We recently completed the construction document prep phase for two very large projects at GLHN and it seemed like a golden opportunity to do a project debrief with the production teams. With GLHN being an A/E firm we have a unique situation where we can focus on the bridging aspects between A  & E as it relates to Revit.

After meeting with each discipline's production / design teams it became clear that there were key areas that needed improvement. These areas included Project Management, Communication, Revit Training, Revit Template Development and Revit Idiosyncrasies.  The Idiosyncrasies being like a software rock in the river you have to
learn to swim around.

All typical growing pains for a firm in the process of converting to Revit, but what really impressed me is that with all the adversities of two multi-million dollar projects having their schedules inexplicably align to the same due date, design shifts and refinements that continued right through CD’s and the struggle of moving to an unfamiliar production platform, both teams still managed to deliver the projects on schedule without sacrificing quality. 
A trial by fire no one would wish to undergo but one that speaks to the integrity, dedication and perseverance of the GLHN team.

I’m reminded of the birth of a Samurai Sword whose smith’s led a religious from of life; accompanying each step of the work with prayer and ritual, bringing the steel through a trial by fire & hand to create one of the finest and strongest blades of its time.

The debrief confirmed that our Revit Optimization Work Plan is on track & target to resolving many of our production concerns and ultimately will capture substantial efficiency gains.  The Architectural side of the Work Plan
is complete and in the hands of my MEP counterpart at GLHN, Tony, for finalization.  I’ve also begun work on a Revit Training Matrix to help us organize and target our training efforts.  Looking to finish the Architectural part this weekend and hand it off to Tony on Monday.
                                                                                                                                                   c. kilgore

Two keys to improved productivity can be found in the Revit Library and setting up project Templates. 

Templates are essentially bare bone projects that have the basic sheet organization and commonly used annotations, notes, schedules, families, line types, details, detail components, etc.  The template gets you off to a quick start and helps standardize the format and appearance of your construction documents.

An essential element of the Template is the titleblock.  The titleblock is a separate family that is loaded into the template or project (if a custom titleblock is required)  It contains instance parameters that allow you to input unique attributes for each specific sheet and type parameters that act as global controls for changes to the titleblock through-out the project.

I use various visibility controls to turn on and off attributes of the GLHN titleblock.  Type visibility parameters like the seal registration points, the disclaimer (that is applied to the record drawings set), Volumes I & II (given our 300 plus sheet sets), and our standard GLHN Logo (which sometimes is replace by a collaboration logo).  Instance visibility parameters control a segmented boundary line that defines our notes portion of the sheet.  It can be turned on/off in segments depending on the length of the notes field and defined independently for each sheet.

The above are all recent upgrades to the GLHN titleblock including the addition of a revision schedule that automatically reads the revision clouds on that sheet and reports the revision ASI number, date and description. Since it was determined that we would be using the 'by sheet' method of scheduling our revisions I did not include the revision sequence number in the revision schedule parameter fields. I just typed in the revision sequence 1 thru 8 in the titleblock.  When you use the 'by sheet' method the revisions are automatically numbered 1, 2, 3, 4, ...etc as they are issued to the individual sheet so the sequence number becomes irrelavent.  When you use the 'by project' setting the sequence number is essential to your revision schedule and replaces the "typed in" numbers I used with the 'by sheet' method. 
                                                                                                                                            c. kilgore