In this final installment of the Model Manager Series, we will talk about the tasks associated with project milestones.

It is very important to keep a record of deliverables and elements created at milestones. Your firm should have a set procedure on how to properly archive materials at key points in the life of a project. Below are some suggestions of when to archive.

Archive at Major Milestones

A project should be archived manually at major milestones, to provide a snapshot in time. Models should be archived using eTransmit at each of the following:

• After every submission to the client (SD, DD, CD)
• Permit Review Submissions
• Issued for Construction Set

Archive Before Major Model Changes

Along with archiving at these major milestones, you should also make an archive before you do something major to the model:

• Enabling Worksharing
• Accepting Design Options
• Removing/consolidating worksets
• Making a major design change

End of Design Phase – Project Closeout

When the documents are completed for a project, a transition from Design to CA occurs. It’s best to try and keep at least one design team member on the CA phase of the project and it is critical that this person be involved in the following steps. If it is not possible to transition a design team member, then the person who will be doing the major CA on the project should be included in this meeting, to get a debrief on the project itself to help them moving forward. At this point, the whole design project team should have a project debrief, to review what went well, what could have been done differently, and to pull out lessons learned.

1. Schedule a project post-mortem with the design team and invite the BIM Manager.
2. Have each team member come to the meeting with a list of things that went well/didn’t go well and how they think it could be better next time.
3. The model manager will compile the list and create a “lessons learned” document to share with the team afterward.
4. Review the custom content created for this project and review with the BIM Manager items that could be beneficial to be added to the firm library.

Gather Custom Content for Company Library

Every project has custom families that were created just for this project. Once the design phase is complete, the team should go through and pick out families that they think might be useful to include in the firm-wide library. There should be a place on the server for users to deposit these files to then be vetted by the BIM manager or another person who has been designated to perform this task. The Model Manager should make sure that each team member is given some time to gather these elements together.

• This will add to your library and lower the time required to create new families
• Contribute to the standardization of graphics/content in the firm
• Help newer Revit users populate projects more quickly
• Help avoid people building bad content or using model in place too much because content isn't available.

Prepare Model for CA Phase

Once a project moves from design to construction, it’s purpose changes and many of the views can be removed to clean up the model. A larger purge can also happen at this phase.

1. Archive the model using eTransmit.
2. Remove all revisions from the “Revisions” section. This will delete all revision clouds and tags, and clean up the revisions section of the titleblock to make space for construction-related revisions.
3. Delete all working plans except for one of each level
4. Delete all working elevations and sections
5. Delete all presentation views
6. Delete/purge any images files that are no longer required
7. Delete any schedules that are no longer required
8. Purge more thoroughly, removing all unused families
9. Load in construction titleblocks (Sketch titleblocks)

Archive at end of Construction

At the end of a project, it is important to create a record of all that happened along the way. As you have been doing CA in Revit, the model should be pretty close to an “as-built” model. Depending on what is written into the contract as a final deliverable to the client, the tasks in this section will vary. It is important to determine at the inception of a project what needs to occur at the end so that the proper workflows can be followed along the way to ensure a smooth project close-out.

Some potential tasks/deliverables:

• As-built drawings and/or model
• Archive of RFIs, Submittals, ASIs, etc.
• Facilities Management model

And that's it for this series! Thanks for following along. I hope these posts were useful and will help you get this position codified at your firm.  

Click here to see the other parts in this series for additional Revit knowledge.

Happy Reviteering!