Best way to offer in-house Revit support?

[Duncan Lithgow]

As an in-house Revit support man for an office with out 40 RAC users what's the best way to support them?

I've just started a discussion here at work about holding regular, short weekly meetings for all RAC users. What I would love some opinions and experience on is the mix of learning options.

On the one hand it would be great if I could teach everyone how everything in Revit works.
On the other hand that risks them playing with settings they ought to leave well alone.

I could spend an hour a week trying to lift everyone's level, but for these relatively new users isn't it better to teach everyone what's possible and teach some of them how to actually use the functions? I'm thinking about things like Phases, View Templates, Filters, RVT file maintenance and so on.

(We're all working on the same project (a 340,000m2 hospital campus) which involves both new and renovation projects. So consistency between models is critical)

[jsteinhauer]

Duncan,

I suggest that you take the cream of the crop for RAC Users, and give them advanced training on the topics you mentioned. More basic users would receive more basic training. But allow the advanced users to help teach the basic users. I would also use a screen capture product such as Camtasia Studio to do short 5-20 minutes training videos. Finally, I would install a forum software to your internal network for users to ask questions, and receive responses for topics and best practices. We have & 'use' all three methods at my firm, with 'success'. We were ranked 12th in the States for BIM something or other by some publication (how the rankings were done still escapes me).

Cheers,
Jeff

[damon.sidel]

I like Jeff's suggestions and agree with training a few to be power users. I'd add that those power users should be spread across the teams in the office and that some of them should be senior staff (at least as senior as makes sense). I'm constantly talking with people and saying things like "Revit can do it in a number of ways, so this is a project management issue, not a Revit issue." So to have experienced staff, preferably manager-level, working in Revit on the project helps move those decisions along. I think the forum in our office would be of very limited use, so it may be something to evaluate usefulness firm-to-firm. The training videos will work well for some people, but I'd add that this particular thing--at least in our office--would have to be explained to the principals up front so that they don't think people are watching TV. (Sounds silly, but we had to have that conversation in our office.)

When I was in charge of Revit training and support at an office quite a few years ago, I had three levels of training:
1. Intensive multi-(half)day sessions. That was usually to get a new group of users sufficiently up and running. We'd set up computers in a portion of the office or conference room (now I might just use WebEx or GoTo). I did the first few, but then we hired a third party to do it.
2. Weekly lunch sessions that focused on a particular topic. I tried to cover whatever topic was most relevant for the current project(s).
3. One-on-one as needed.

[sbrown]

Pretend you are a doctor with patients. "Make the rounds". Get up from time to time during the day, walk around the office and check in on how your patients are doing. Do they need a nurse or a bedpan changed? Are they in cardiac arrest. don't let things go. Also, I think "just in time training" is the way to go. Get a project team together in the beginning of each phase, identify the needs of the project and train to those needs.

[antman]

All great advice. I'll just add that I think short weekly meetings are a great idea. If the company will provide lunch, a good portion of the people will be willing to learn 'on their own time.' Also what I have found to be highly valuable are shorter (10-30 minute) impromptu meetings, usually with a project team. Sometimes a question arises, and it would be beneficial for the whole team to gain the knowledge. I would just gather the team around the user's station, and go through it right there. In my opinion/experience, the knowledge retention from that setting is very high - especially because it's not 'formal' training, it gives the team members a chance to ask direct questions or offer their own ideas.

[damon.sidel]

Get a project team together in the beginning of each phase, identify the needs of the project and train to those needs.

I have to add that IMHO all training should be focused around a current project. It may cause some stress as people get up to speed, learning while still trying to meet deadlines, but it is so much more valuable to learn on a real project. So that would go for weekly sessions, too. As I mentioned they should be relevant to the current project. Even better, they could use (a copy of) the project model.

[TroyGates]

Use an assessment tool like KnowledgeSmart to find the areas each individual needs training in. Then create small, focused training sessions for the groups of people that are weak on that particular topic. Especially topics that are directly usable on projects immediately.

[Duncan Lithgow]

Thanks for those answers people. I also got some good ideas on Club Revit at LinkedIn. To summarize what I heard there was:

* make sure everyone knows the basics
* make sure everyone knows the company standards
* design tutorials around their typical every day tasks
* when teaching advanced functions make sure everyone understand the consequences

What I think is going to be a bit tricky for me is finding the right people to help up to power level. I've also got a few key people who are in decision making positions but aren't the Revit power users they should be. I need to find a way to lift their level without them losing face.

[davidcobi]

In addition to previous comments, if you provide a very good template you can significantly cut the scope of training required.