It might seem daunting, time consuming & prohibitive for smaller practices, to implement BIM. Not with Driving Vision!
This article is part of a blog series on the Virtual Design and Construction world. What can we expect it to bring to the construction industry?
One day JB, Driving Vision CEO, met his friend Sean, a builder. They talked about SmartLeanBIM which advocates the right BIM, at the right time, by the right people, and specifically for the right reasons.
JB started the conversation by saying that in the construction industry, we traditionally design, and then work out all the mistakes during construction.
With BIM, during the design stages, we create a digital prototype of the asset eliminating reworks and waste. But BIM is more than just software or a tool - it is a culture, a new way of working.
BIM has multiple teams and uses, including marketing and facility management.
"Nothing new here", said Sean.
JB agreed but added that traditionally, teams work independently, and tools are uncoordinated from the rest of the workflow.
We rely on manual processes including Excel and Word, and we use an internal drive and sometimes a separate cloud-based system for documentation.
As the two systems are not synchronized, teams may double the work, by saving documents in both systems.
Since not everyone has access, collaboration can be cumbersome and time-consuming.
Without a single repository for information, projects lack standardization.
Site managers and designers often have their way of labeling and storing documents, which makes it difficult to track down information quickly.
It makes auditing company procedures unreliable.
In the industry, we have great authoring, analysis, and use tools but we still are slow to utilize business management platforms for BIM management.
JB ended the conversation by saying:
BIM is about collaborating to help remove silos, enhance communication, and facilitate planning.
BIM improves the visualization of the design before starting the construction process and helps handle project management.
The steps are plan, scope, schedule, track, and verify. It helps to simplify project management, streamline the BIM execution planning (BEP) process, reduce the administrative burden, ease the management of BIM tasks, and connect the BIM requirements to the model for BIM compliance.
When implemented, BIM helps visualize a project using all specs, information, and descriptions to create a 3D model. It improves communication amongst all stakeholders and helps the decision process to finish the project on time and within budget.
BIM helps to visualize the future project before it starts. Before starting the construction process, the plan can be revised to make it better and mitigate risks, as early as the design phase.
According to a market survey report by Markets and Markets, the BIM market is expected to rapidly grow over the next five years and reach $15 billion in 2028.
Below we describe the top BIM 2024 trends, fueled by growing urbanization and the need for affordable housing worldwide.
BIM coupled with the Internet of Things (IoT) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) helps construction companies to redesign and streamline their processes making the decision-making process efficient through the life cycle of a building from design to maintenance.
IoT sensors collect real-time data like temperature and humidity to control the building's comfort of its inhabitants. AI digests this data to enhance the building's performance, predict maintenance requirements, and improve energy efficiency.
Cloud technology promotes collaboration in the construction industry. BIM's platforms, using the internet, allow all teams working on a project to access data from a centralized model, from a single source, from anywhere, at any time.
Real-time collaboration lowers coordination errors and improves project efficiency.
Sustainability and efficient building methods have favored prefabrication and modular construction.
Designing, visualizing, and fabricating modular components with BIM helps construction companies to streamline the coordination of prefabricated elements, helping them to minimize waste and deliver projects on time.
BIModular Director Geoffrey Jennings says:
Most disciplines now utilize BIM in their design process. Over 98% of large architecture firms in the U.S. have adopted BIM and over 30% of small firms use it for some modeling and documentation. The collective BIM adoption rate in the design industry is 80%.
Digital twins using BIM data make it easy to analyze different scenarios to improve building performance and simplify maintenance scheduling. BIM facilitates the design and construction of structures.
Digital twins monitor the usage performances of the building to improve the comfort and health of the occupants through the life cycle of a building.
BIM is a great tool to reach sustainability goals. Sustainable design principles using BIM help to integrate all information provided by designers, engineers, and facility managers at the early stages of a project.
By simulating energy performance, making daylight analysis, and assessing material lifecycle, designers can make informed decisions and minimize the environmental impact.
Generative AI helps set design goals and constraints. BIM software generates design options to maximize the building's performance, minimize cost, and improve aesthetics.
Generative design helps to explore complex geometry and iterations, encouraging innovation and pushing the perimeters of the design to improve the sustainability and efficiency of construction.
Immersive technologies enhance the visualization capabilities of BIM, improving project scheduling and construction. The positive results are enhanced communication, improved spatial awareness, and reduced errors during construction.
For example, in augmented reality (AR) you can overlay digital models onto the physical environment, providing the project members with immersive designs and possible solutions.
Blockchain technology is becoming a secure and transparent means of managing BIM data and transactions.
Blockchain establishes the integrity and durability of BIM data, enhancing accountability and minimizing disputes, producing smart contracts, automating payment processes, and streamlining project governance.
Resilience due to climate change and natural disasters is critical in infrastructure planning and design.
BIM allows engineers to assess the resilience of infrastructure assets and maximize designs for durability and adaptability that can cope with environmental challenges and ensure long-term sustainability.
Interoperability between various software platforms often blocks the data exchange in BIM's implementation.
OpenBIM allows interoperability among different BIM software solutions allowing better communication across disciplines and organizations, improving innovation and efficiency in project delivery.
BIM helps to automate and integrate processes to improve efficiency, communication, and collaboration that far exceed those of the traditional construction processes.
With BIM you mitigate risks for errors, reworks, overspending, and delays, to improve construction site efficiency and track your projects accurately and easily.
Collaboration between architects, engineers, contractors, owners, and facility managers is difficult to manage if you only rely on emails, reports, and phone calls.
