Average CAD/BIM skills are too low: Why they should be raised and how to conceptually assess them.
Architects are too overwhelmed in the battle to remove friction in their workflows and too overwhelmed in their efforts to stay on top of project deadlines. Unsurprisingly, even top tech-forward starchitect firms have average skill levels across primary BIM tools.
THE AVERAGE BIM SKILL LEVEL IS TOO LOW. Based only on anecdotal evidence through a series of recent interviews with several firms, the economic benefits of our architectural practice technologies are under-utilized.
First the Yardstick
I keep asking a common question as Architosh talks to architectural firms for various editorial reasons. I ask them to self-assess their average skill level with their primary BIM or CAD tool.
The conceptual yardstick from which this skill-level assessment is measured spans from A - Z and is broken into six user skill-level groups. They are as follows:
Beginner (A-D)
Advanced Beginner (E-H)
Intermediate (I-M)
Advanced Intermediate (N-Q)
Expert (R-V)
Advanced Expert (W-Z)
Fundamentally you could place all users into three core categories—beginners, intermediates, and experts. But growth and learning have phases with inherent roadblocks and tipping points. The reader may debate various aspects of the shape of the blue line curve. And that is okay. But some characteristics should be pretty defendable. (see first image below)
Averaged -- Production Efficiency by Skill Level Groups. Click on image for larger view. (Image: Architosh)
For example, those learning CAD/BIM and other digital tools—if they have had experience in similar tools—generally learn rapidly. These "Beginners" take a few weeks before they reach an Advanced Beginner status, which is that point when such users feel they are contributing decently to team efforts and are actually productive. I assign this point at the beginning of becoming an Advanced Beginner with a productivity capacity rank of 1.0.
We can make some distinctions at step changes without getting into subtle differences between these six skill-level groups (this is an ongoing project at Architosh).
Advanced Beginners know where all the essential tools are, understand palettes and their options and settings at a solid level (rarely need help), and can generate productive work as part of a team or solo.
Intermediate users have a deeper understanding of tools and palettes and, importantly, have a much more commanding experience of tool sub-set options and their use in different conditions. They should have a strong understanding of software preference settings and, importantly, have taken the time to customize the UI/UX to suit best their way of working.
"By Some firms are actively researching how to assess skill levels without putting people on edge or sending an unwanted message that their efficiency and speed at working with digital tools are what is most valued about them as employees."
Advanced Intermediate users distinguish themselves with a few key traits. Firstly, when there are multiple ways of achieving the same end, they maturely understand these options and feel confident selecting the best choice. An intermediate user will not feel confident and may guess, experiment, or ask for guidance. The slope between Intermediate and Advanced Intermediate is slow and long, and users acquire hard-won skills through trial and error and the opportunity to learn from Experts.
Expert users in big firms are often BIM managers and Digital Design Directors or their dedicated support staff. In smaller practices, they may be veteran, long-time users of a particular software and have been interested in its mastery. Experts know the software's menus, sub-menus, palettes, and tools very well and can solve nearly every problem a lower-level user may face.
So what is an Advanced Expert? This is a rare category of users. These are Experts who can customize the software through either scripting or coding, or both. You are not at the highest expert status level if you can't code or script. These are folks who can build custom tools or add-ons, et cetera.
Average Skill Levels
Whether talking to the digital design directors, BIM managers, or CIOs at firms from Bjark Ingels Group (BIG) to CBT in Boston to smaller and mid-sized firms in Europe or North America, when I explain this six-group skill assessment to them, they nearly all say the same thing: their average skill set is Intermediate to low Advanced Intermediate.
Averaged -- Production Efficiency by Skill Level Groups. When asking firms like BIG, CBT, and multiple others in recent interviews and discussions, leadership says the average skill level of their BIM/CAD uses is in the green zone, as shown in the diagram. This is Intermediate to early Advanced Intermediate level. (Image: Architosh)
The average skill set is the average of all CAD/BIM users across their primary tools. I characterize this in the green-zoned vertical bar in this chart above, from a K-level user to an N-level user. Somewhere in the upper half of this group, such a user could produce twice as much as an Advanced Beginner. Given a project to do independently, the Advanced Beginner would need twice as much time to finish all the work.
