Why Is It Important For Organisations? How Is Team Building

Team building. Despite the fact numerous team building books are published every year, building strong teams continues to be one of the major concerns of all the organizations. Every year organizations spend several thousands inviting resources and experts in this field to train their workforce to strengthen the team spirit within the organization. If this is your concern too, then you are not alone.

When you are working on your skills and goals for creating exceptional teams either by deriving the wisdom from team building books or by attending relevant seminars, you should focus on creating a positive work culture. The question however is why should organizations focus on this factor and on creating a positive work culture when they are actually supposed to be focusing on production, marketing and sales?

The answer is very simple businesses processes such as production, marketing and sales do not happen by themselves but they are outcomes of people's efforts. Inevitably, we have groups of people working on these processes. If these people do not work united as a team then they would be undoing each other's efforts and thereby becoming a self-defeating group.

Team building should therefore be the primary focus of organizations. Further goals could be achieved only after this primary goal is realized and until then, no organization could actually achieve optimal performance levels.

Thankfully today we have access to numerous studies that help managers and team leaders with insights on building teams. Many team building books that elaborately discuss this topic come as resource manuals for the leaders. So if you are struggling to create a positive work culture or build strong teams, you need not despair because you will never run short of resources. You will find all the resources you need online as well as offline.

Once you manage to build a strong team, all the other goals that directly affect the bottom line of your business could be achieved more easily. You will also have a more positive profit-and-loss graph once you have a strong team. When your team is working in tandem operating with a single goal in mind, you can achieve any goal, including the most challenging goals.

It is not without reason companies invest heavily on team building and on creating a positive work culture. You just need to imitate the top organizations in any industry on this goal of building a healthy team and a positive work culture. Benefits of peoples.

Building Information Modelling 3D (BIM) Real Needs

The concept of building information modelling (BIM) has received universal acceptance from the building services, structural engineering and architectural fraternity mainly due to its need for lean construction and also its cross-disciplinary usability. 3D BIM modeling has existed for a number of years now and the industry is aggressively adapting itself to embrace the new work flows of the BIM process; however, there is still a lack of clarity amongst the owners (the clients) as to what exactly they can achieve from these models, what they need to achieve and how they can make optimum use of this concept.

This article seeks to explore some beliefs related to the use of BIM and sheds light on when it should be used and to what extent. For the sake of clarity, it is important to know the difference between non-BIM 3D CAD models and a parametric BIM models.

3D CAD models are virtual representations of a facility that provide only visual details. Applications such as AutoCAD Architecture and AutoCAD MEP are used to create 3D CAD models that can be used for design, development, construction and pre-fabrication. On the other hand, BIM models are intelligent models embedded with parametric details that are extremely important for design, development, construction, pre-fabrication, assembly, analysing energy performance and facility management of the built environment. For BIM projects, the details can be effectively shared between different project stakeholders: facility owners, designers/architects, MEP (M&E) engineers, fabricators, consultants and contractors. Revit Architecture and Revit MEP are applications used for BIM modelling whilst Navisworks is employed to detect clashes between different system models. 

One of the most crucial aspects that helps decide whether BIM is actually required or not is gaining an in-depth understanding of the model's purpose. More often than not, there is so much difference between client's 'stated' needs and his/her 'real' needs. In a lot of cases, clients state that they require a BIM model but actually what they require is a smart clash-free 3D model which can be used to extract respective construction drawings. In such scenarios, AutoCAD MEP or AutoCAD Architecture could easily be used to provide a 3D model that meets this need. Alternatively, a BIM software tool could be used to provide a 3D model without providing additional elements such as data rich 'information'.

In other cases, a BIM model may actually be the basis to plan, design, construct, and manage a particular facility. These scenarios require multidisciplinary project stakeholders to access the BIM model at different stages in the project life cycle. As a result, the most important factor that dictates the success of any project employing BIM is the richness of 'information' embedded into the models.

 So, depending on the project's scope, a full-fledged BIM model may contain valuable information, such as dimensions of building elements, quantity take-off data, material requirements, time scheduling, costing, prefabrication data, activity simulation, and energy performance. Other important factors that contribute to success of BIM include the data-sharing and interoperability standards to allow smooth multidisciplinary collaboration between key disciplines.

Irrespective of whether the client actually requires BIM or non-BIM CAD model, the BIM wave that has spread across the AEC industry has forced the agenda to adopt a more progressive approach to planning, designing and coordinating models and drawings. 

The industry continues to transition from non-BIM 2D approaches to collaborative BIM work flows and 3D CAD work flows and even that is a huge shift for the industry. This change is more often than not influenced by the demand side i.e. the clients.