With BIM, all disciplines collaborate closely. They can use a platform like Plannerly to communicate and agree on the scope of work, review clashes, resolve schedule overlaps, and communicate remedies and new plans to meet client requirements.
Cloud-based BIM team members can access information via mobile devices, to get the latest data at any time from everywhere.
With BIM all stakeholders are interdependent, they organize their schedules and activities collaboratively, leading to efficient and speedy deliveries.
To allow your project teams to visualize the project before the shovel hits the ground, it is recommended to combine BIM with virtual reality (VR) and AI.
The 3D models reviewed in VR, early in the design phase allow your client to feel how it will be being in the building and visualize the construction as if it is real.
The points of improvement discussed earlier, eliminate time-consuming and costly reworks.
A study made by McKinsey found that all projects take 20 percent longer than scheduled to finish and are up to 80 percent over budget.
The benefits of BIM visualization at the initial stages include risk mitigation, lower insurance costs thanks to reduced claims, and fewer errors and accidents. It also promotes prefabrication - a better solution than on-site construction.
Automating and integrating processes into a single system reduces errors, clashes, and costly rework risks.
BIM identifies high-risk areas during the pre-construction phase. You can plan for better safety and coordination measures on construction sites. This avoids hazards for the whole life of the project.
Planning in collaboration and sequencing the tasks, allows the teams to avoid clashing of geometric designs, identify discrepancies, make necessary changes as needed, and avoid costly reworks.
BIM permits real-time data access through the project life cycle. It makes the review and monitoring processes easy to manage. It leads to better-built constructions.
BIM eases the planning of future projects by reusing data and avoiding the same mistakes twice.
Decision-making is easier when you have a visual analysis of the project. Materials to be used, space required, orientation, mass, and other issues can be planned at an early stage.
BIM 4D and 5D modeling use 3D models for project analysis and management.
4D BIM adds time-related information to 3D BIM models, to enable detailed scheduling of the construction process, and help to monitor the project’s progress even without visiting the site.
5D BIM adds costs to BIM components. This assists in calculating and predicting the project costs, finding the lowest cost solutions to avoid going over budget, avoiding wastage, and getting accurate estimates.
In facilities management, BIM provides significant comprehension of the building data. You look at a building model and see exactly where costs arise and how they occur.
It allows you to spend the right money on maintenance, update service records for the year, and upgrade the plan and its ramifications to peripheral systems as required.
Understanding in real time how the facilities operate and integrate with vital management software drives data-backed solutions.
Connecting design, analysis, and documentation in a BIM workflow is challenging. It requires, shifting most of the effort in the design project phase to avoid correcting errors when the construction has started to help improve project performance, reduce cost and waste, and optimize the construction time.
The construction industry sources, uses, and generates huge quantities of data in different formats from different teams.
Data transfer should only use one standard to optimize the design, build cheaply and quickly, produce excellent quality buildings, provide greater transparency, and encourage participation. This makes it easy to share and use information and encourages collaboration.
The challenge is to capture all drawings into one common file to avoid information loss.
To facilitate decision-making your model should provide accurate geometric and spatial data to perform calculations quickly and easily, and to be compliant with environmental requirements.
Change orders are common in most projects. After deciding on the original scope, or contract, the client may realize that the original plans do not meet its current requirements.
Several design process maps, or plans of work, are used throughout the world to advise clients through briefing, design and construction, handover, and beyond.
Maps differ from country to country, but they have the same goals providing the project team with a road map, promoting consistency from one stage to the next, offering vital advice to clients, and undertaking their first and only building projects.
Cloud-based platforms allow project teams to take the office to the field.
Including estimators earlier in the planning and incorporating accurate cost and scheduling data in your model will help you to produce accurate bills of quantities, control and optimize the procurement process, and install accurate systems.
BIM coordination processes, including clash detection systems, allow you to coordinate trades and subcontractors better, avoid clashes, detect any MEP, internal, or external clashes before construction begins, reduce the amount of rework needed on any given job, mitigate risks and reduce costs, and report positive returns on your investments.
The above benefits are adequate for all types of contractors and subcontractors, for all project types.
Using the BIM process when designing, building, and operating a building, stakeholders collaborate and coherently operate a system that incorporates people and technology in streamlined processes that optimize time, reduce costs, and improve efficiency in buildings, including public infrastructure, hospitals, and commercial and residential buildings.
BIM is more than just software or a 3D model, it is a new way of thinking. The model contains all the necessary elements and required information to build the project and hand over the maintenance details to the operation team.
In traditional workflows, you rely on multiple file formats, and disconnected processes that do not document all changes made, so you end up with disconnects and incomplete documentation.
BIM is a dynamic workflow that synchronizes a common approach amongst the various stakeholders through coherent project management allowing you to improve the efficiency of the design process, reduce waste during the construction, and improve the quality and efficiency of the building in operation.
Driving Vision's BIM expertise diagnostic looks at how you can eliminate waste, time, and material, and improve your margins and the quality of the information provided during the design and construction phases.
A Driving Vision expert conducts the interviews online, issues a report, and discusses our findings with you. Together we decide the best way to implement the solutions at your pace and according to your budget.
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
Of practices using BIM made positive ROI
Of practices using BIM improved health and safety
Of practices using BIM decreased errors and omission
Of practices using BIM enhanced their practice image
Of practices using BIM claimed less litigations
Of practices using BIM reduced rework
It might seem daunting, time consuming & prohibitive for smaller practices, to implement BIM. Not with Driving Vision!
