Using Revit for Facilities Management - Pros & Cons

[Marek Brandstatter]

Some FM questions:

How well is Revit suited for facilities management?

How does it stack up against Archibus for example?

Is it suited for prime-time?

[PeterJ]

Marek, this has been discussed quite recently, I couldn't find it in a quick search but it is out there, just a question of playing with the search queries, or you could contact Jeffrey McGrew directly, he is among the more knowledgable people here on that topic.

[hand471037]

Here's what I wrote in another thread about this topic:

Revit excells as a Information Management tool. In some ways it's even better than the existing FM solutions out there, for everything is always linked & live, and you can trust your dataset. With certain other FM applications it's not so bidirectional, syncing is more manual, takes much more setup, and if the drawings get out of sync with the database you're in a lot of trouble, for now you can't trust either dataset. This never happens with Revit and the set up is very minimal and doesn't require any programing or database knowlege. Working with Revit for FM is more simular to Apature than to Archibus, in that you can simply import your existing DWG files and define your suites over them rather than recreating your buildings within Revit in whole. Revit also understand BOMA standards out of the box.

Revit is not however made for FM. You can certainly leverage Revit's bidirectional data model & it's built-in relational database to track any information you want about a building. However, like the post above states, a dedicated FM solution is going to have better toolsets for FM specific items, like move management and the like. However, Revit is easyer to use, useful for more things, and way cheaper than something like Apature. So look at your needs first, and decide if you might be willing to give up some FM-specific features to gain a faster, better, and easyer to use system that requires less setup. You might find that Revit will be the cheaper and better solution!

So, the short of it is that Revit is a great basic FM tool that has low overhead due to it's ease of use & ease of setup. Plus you can use it for other things too. Many property brokers and Architects working for them would be very well serviced by just using Revit. For example, I know a property broker that, on his own, without training, without a CAD manager, without any help, completely recreated his 30 story skyscraper, in 3D, complete with all the leasing & suite information. I've *never* seen a property broker who could use AutoCAD beyond simple drawings!

If you need to go beyond just tracking information, you might need a 'real' dedicated FM solution like ArchiBus or Apature. However, that comes with higher overhead, for the product, setup, and learning curve are all gonna be steeper. But I stress for most to at least look at Revit first, just because after reviewing those other FM solutions at another firm, we found that Revit, while not being FM-specific, was so muh cheaper in the long run for us that it was the best choice.

So Revit is great for small shops, single users, and the like. ArchiBus and Apature are great for large shops, corpirate users tracking lost of different info/buildings, who have CAD management support and such.

[Marek Brandstatter]

Thanks Jeffrey - really appreciate your insights.

Revit4FM is something we're planning to delve into much deeper over the next couple of weeks - best practices, tips, tricks, workarounds etc.

It would be great to share knowledge?

[hand471037]

Yeah! I've got a ton of info and tips, for this is what I used Revit for a lot (until I went to work for a reseller). E-mail me off-line and I can send you some tips...

Jeffrey.mcgrew@id8media.com

[Marek Brandstatter]

Hi Jeffrey - let me know if my email got though.

marekb at cadplan dot co dot za