Five Basic Points To Team Building

Everyone needs to know and and team building basic option run every department.

1. Team Building Explained

For years now, people's perception of team building has been synonymous with images of people building rafts, taking part in 'awkward' trust exercises, or being stranded whilst orienteering in the middle of nowhere.

It may come as a surprise to a lot of people to learn that things have actually evolved.

A survey by Videophone UK and You Gov has concluded the UK staff have become turned off by team building as they often breed 'awkwardness'. According to the survey, experiences like being blindfolded and led by colleagues are considered the least effective team-building activities.

Findings showed the most effective events are social events like going out for a drink or a meal; Team building events that are interactive, fun, fast-paced and down-right entertaining event are the sort you will want to share with colleagues.

2. Conferences - The Good/The Bad

Whilst conferences are the single most common way to converge an entire company in one location for a collaborative session of discussion and networking, quite often you are asked to provide Conference Energiser activities to whip-up the room and revitalise delegates throughout the away-day after prolonged periods of intense presentations and slide shows.

A poorly delivered Staff Conference can have a negative impact on the morale of your employees.

Without the addition of carefully choreographed team building activities, energisers or keynote speaker, you can be faced with delegates criticising the day for being "death-by-PowerPoint", "chalk-and-talk" or another favourite is "analysis-paralysis".

3. Think about Going Abroad

Organising team building events that are to be delivered overseas and internationally can be a daunting event to manage as there are so many variables and added logistics to cope with; hundreds of flights, hundreds of requirements, hundreds of hotel rooms - all in a venue that aren't exactly fluent in English - needless to say things can be lost in translation!

That being said the output of such an event is very useful to a team and something where people are away from their comfort zone and having to work together will definitely mould a team quicker and stronger than anything local.

4. What team building events will your team most enjoy?

Often clients want to drill down to finite details about the specific activities that make up team building workshops including a minute-by-minute agenda. Not only is that not applicable for this type of training since it's often a fluid and dynamic process, but it is really focusing on the texture of the bark on the trees rather than stepping back for a view of the forest.

What is important is having a clear goal for this portion of your meeting. One mistake companies make is having a "We do a team building activity at this meeting every year" attitude with no real thought about what they want to get out of it. How do you choose the right team building activity? It's best to take the Stephen Covey approach and begin with the end in mind.

Before you start filling out Internet forms and making phone calls to team building companies, think about the goals for this session. If you are the information gatherer, press the decision makers for additional information beyond the tired and overused "team building" and "communication" for something more concrete like breaking down silos or building creative problem solving skills. On the surface you might be looking for something fun and interactive, but there's a good chance that if the company is spending thousands of dollars on this event, someone is looking for tangible outcomes.

Team building activities are exercises that can help teams build cohesion and work through a host of common group issues. They are used as educational tools to provide opportunities to at least begin discussions that can be continued back at the workplace.

How do you choose the right team building activity for your meeting? It's like the ingredients of a delicious recipe. Instead of focusing on the bok choy, which isn't particularly interesting in itself but put in context of other ingredients becomes a flavourful dish, begin with the end in mind. If you take a step back and focus on the goals and outcomes from your meeting you will make the right decision for a team building activity.

5. When to do team building? Take a look at January!

Research has shown that one of the best ways to avoid that after Christmas lull into depression is by doing things that actually give you a cause to look forward to something. So why not invigorate your team and give them something to get excited about with a January kick-off team building events. A fun corporate event means that whilst Christmas is over, the gifts just keep on giving. Activities testing physical, mental, skill and creative capabilities revive the thrill of Christmas and good old family fun, and your team will be left feeling energised and ready to take on the working world once more. Or why not revitalise your team and get their engines going with a straight-talking super-car racetrack experience or Golf Day?

There are a range of no-nonsense successful packages catering to any budget and that really aim to target the core skills for devising your perfect team, team building events are guaranteed to put a much needed smile on your employees face... and yours too!

New Year's resolutions - we've all made them. Whether it's deciding to join the gym and actually use it this year, de-clutter the house or stick to your diet for longer than just New Year's Day this time around, January 1st is a day designed for CHANGE.

But for all our good intentions and spirit, studies have shown that by January 10th most of us will have already given up our resolutions, a mere nine days after they were made, with three-quarters of 3,000 British admitting they were no longer confident they would stick to their promises for the rest of the month.If you're failing to see these changes through at home though, don't let this be the case at work. Take the opportunity to really target the issues you may have with your team and challenge them to raise their game.