BIM Demystified

Steve Race

• Publisher: RIBA Publishing
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781000705102
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Architektur
• Subtopic: Architektur Allgemein

BIM Demystified is a short, practical introduction to Building Information Modelling (BIM).

Addressing BIM from the point of view of mainstream practice as opposed to a cutting-edge technological perspective, it offers a user-friendly yet thorough explanation of a subject which is often swamped by jargon and deluged with spin.

Taking a wide view of BIM – encompassing business opportunity, Code of Conduct, cultural issues and the necessity for better legal arrangements too – the book's chapters range from the BIM ingredients (including objects, parametrics, and standards), to the business case for BIM and how to implement it. BIM requires a shift in attitudes if its benefits are to be obtained – and this book will allow individuals at all levels in any practice to build a firmer understanding of the merits and wider application of the subject. It brings together both managers and technologists within businesses throughout the AECC chain to form better and more valuable propositions for built environment interventions.

Section 1
BIM: the movement not the acronym

Did you know you might already be using BIM?

Initiatives to establish better practice within architecture and construction appear with rapid succession. Improved integration, co-operative working and newer forms of contractual arrangements offer the prospect of changing the way interventions in the built environment are made. Architects are primarily trained as designers; many other activities and skills are needed to bring their ideas to fruition.

The current interest surrounding the phenomenon known as BIM simply reminds us that different attitudes, techniques and relationships come along from time to time to make us think about the way we manage our information. Since time immemorial architects have created information to express their intentions to other members of the design team. They have produced and communicated information in some form whether it be scribing simple depictions in sand, on papyrus, parchment, paper or today’s modern complex and ubiquitous electronic forms.

For thousands of years an architect had a relatively close relationship with the craftsmen who created the final artefact. Communicating information was a comparatively straightforward and personal activity and the form and pace of the development of information communication was largely in the hands of the architect and the immediate team of artisans. Today the situation is radically different. Alongside their primary design skills, architects have to take on board information creation and communication in a way that previous generations never had to. On the one hand the internet has placed more and more information at our disposal. On the other, architects have to be increasingly vigilant in obtaining and filtering the information they require in a more litigious atmosphere. The information they themselves generate is subject to immense scrutiny by all members of the immediate and extended project team. Commercial clients are even more hyper-critical.

Architects often make decisions, sometimes wrongly, based on too little or too much information and almost always on information that is not integrated. To use information in better ways does not require architects to dispense with any of their existing skills, simply to think differently about the way they exercise them. Architects have been using BIM from the very first time information was exchanged in order to get something built. This book looks at some of the ingredients that influence the creation of information by architects and gives a framework for improvement. There is no need to believe that BIM is something entirely new and different. We, as architects, simply have to ask ourselves how we can produce information better and in a less adversarial environment.

Beware the acronym

BIM is one of the most recent acronyms to appear in the world of architecture and construction. The timing of its first appearance is difficult to establish. America claims its origination in 2002 as a means of describing virtual design, construction and facilities management. Various groups around the world were using the acronym at about the same time but with different meanings. BIM has already fallen into the same use, abuse and misuse that CAD, CADD and CADFM did. At best these acronyms provided a rough guide to what was being discussed; at worst they led to endless debate on whether the ‘D’ stood for design or drafting or drawing, a debate which produced nothing of practical relevance.

Equivalent problems of interpretation exist for BIM. Individual letters conjure up images in each person’s mind. ‘B’, Building; for some this might mean an envelope and everything within it, for others the ‘B’ may connote a wider view of a building and its surroundings; infrastructures and landscaping for example. The word building is somewhat restrictive in conjuring up a broader range of considerations; it may not tell us anything about policies, assumptions, strategic decisions, brief content, user assessment, supply chains, regulation or recycling sustainability. Are all these to be implied and imagined from a meagre starting point of ‘building’? ‘I’, Information, is quite straightforward if taken at face value and is probably the most important word represented within the acronym. The ‘M’ is interpreted in two quite different ways; model/modelling or management.

Modelling or management?

