Cross Country Brewing

Hello Fellow Bimmers,

I have finished my cross-country trek and got to experience several different breweries in the US. In one of these breweries I found several pictures on the wall that got my brain going. The pictures I have included with this blog are from the brewery Heavenly Goat in Mishawaka, Indiana. My favorite brews were the It’s Brittany Bitch (I chose to sample this because of the name and it turned out great!) and the Death by Porter (Because who doesn’t love a good porter). These pictures got my wheels turning on how brewing operations use BIM. In this sense we are literally brewing with BIM! Lol.

Anyways, beer making can be a very tedious process that has some pretty good science behind it. Whether it’s the clearances around holding tanks or piping running through the building for the beer to travel through during the brewing process, these things all must be precise and tracked. That is where BIM steps in. In walking through all these different breweries, the blueprints I saw kept sticking out and making me think of how things were laid out during construction.  Also, how important the construction of these buildings is to the process of brewing in general. Coordination in these buildings can be very detrimental, especially if they have a lot of different pipes running around.

I had a lot of thoughts about how the owners wanted their buildings to look and how the communication process was for many of these buildings. Each brewery I went to had their own personality and I think that is a huge push to BIM, allowing the owner to put their personal touches into the building from the get-go. Being able to visualize the project from start to finish is a huge selling point in today’s market. This was honestly one of my favorite parts of architecture when I first started. I loved connecting with an owner and helping them visualize their project with all the finishes through renderings. Their excitement was infectious, seeing the reactions and being involved in the process with them throughout the construction process was a fun experience.

One of my favorite milestones on the timeline was handover. It is always a bittersweet moment I think, handing over the possession of this project you have worked on for months is relieving. On the other side though, you have built a relationship with the owner and this project. Involved through the schematic design into construction and reading every change order with the owner to ensure they are getting what they really want.

Anyways, I hope that you guys enjoy the pictures and enjoy the podcast! Even the blog is filled with plenty of tangents!! Lol.