With the construction industry starting to emerge from the hiatus imposed by Coronavirus, reviewing upcoming projects in the light of social distancing requirements and revisions of plans to ensure job constructability is first on many organisations’ to do lists. With many of the major contractors having committed to keeping cash flowing through the industry over lockdown, smaller businesses look likely to emerge in a position to compete effectively in the marketplace. BIM has been key to maintaining communication and enabling design work to progress. With the construction season - particularly in Scotland and the North compressed to weeks rather than months - the use of designs driven by BIM, 3D visualisations, and other areas of technology will be key to assessing which projects begin, or are restarted, in 2020.

For the smaller concern where income has been restricted over the last few months the costs of implementing this new technology is one of the main issues. On the one hand there is the need to remain competitive, and on the other showing a realistic return on investment in software, and the infrastructure to make effective use of it. Driving Vision have worked with many small and medium sized organisations helping them achieve this balance. Basing your design process in the cloud controls costs by providing scalable storage through the Cloudalize platform and lean project management though the Plannerly platform. Working with Plannerly enables you to create simple online BIM Execution Plans, schedule, manage and automate tasks making sure that all participants are communicating efficiently.

Visually based tools allow you to communicate the impact of construction on the environment and surroundings to clients and other stakeholders. This can lead to quicker decision making and, particularly important in the current climate, introduce more clarity into the design process for all those involved. With the need to communicate with all sizes of business as well as the public sector being the key to progressing projects, Driving Vision’s advanced visualisation tools can give insights to help assess site accessibility. It may be that a site with restricted access or limited paths for traffic can be assessed using 3D visualisations to decide what changes to site practice are needed to bring the project within social distancing requirements.

Using these tools brings the capability of the smaller organisation up to that of much larger businesses. It also enables them to capitalise on their inherent advantages of agility and speed and flexibility of response to changes in site requirements. This gives the small and medium sized business huge value to the larger organisation during and after this time of change and retrenchment in the construction industry. Get in touch with Driving Vision to learn more about our processes and suite of software and infrastructure support.

Implementing BIM can be daunting, but Driving Vision is here to help you at the pace you are comfortable with. Get started by getting in touch now