BIM is both an activity and a thing. The verb does not tell us who is doing the building modelling or the noun what the model contains. Does the activity simply imply the individual designer, the immediate team in the individual design practice, the wider project team and supply chains, or all of these, plus users and maintenance personnel? Does the verb cover information creation, collection, updating, archiving collating, co-ordinating, validating or sharing? Does the model include 2D graphics, 3D graphics, intelligent objects, parametrics and all physical and electronic forms of non-graphic information?

In this context model/modelling can be taken to mean a representation to a smaller scale, a simulation of how something works, or a representation of something in a different form or media to the original. Using model/modelling as the respective noun or verb gives a range of possibilities from the static to the dynamic, which is acceptable when thinking of information in project life cycle. Interpreting ‘M’ as management gives a far more potent and all-encompassing notion of what the acronym is really intended to portray. Management, among other things, implies planning, organising, resourcing and controlling not simply the information that is required on a project, but the people who create and combine it to produce the finished built environment artefact.

Management is an essential ingredient in translating often complex and disparate information from a wide variety of sources into an organised whole that is continually updated and used by the project team. The way information is managed determines the confidence people have in it and the effect it has on success and profitability for all concerned. There are more profound and far reaching implications interpreting ‘M’ as management rather than model or modelling. This is far the better option, in that it is currently contributing to wider discussions and initiatives about improved co-operation between project team members. Taking the letters at face value produces an impression of the architectural and construction world that falls far short of the real complex issue of information creation and management in any project life cycle, whatever its scale.

Project Information Management (PIM) or Project Lifecycle Information Management (PLIM) may have been more helpful and more indicative of the intention to form a comprehensive information package that represents the life of a facility. Any acronym probably suffers from inadequacy of implication or completeness of meaning, so there will be many happy hours of friendly debate on just what is meant by BIM.

BIM in the USA and UK

One of the most strategic documents on BIM and collaborative supported IT issued anywhere in the world to date is the ‘National 3D-4D-BIM Program, additional BIM Guide Series’, issued by the Office of the Chief Architect, Public Buildings Service of the US General Services Administration in Washington. The challenge has been accepted and many states have announced initiatives based on the central policy statement, for example the State of Wisconsin has declared that all its state-funded facilities over the capital value of $5m will use BIM techniques. Moreover the General Services Administration (GSA) has offered its own definition of BIM as follows. ‘Building Information Modeling is the development and use of a multi-faceted computer software data model to not only document a building design, but to simulate the construction and operation of a new capital facility or a recapitalised (modernised) facility. The resulting Building Information Model is a data-rich, object-based, intelligent and parametric digital representation of the facility. From this, views appropriate to various users’ needs can be extracted and analysed to generate feedback and improvement of the facility.’

This is a courageous statement that embraces most modern IT concepts in architectural and construction software, namely objects and parametrics. The scope is wide enough to allow a range of BIM interpretations from the most humble 2D ‘drawing database’ to the most sophisticated modern technology. As if this was not enough the American Institute of Architects has published AIA Document E202–2008, Building Information Modeling Protocol Exhibit. The document provides a very worthwhile proforma to assist project teams in establishing their methodology for implementing a project based on BIM principles. It offers a definition of BIM (‘A Building Information Model is a digital representation of the physical and functional characteristics of the Project and is referred to in this Exhibit as the “Model(s)”, which may be used herein to describe a Model Element, a single Model or multiple Models used in the aggregate. “Building Information Modelling” means the process and technology used to create the Model’). It provides the following section headings which the project team then complete for themselves:

• An opportunity to set out model management responsibilities both in the immediate and longer term.
• The level to which any element in the BIM should be modelled.
• The author of any element.
• The uses to which the model can reliably be deployed.

The document is by no means exhaustive in what a project team might need for a comprehensive implementation of BIM, but what it does give is a valuable framework which, with the right attitudes from team players, would significantly lift the level of information creation and management, and thus enhance advantage all round. The AIA document would form a natural partnership with the relatively new Joint Contracts Tribunal (JCT) Constructing Excellence form of contract. This contract is an innovative statement by the JCT and represents a paradigm shift from an adversarial to a collaborative form of contract. It provides for the annexation of a Project Protocol which could take the AIA document or a development of it as its basis. It is a quasi-legal document. Its power is not its legal bearing or its technological depth; the monumental consideration is that it is produced by a powerful institutional body like the AIA.