If your gut tells you that an Advanced Intermediate should be more efficient than 2x over an Advanced Beginner, I would caution you and ask you to look at the scale of the blue bar again. Being able to produce vastly more work than someone else in your firm is more challenging than you think. Assign yourself a letter on the scale and then think of a colleague you work with who is not at your efficiency level and ask yourself where they would lie on the curve.
Average Users—Dispersion
Any office with multiple employees will have users spread out across this metric. A new hire unfamiliar with your CAD/BIM tool may be mid-way through Beginner status after three weeks. A month or two in, and they are clearly far more independent and getting work done. Other users will be further along, and your regular long-time employees may be clustered in the J-O spectrum.
Firms have various users clustered at different skill levels, and this is a dynamic where this data is hidden from them due to a lack of measurement tools in the software systems. A possible useful KPI (key performance indicator) would be to compare profit ratios at any given time over a firm average skill level assessment, taken at the same time. This would give you KPIs that, over time, could be useful for an analysis of staff mixtures and staff skills (Image: Architosh)
Some users only spend a few hours a week in CAD/BIM tools. They are senior-level people doing more management tasks or spending more time in the field. They may have started Revit a decade ago, but their skill levels have plateaued due to their responsibilities. Many principals function at only the upper range of the Advanced Beginner level.
Meanwhile, only some firms possess legions of Advanced Intermediates and Experts. And one must ask, why not?
Network Effects—A Cost Problem
In the chart below, I have outlined the Beginner region. The dominant CAD/BIM platforms benefit from positive network effects, such as legions of students leaving university with years of experience in the prevalent software tools most firms use in their regions and countries.
Firms that utilize dominant tools benefit from hiring employees who are never in the green circle shown in the diagram. Those firms that use less common BIM/CAD solutions must overcome the economic disadvantage missed out by positive network effects. This may emerge in the core innovations in their chosen tool. (Image: Architosh)
This was discussed extensively as a critical topic in our second Revit Open Letter feature (see: Architosh, "The Revit Open Letter Through the Lens of QWERTY-Nomics," 20 Oct 22). Challengers to dominant platforms may have phenomenal technologies and features that speed up workflows and offer both tangible and non-tangible benefits. Still, the inability to calculate that cost-savings makes it challenging to compare the cost impacts of ignoring positive network effects firms gain by selecting the dominant tools.
We can see that when users must learn a new tool from scratch, their productivity is dramatically low in the first few days and weeks. These users are not even at a production capacity of 1.0—the point at which a user generally contributes, albeit slowly, but not with a terrible impact on an office or team. When a Beginner graduates to an Advanced Beginner status, they remain on the same growth slope. (see chart). They will remain there, mostly, until they reach the Intermediate level.
Climbs—Growth and Low-Growth Phases
The Intermediate level is the place where a lot of users end up long-term. As users progress as intern architects to higher levels of responsibility, their tasks change. They often spend more time doing design and management tasks. Their value to their firms moves away from "production" only and to soft skills like client relations, team and project management, and design.
Firms Users pass through phases of fast growth (marked in green) and slower growth (marked in red). As they climb in skill capabilities, they take on characteristics of each skill level group, from Beginner, Advanced Beginner, Intermediate, to Advanced Intermediate, to Expert to Advanced Expert. (Image: Architosh)
It would be fantastic if the high-growth phases in the early Beginner level and the hard-earned and typically self-initiated Expert level were present throughout the learning lifecycle of a typical CAD/BIM user. In my 25 years of practicing architecture and being my firm's CAD/BIM management layer, this curve's basics are very true. Others like me may see things differently, and this author would welcome emails with alternative perspectives.
Economic Impacts—Industry Solutions
Everyone I talk to about this "Averaged -- Production Efficiency by Skill Level Groups" curve has something interesting to say. Everyone also says a few common things to say.
First, people recognize the lost economic opportunities by not continuing to advance CAD/BIM skills. Some firms I speak to are starting to do something about this. Some firms are actively researching how to assess skill levels without putting people on edge or sending an unwanted message that their efficiency and speed at working with digital tools are what is most valued about them as employees.
