Thank you, work planners!

From the bottom of his heart, Pim van Meer thanks the planners who helped him get his feet on the ground. They were the first to be enthusiastic about his arrival. They were the ones who showed him that the model is not beatific.

I write this with slight reluctance, because my ego would have preferred it to be otherwise: I owe my current position largely to builders, especially the planners. Au. 

Earlier I had to admit that my career took off thanks to developing contractors who started using BIM and digital construction in the crisis of 2010. At the time, I thought everyone understood me. In reality, everyone mostly understood the need.

I started with standard housing construction for various contractors. In between, I was allowed to do something beautiful: Utrecht Leidsche Rijn, endlessly redeveloped because redevelopment was cheaper than paying the fine when the plug was pulled. Those hard contracts with big builders pulled me through the storm as an architect. And imperceptibly, those years taught me the job of work preparation: their schedule, their rhythm, their pain. I didn't realize that bimming especially because you can do part of the work preparation semi-automatically with it. And at the same time I saw: their work did not become simpler, it became more complex. More regulations, more dependencies, more if-then in less time.

To be honest: in our organization, the planners were the most enthusiastic when I came in. I knew that sometimes developers would rather lose me than have me around. I make uncomfortable things visible. But precisely because work planners build it, I was able to play hardball. I flipped contracts so that everything came in 3D. Not because I wanted to be hip, but because I wanted to fill their plate with exactly what they needed. If you superimpose shafts and walls, if your cross-sections and dimensional grid are correct, if the space matches the program, then a contractor can check with traditional (2D) checks if necessary - and still find no more risks to discount. That's good for everyone, including the developer.

And yet it chafes. I spend fifteen years trying to explain how to work packages distills from models, how you see in the keet with structural engineers and installation teams whether it really fits together. For me, a concurrent engineering session has become so normal that I rarely post them on LinkedIn. But maybe my world is distorted. Maybe outside my bubble, it's far from the norm. I want to shout: The Wkb via 3D is self-evident, isn't it? But something is only natural when enough people do it by themselves.

What I learned in the shack, I didn't learn at TU Delft. I learned it from people with a folder full of markers, who forced me to justify my digital truth with one raised eyebrow. Pim, beautiful model. Where do you secure this detail? Who signs for responsibility here? What happens if this delivery shifts two weeks? They taught me that a perfect model is not a goal, but a tool: enough accuracy to make the next decision, enough guidance to remain manufacturable and affordable. Sometimes 60 percent well modeled plus 40 percent craftsmanship is faster and more reliable than a 100 percent fetish that never gets finished. I find that hard to say, because my heart is screaming: one hundred percent or nothing. The shack whispers: ninety percent on time is often smarter than one hundred percent late.

Am I always honest and nice to planners? No. I am impatient. I think things can and should be done faster. I am proud of the projects we build ourselves - secretly too proud. And I sometimes forget to say that they are the ones who have my back. That when I insist that we deliver in 3D in one go, they are the ones who pick up the leftover clutter, add the last remnants, make reality match my promises. It is easier to present a model than to pull a schedule close.

So hereby, without irony: thank you. Thank you for every this doesn't fit, not yet which I was at first opposed to and later pleased about. Thank you for every slide that test moment into the OT/BT who prevented chaos. Thank you for every time you converted my beautiful story into a make-able order. You made me tougher on the content and softer on the tone, although I don't let the latter show too often.

And then the question I struggle with: should we have been further along by now, or is this the normal plateau? Is a chain with 60 percent right models and 40 percent trusted craftsmanship perhaps more efficient than the obsession with 100 percent digital? My head says: push on to a hundred - discipline, rhythm, one source of truth. My gut says: fair is fair, without your expertise my digital world would collapse. Perhaps the answer is exactly that tension elastic. My job is to keep the rubber band under tension; you make sure it doesn't snap.

I will say it more often, so that I remember it myself: you were the first to really challenge me to train the rest of the world. And every time I think this has become normal, I will go back into the shed and learn again why normal doesn't come naturally anywhere.

Filing moment

Perfection in the model is the goal.
No. Decidability is the goal. The model provides guidance, the shack provides reality. Where the two meet weekly, projects flourish. Then the rest of the romance naturally sinks into place.