BIM and Construction

Here is a copy of an Article I have written for Victoria and Vancouver Construction Associations:

"BIM wont have any affect on me".... "No one I know is doing BIM models"..!!

I hear this quite often when I talk to the contractors on site about how BIM is affecting the construction industry.....

Building Information Modeling is already affecting the projects they are working on, however it may not be directly impacting what they are doing....YET!!

The majority of Architects who are the late adopters of BIM are doing "Lonely BIM". lonely BIM is a term used when the Architectural firm is creating their drawings with their old process but with new software. The end results are the same, a printed copy of a set of drawings, so the trades and contractors don't really see any difference.

Those Architects who adopted BIM early are seeking out consultants who are BIM savvy so their project can be done entirely using BIM. The spin off of this is that those Architects who are familiar with BIM are encouraging the construction companies to use the BIM models for quantification, reviewing the constructability and scheduling the project.

Construction companies that are working on BIG projects are getting the model from the Architects. That trend is starting to trickle down to the smaller projects.

So next time you are bidding on a project ask if there is a BIM model you can view, you'll get a quick understanding of the project and you'll be able to get a much better understanding of the scope of work your bidding on.