BIM for Sri Lankan Construction Industry

Building Information Modelling, commonly referred to as BIM, has become the celebrity in the AEC sector. Interestingly there are valid reasons for BIM to be in that position. The benefits it has brought, and significantly the benefits it promises, and the changes it is making to the way we work makes it something attracts everybody’s attention. BIM is not a software. It is a concept for development of software and improving the process of design, construction and operation of buildings.

BIM is not popular yet in Sri Lanka. In fact, it is unknown to most AEC professionals in Sri Lanka. Poor awareness is thought to be critical barrier for receiving the potential benefits of advancements in the technology and processes in the field. Identifying this gap, initiatives were taken by a group from University of Moratuwa aiming to improve the BIM awareness of Sri Lankan AEC industry. The first step taken was the implantation of web based portal for information sharing and dissermination. The web site was named BIMLab Network and can be accessed at http://www.bimlab.net from around the world. I developed and maintain this website, it is at the initial stage, but I try to include interesting information time to time. Do visit this site and send me any feedback that you have.

Official Web of QS Alumni Launched

The Quantity Surveying Alumni Association of University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka has launched its official website at www.qsalumni.org. QS Alumni is one of the most active alumni clubs of university of Moratuwa. Its membership comprised of graduate quantity surveyors from University of Moratuwa.

Mobitel HSDPA Connectivity Poor Again

Mobitel 3G broadband has become poor again. It auto disconnects often or connectivity changes to WCDMA or UMTS where no download or upload can happen. I wonder what has gone wrong again.

VFORM Training Centre

VFORM Training Centre was ceremonially inaugurated on 2nd July 2010 with presence of number of eminent people from various sectors of the industry. Interestingly, they were all clients of VFORM Consultants (Private) Limited.

VFORM Consultants became a leading professional service provider in comparatively short period of time, specifically in the field of Quantity Surveying, Project Management and Dispute Resolution in the Construction Industry, Sri Lanka.

At reaching the level of excellence of professionalism, VFORM has now embarked on training and dissemination of knowledge (in my words, sharing of knowledge). “We are not planning for conventional way of academic teaching, what we look for is a model of Learning by Doing, i.e. to provide training with hands-on experience” said Lalith Ratnayake, a director of VFORM Consultants. “With our experience, here in Sri Lanka and overseas, we have identified a large number of gaps and poor practices because of unawareness of people practicing in various levels. Our endeavour is to collect expertise from the industry and train those people to perform better so that the standards of the industry will be uplifterd” added Tilak Kolonne, the other director.

Congradulations to Tilak Kolonne and Lalith Ratnayake for their achievements....!

Homepage: www.vform.net
Email: info@vform.net

Are you the winner?

Similar to most other countries, the lowest bidder is typically the winner of construction projects in Sri Lanka. In public sector this is because of accountability and in private sector it is mostly for the cost reasons. The lowest bid may come from a firm that badly under estimates the cost of the project. Therefore, there is a possibility that large winner’s curses to exist. Winner’s curse results in lower profits (or negative profits in some cases) which is detrimental. Want to know further? Read my web article: Winner’s Curse in Construction - Evidence from Sri Lanka.

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Mobitel HSDPA Connectivity Improved

Just about a month ago I wrote a review on Mobitel 3G internet concluding that “I would never recommend Mobitel to anyone”. But, things have changed quite much. I noticed that issues I mentioned in my review are very much corrected in the New Year. Connection speed is quite OK now (though not very good) and I got disconnected rarely. I got error 619 only once. Coupling this with their good price plans, I think Mobitel 3G would be a good option now.

Mobitel HSDPA (3G) Connection - Review

After using my Mobitel 3G Data connection for more than a year, I thought of writing a small review here about it. Initially, the service was very good. Only problem I had was it did not have connectivity in my home town, Aranayake. Therefore, the advertisement of the school teacher at a rural school seemed to be misleading.

The service degraded so rapidly in recent times. Now it is at a worst situation. It is quite difficult to get connected. Most of the time it returns the “error 619” for my BandLuxe modem.

From modem literature I found that this error is due to the fact that the network refuses the connection probably because I have not paid my bill. I pay online and pay all my bills on time. So, the only probability is that Mobitel refuses the connection because they have issued more connections than they can serve. This is further substantiated by “connection drop” occurring very often, especially if no data transfers occurred for few seconds. This is real troublesome and risky when I had to do online payments. Once, a payment was done, but I could not get the certified receipt since the connection suddenly dropped.

When I’m lucky to get connected the connection speed is only 64 Kbps, which almost like GPRS (EDGE).

All these problems are there when I use it during day time, especially in late evening when many would be trying to get connected; and never occurred in dawn.

I think they drop active connections to serve the other requests for connection. In my opinion, Mobitel follows a poor business strategy. They try to increase their customer base at the expense of the satisfaction of their current customers. They will ultimately loose all their customers.

I will never recommend Mobitel 3G Data connection to you. Cheers.

Above is my personal opinion upon experience as a customer of Mobitel 3G Data connection offered by Sri Lanka Telecom Mobitel, and I have not verified the technical facts from experts.

However, You should notice that Mobitel Sri Lanka offers cheap HSDPA packages for "Upahara" users. These would not be matched by Dialog.