Thoughts from the Field - Vol 2 Issue 1

New Year - Why isn't everything better?

I will start off this issue of Thoughts from the Field by saying “Happy New Year”, and…”why is everything still the same”?

If you are like many people I know, you may have been expecting to say goodbye (and good riddance) to everything that was 2020. Now that we are midway into February, many people are looking dismayed as very little has changed for the better. I launched this newsletter in the last half of 2020 with great expectations; great expectations for the newsletter, great expectations for the end of 2020, and great expectations for the industry as a whole.

I ended up stumbling a bit while I struggled with the many challenges presented by the last quarter of 2020. The newsletter took a back seat, my planned launch of a new monthly LinkedIn Live program got postponed due to my cohost coming down with Covid, and I generally did not accomplish all that I set out to accomplish by the end of the year.

Welcome to the new normal.

I launched this newsletter discussing the topic of resilience and in the last issue I published, I issued a warning to prepare for the new normal. What I may not have made clear, is that adapting to the “new normal” really means being flexible and resilient. Whether it’s our personal lives or our work environment, almost nothing is like it used to be (remember 2019?), almost everything is continuing to change, and making inflexible plans for the future is almost sure to result in disappointment. 

My advice is to stay vigilant, learn how to become more resilient, and be prepared to accept and embrace change. And while you are at, if you haven't yet subscribed to this newsletter, click on the SUBSCRIBE button at the top of this newsletter to stay in touch and up to date.

What I am Checking Out

Rapid Covid Testing at the Company Level?

With the pandemic on everyone's mind, I decided to share some information from a presentation I recently watched during one of our regional safety committee meetings. The presentation was by Ariss Medical, and introduced the availability of affordable rapid covid tests that can potentially be purchased and administered at the company level, by a trained individual. These are rapid antigen tests that are reported to have a high degree of accuracy, with a cost of about $30 (US) each. I know that "affordable" is a relative term, but I just paid $100 for a rapid test, so this has the potential to be significantly cheaper. The presentation was given to group of safety managers, all from construction companies. With construction staying busy, keeping people healthy and working has been a major emphasis in my area, and rapid testing has been an integral part of some construction company's overall covid health and safety plan. These new tests may offer an alternative to more expensive tests that require sending people out and waiting for results.

Autodesk Announces new Construction Cloud

I was an early fan of Plangrid software and its ability to keep the entire construction project team up to date and informed. When Autodesk purchased Plangrid a couple of years ago, the question for many of us was, "how will this get integrated into Autodesk's family of products?" We saw a few novel features like the ability to view a project's 3D model by clicking on the 2D plan sheet, but the full answer to that question seems to be answered in the latest announcement by Autodesk this month about a platform called Autodesk Build.

Autodesk Build unifies best-in-class features from BIM 360 and PlanGrid and provides construction teams the power to:

Manage projects more efficiently

Maximize cross-team collaboration

Digitize and centralize document management

Streamline cost management

I am reaching out to my friends at Autodesk to learn more and will share as I do. This platform is now available globally, so if any of you have had the opportunity to try it out, please share your thoughts in the comments section of this newsletter. In the meantime, you can read more about it here in this blog post.

Bluebeam Revu 20.1

The latest release of Bluebeam Revu arrived as a minor release in January and includes some interesting features in the release notes, including some improvements to a few markup and measuring tools, and some changes to Bluebeam Studio. I think the most interesting item in this release, however, is the new integration with Microsoft Sharepoint. This new integration allows you to navigate to your PDF documents in your existing Sharepoint site, and then open the file directly in your web browser using Bluebeam Revu. You can check out, edit, and check in, all your PDF files (including plan sheets) from your Sharepoint site directly, without having to go through any extra steps (download, save, overwrite, etc). I think this feature enables some new workflow possibilities and I look forward to experimenting. Note that in order to enable this feature, your company will have to install an app on its Sharepoint site.

I have noticed while in clients' offices that there are still many people using older versions of Bluebeam Revu, so I want to give you my thoughts and recommendations related to updating your copy of Bluebeam Revu. I also want to clarify which version of the training you should use if you want to learn more about workflows and how to use the software.

Beginning with the release of Revu 2018, Bluebeam introduced a major change to the user interface. It was a big enough change that many users did not make the switch, and the early releases of Revu 2018 were fraught with bugs. Consequently, I do see quite a few people still using Revu 2017 (and earlier). If this is you, make sure you are updated to the latest version, which is Revu 2017.0.40. You can learn more about using Bluebeam Revu 2017 and earlier in this LinkedIn Learning course.

Revu 2018 was mostly about a user interface refresh, and didn't include many new features. For this reason we simply added a new chapter to the Learning Bluebeam 2017 course that shows you how to manage the changes going from 2017 to 2018.

The release of Revu 2019 squashed some serious bugs and added new and improved features. If you are currently using Revu 2018, I highly encourage you to update, and you can watch Learning Bluebeam Revu 2019 to get up to speed.

Keep in mind that if you have been paying for annual support from Bluebeam, these major release updates (from 2018 to 2019 to 20) are included at no additional cost. Otherwise you will have to purchase the upgrade from Bluebeam.

What's New on LinkedIn?

Notice that I changed the title of this heading? As LinkedIn Learning becomes more and more an integrated part of LinkedIn, things that are new tend to have an impact across the platform. For example, the Q & A feature contained within each LinkedIn Learning course has the ability for these discussions to appear in your main LinkedIn feed. If you haven't used this feature in LinkedIn Learning yet, you should check it out. While watching any course you have the ability to ask a question by just clicking on the Q & A tab in the course page. From there, you can ask a question or start a discussion that will be available to other learners watching the course. The course instructor is also notified when you post a question here, so it enables you to engage directly with the instructor and the other people in the class. You also have the option of enabling the "Also post on my LinkedIn feed" option, and the question you ask will also create an update for your connections so you reach even more people. Its a great example of how the Learning features are being deeply integrated into LinkedIn. There are some additional features coming that I can't quite share with you yet, but they should be ready to discuss soon, so stay tuned.

Check out this Newsletter

One of my fellow instructors, Bonnie Biafore, has started a Newsletter called Bonnie's Project Pointers, here on LinkedIn. Bonnie teaches project management courses and is the resident LinkedIn Learning expert on Microsoft Project.

Beams and Columns - Live with Jim and Shawn - COMING SOON!

Another relatively new feature on the platform is called LinkedIn Live. I will be launching a new live broadcast on March 2nd with my aforementioned co-host, Shaun Bryant. We will have more details soon, but we are really looking forward to this opportunity to reach out and be more interactive with our audience. I am based in the US and Shaun is based in the UK, so we hope to bring some global perspective to topics that effect Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC). The first episode will air on March 2nd at 9:30am MST. I will get details out soon.

General Safety and Health Courses

Last year I launched a course on LinkedIn Learning called Understanding Personal Protective Equipment, that is more of a general safety and health course (not specifically for construction). The course has done great with thousands of viewers, and it has prompted us to begin creating a series of general safety and health courses. Working in the Heat, and Slips Trips and Falls, have been recorded and are in the hands of the production team. Look for these to be released soon. There are also two more in the works, and I look forward to continuing with these general safety courses in addition to more courses for the #AEC industries.