Thursday, December 22, 2011
Should Project Managers Learn Revit?
The role of Project Manager or Project Architect is very hard to define. There are almost as many variations as there are projects. Some Project Managers are actively involved in the production, many mostly review drawings, others are managing relationships exclusively. Of course, most do all of the above. In the end, they need to rely on their production past to know how to manage production present. So even though Project Managers will likely not be involved in production Revit they NEED to know how it works. The sooner a Project Manager realizes this, the happy he will be. In fact, the happier we all will be. If a Project Manager doesn't learn how to use Revit, there will always be this murky unknown that causes tension in the team. It's worth the time to send a PM to training. After or even during training the PM should model up something small from start to finish. Within a month or so, the haze will start to clear...
I am a PM and certainly agree that there is value in my knowledge of Revit. The firm I work in has PM's at a very high level of responsibility, so they discourage me spending the time to remain familiar with Revit. However, I believe there are enough advantages to keeping up with current technology to make it worth the time: I can communicate with the design team on a more "in the trenches" level thereby gaining credibility with those I am directing, I often am able to assist in solving problems related to how to use Revit, and I can do the work myself if needed - which happens when there is a deadline and someone calls in sick, etc. I am also able to communicate the value of Revit in a very tangible way to upper management. The best part is I get to use Revit to study the design and find areas that need further development or correction.
ReplyDeleteCouldn't agree more. My journey was a bit different than is typical of PMs: I became somewhat of a Revit expert (ok, nerd really) and only recently have I made my way into becoming a PM & PA among other ancillary roles. I wouldn't have it any other way.
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