 3D within the same viewing environment) has really impressed me, as seen in BIMX and Bentley products. Also, another technology that I feel should be utilized more often, is automatic recognition of discrepancies between the as-built model and point clouds coming from a job site, like Verity by ClearEdge.
Can you tell us a bit about the projects you’re working on and what role (if any) innovation and technology is playing?
What’s pretty cool is actually how we have applied agile methodologies from our dev side to our BIM services side. When our BIM specialists are involved in projects, they do small, incremental development of the BIM approach which makes it easier to tailor to project-specific requirement. We are also inspired by the lean approach, which consist of creating value in the inside of the process by reducing waste. This waste can be time wasted in complex processes, so we use technology to streamline those processes and provide more value to the clients.
What do you fear or struggle with the most in terms of technology?
The growth of different native file formats. They are a barrier to collaboration on projects.
What is Digital Construction to you and why is it important?
Digital construction for us is building before building. It’s important to avoid surprises on-site. In my mind, it’s the mandatory workflow required to achieve offsite and pre-construction, which are critical for lowering the environmental impact and improving efficiency on-site.
What does the next 12 months have in store for you?
We are taking a closer look at how machine learning ties into construction. Stay tuned for more!
Want to know more? You can follow Carl via Twitter, connect on LinkedIn and take a look at the work BIM Track are doing via their social accounts: Twitter / LinkedIn. And of course, see him speaking at #DCW2018.
- Alexine Gordon-Stewart