It is architects claiming some ground for themselves rather than allowing other disciplines and project team players to usurp architects, as has so often happened in the past. More significant is the fact that these documents and proclamations come from incredibly significant and influential practices within the USA. This in itself is a major boost to the adoption and spread of BIM. Having said that, many of the examples and case studies generated by the USA exhibit no more than the customary struggle to manage and exchange information born out of the use of a proliferation of systems that can be found on most medium and large scale projects.

Pre 2010 the USA led the way in evangelising about BIM at any level. Until the Government’s chief advisor on construction, Paul Morrell, indicated in October 2010 that BIM would play a key part in Government procurement policy. Since then the UK has made significant strides in taking on the challenges implied by BIM procurement methods. This is evidenced by the publication in 2011 of a BIM Industry Working Group report on BIM, BIM: Management for Value, Cost and Carbon Improvement, in response to an invitation by the Cabinet Office to ‘look at the construction and post-occupancy benefits of BIM for use in the UK building and infrastructure markets’.

Figure 1.1 A report for the Government Construction Client Group. Building Information Modelling (BIM) Working Party Strategy Paper.

The report is symbolic. It has taken many years and many reports and much effort on behalf of small groups and individuals to eventually bring this to the notice of Government. The idea that information assets are both valuable to the client, whether public or private and whatever scale, but at the same time also represent a different way of working has been a long time in the realisation. If the Government client can lead the way in incorporating BIM methodologies into its procurement process then there could be a quantum shift in the way the UK construction industry conducts itself.

An attractive feature of this prospect is that a BIM outlook will be encouraged to percolate through all scales of practice. Mainstream architectural practices could take the opportunity to hone their BIM skills. There are major prizes to be won. The report champions newer forms of collaborative contract which is essential if project teams are to co-operate in a more comfortable legal environment. The danger is that a narrow concept such as BIM uses one software platform or convoluted technical standards required for information exchange which might prejudice those who have the procurement power. Whatever the connotation placed on the acronym, in this document it represents a powerful force for change, it should not be abused.

The influence of the recession

At the time of writing the most recent review by the Office for National Statistic shows that the economic output of the construction industry was in decline from Q1 2008 to Q2 2009. From then onwards there has been a steady recovery but the first quarter of 2012 was slower than equivalent quarters in 2010 and 2011.

In such stark economic times the hardship that private and public sector organisations and companies have encountered has encouraged a reappraisal of current work practices to seek out opportunities for improvement. Given few alternatives, small groups of individuals or entire local government departments have seen BIM as a possible solution to meeting the harsh realities of the recession.

In one architectural practice in Scotland for example a small group of people decided to implement their version of BIM. They demonstrated benefit to themselves and then took that to the senior managers in their practice. BIM was adopted further within the business and on more and more projects.

At another scale of operation a local authority department felt that because of Government cuts in budget the status quo could no longer exist. They too experimented with their version of BIM. They kept the experiment within the bounds of a single local authority department and out of the hands of the local politicians until they too demonstrated benefit to themselves. Then they went public.

Both these examples show how a smaller entity can demonstrate BIM advantage to itself. That entity establishes and owns the benefit whatever that might be. It could be financial, but there are other benefits such as job satisfaction, more value propositions to clients and unlocking poor decision points in company processes.

The old adage ‘through adversity comes strength (and opportunity)’ appears to be true in recessive times.

The influence of the Government initiative

The Government initiative on BIM since 2010 is perhaps one of the most profound policies the construction industry has ever seen. Sir Michael Latham in his 1994 report encouraged us to review our procurement and contractual relationships and advised us to engage in more partnering and collaboration. In 1998 Egan echoed these sentiments and emphasised integrated processes. Both did their bit but never has there been such a comprehensive geographical, inclusive, pan professional, supply chain outreaching initiative in the history of construction.

The launch of BIM Regional Hubs throughout England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland has established a network of enthusiasm and co-operation that could revolutionise the way UK Construction Plc operates in future. The main aim of the Regional Hubs is to act as a two-way conduit between industry and the BIM Task Group in order to raise awareness of the Government Construction Strategy (GCS) rel...