Second, people recognize that there is a real cost impact for bringing in staff at the Beginner level to firms. Often cultural dynamics will keep architecture firms from elevating or upskilling their average CAD/BIM skills—which will only be economically favorable—yet they address efficiency falsely by eliminating future employees based on the digital tools they know at the time of hire. Brilliant, talented people with valuable connections are often eliminated because of shortsighted efficiency concerning new hires, while veteran employees remain underutilized due to stagnant skill levels.
Similarly, colleges and universities undercut the profession by inadvertently making economic conditions worse for it. By not fostering critical technology evaluation skills tied to financial principles, young architects are both made into interchangeable units of production—with their initial value tied too much to what CAD/BIM software platforms they know—and not encouraged to develop skills in alternative options for digital tools which would (a) boost their value to firms using the non-dominant CAD/BIM alternatives (this because they enter at a higher production efficiency level), and (b) increase their flexibility concerning employment giving them more options to be selected not for the benefit they provide firms on dominant platforms (e.g., positive externalities tied to network effects) but for their value as "whole architects."
Technological Lock-In
The technical economics term described above is known as "technological lock-in." Technological lock-in occurs when an industry monopoly or dominant firm creates a technological standard (de facto CAD or BIM standard) that becomes widely adopted, making it difficult for competitors or employees to use alternative technologies or skills.
This can lead to employees and future employees being only trained in the specific skills required by the dominant firm's technology in the AEC workforce. These skills become less valuable in the overall labor market because they are not easily transferable to other industries or firms using alternative technologies. As a result, the dominant firm can maintain its market power and reduce competition while limiting its employees' career options and bargaining power.
"By inadvertently creating a natural monopoly, young architects reduce their bargaining power at firms. There is too much of an abundance of identical labor with exactly their skillset, yet they lack value with skillset differentiation in an undifferentiated market due to concentration by the dominant software system."
It's straightforward. If young architects knew 2-3 CAD/BIM standards at an Advanced Beginner level or higher (F-G level, ideally) and there was a balance of alternatives in the industry, their value to employers would be less beholden to digital tools and more connected to more wholistic aspects of being an architect. By inadvertently creating a natural monopoly, young architects reduce their bargaining power at firms. There is too much of an abundance of identical labor with exactly their skillset, yet they lack value with skillset differentiation in an undifferentiated market due to concentration by the dominant software system.
Software Vendor Options
Software vendors in the CAD/BIM space competing with a dominant firm could help themselves in the industry by doing:
- Increase the number of users and students with at least Advanced Beginner level skills in their tool.
- Implement technologies that accelerate upskilling users on their tool.
- Create technologies that help users switch from dominant tools to non-dominant alternatives more quickly.
The first step makes it easier and less financially risky for firms to adopt alternatives and faster for them to reap benefits from the core innovations in the alternative. The second step boosts core production efficiency in the firm using the alternative, offsetting lost opportunity benefits stemming from network effects. And finally, the third step lessons the risk of switching platforms and speeds up the conversion process.
Closing Comments
The purpose of developing this "Averaged -- Production Efficiency by Skill Level Groups" curve is to form a basis for understanding possible economic downside and upside to skill levels in CAD/BIM tools in AE firms. It also helps create a standard reference for skill sets when I talk to firms about their BIM and CAD practices.
As for the actual curve and its shape? This is a conceptual hypothesis based on decades of experience managing BIM/CAD technologies in practice and from two-plus decades of speaking to BIM and CAD managers in all kinds of global firms as part of editorial projects at Architosh.
"How can architects lament their financial situations, unionization efforts, long hours, et cetera, yet not take the time to formulate plans to measure their own activities?"
The AEC/O industry badly lacks data about its own activities. How can AEC/O firms improve what they do not measure? How can architects lament their financial situations, unionization efforts, long hours, et cetera, yet not take the time to formulate plans to measure their own activities?
CAD/BIM users should start demanding that these tools provide some measurement and assessment. Every tool in this category should, for a start, offer benchmarking functions to help users "best fit" hardware to the software and optimize hardware replacement cycles in synch with software updates. Secondly, and perhaps most importantly, they should provide skill testing assessment features. Lastly, CAD/BIM tools should offer more features that automatically guide and aid in upskilling users.
There is no excuse for most firms—from tech-forward to starchitect firms—to run on intermediate averaged skill sets. Doing so is unrealizing the full economic potential of the investment in the software systems.
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