If you already do this for a living: Capacity at the level of each task team, not the firm. A firm with fifty Revit users can still be short of the three people this project needs in month four.
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Every tender response promises a delivery plan. ISO 19650 asks the team to back that promise with evidence: a summary of what it can do and how much of it, for this project.
Capability is knowing how: experience with the project’s information standard, its production methods, and the tools to follow them.
Capacity is having enough: people, hours, licences, hardware and support, available in the weeks the project needs them.
A team can be capable and still not have the capacity. That is the more common failure.
Three things to check
Each task team checks itself on three points, in this project’s terms:
- Managing information. Does the team know the standards and procedures the project uses, and does it have people with time to do the information tasks: checking, naming, sharing, keeping registers?
- Producing information. Does it know the methods (modelling standards, templates, classification) and have enough people to produce the deliverables on time?
- IT. Does it have the hardware, software, licences and support, in enough quantity, for the whole team, for the whole period?
The lead appointed party collects these into one capability and capacity summary for its delivery team, and submits it with the pre-appointment BEP, a mobilisation plan and a risk register.
The work needs 60 hours more than the team has. Say so in the capability and capacity summary, with how you will close the gap, before the appointment, not in week 6.
A services subcontractor’s tender says “experienced BIM team of 40”. Appointed, it puts two modellers on the project: the rest are on another job. By month four the coordination models are three weeks late, and the clash process runs on old models for a quarter.
The tender names three modellers by role, at 60% for six months, plus a coordinator at 20%, and shows licences for all of them. The summary also notes one gap: no one has used the client’s classification system, so a training day is in the mobilisation plan. The client can see exactly what it is buying.
Read it against the plan
A capability summary only means something next to the delivery plan. The number of deliverables, the hours each takes, the people and their share of the week should add up. If a team promises 200 models and drawings in a stage with two people at half time, the plan and the summary contradict each other, and that is worth a clarification before appointment.
Key takeaways
- A tender response shows three things: the team can manage information, can produce it, and has the IT to do both, in the quantities this project needs.
- Capability is knowing how (standards, methods, tools); capacity is having enough of it at the right time.
- Each task team assesses itself; the lead appointed party adds them up into one summary for the client.
- A gap found in tender is a plan; a gap found in production is a delay.
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