The BIM Manager's Handbook

Guidance for Professionals in Architecture, Engineering, and Construction

Dominik Holzer

• Publisher: Wiley
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781118982426
• eBook ISBN: 9781118982341
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Technology & Engineering
• Subtopic: Architecture Design
• Index: Technology & Engineering

The BIM Manager's Handbook: Guidance for Professionals in Architecture, Engineering, and Construction

Building Information Modelling (BIM) is a design and construction software that manages not just graphics, but also information—information that enables the automatic generation of drawings and reports, design analysis, schedule simulation, facilities management, and cost analysis—ultimately enabling any building team to make better-informed decisions. This allows a range of professionals—architects, engineers, construction managers, surveyors, cost estimators, project managers, and facility managers—to share this information throughout a building's lifecycle. BIM is now recognized worldwide for the efficiencies it delivers in terms of working collaboratively, communication, processes, cost savings, and a property's lifecycle management.

With the widespread adoption of BIM, BIM Managers have become a much-needed new breed of professionals in architectural, engineering, and construction practice. Their role is often misunderstood and ill-defined, and such are the day-to-day deliverables that they are likely to face. The BIM Manager's Handbook provides an in-depth account of the breadth of activities that any BIM Manager or staff member, who is actively engaged in the delivery of project, is required to undertake.

Providing prereleases of the final work, The BIM Manager's Handbook ePart series isolates significant topics around BIM management. In the sixth and final ePart, BIM is taken to the next level by outlining what is required to truly excel as a BIM Manager. It highlights how BIM Managers acquire the necessary communication skills to maximize an efficient information flow between the BIM Manager and others. It illustrates how BIM Managers tie their activities to cutting-edge BIM research and development globally. Lastly, this ePart lays out how to promote BIM excellence both within an organization and beyond.

1
BEST PRACTICE BIM

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How does one get Building Information Modeling right in practice? What are the key tasks and challenges faced by BIM Managers in achieving “Best Practice BIM” and how can they master them? By drawing from the experience of some of the world's top BIM Managers, this publication gets to the bottom of these questions. There is much we can learn from their experience, no matter if good or bad. The following exposé consolidates a broad range of feedback from these leading experts and it provides support to those who strive for excellence in their pursuit of implementing BIM.

If we want to understand how BIM Managers can excel in their role, we first need to understand the principles behind getting BIM right. This publication scrutinizes BIM's changing context and looks to see if there is a “BIM formula of success.” The past decade has given us the opportunity to see a number of high-profile BIM projects through to completion. We learn from the mistakes we made on the way and we reflect on “Good,” or even “Best Practice” BIM. What might be the tipping point for its successful implementation? What are the typical thresholds and benchmarks that apply? Answers to these questions will assist BIM Managers to maximize BIM benefits not only intraorganizationally, but also across the broader project team.

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BIM Managers: Breaking Ground

BIM Managers are a wholly new breed of professional. They emerged internationally in less than a decade, most markedly in larger tier 1 architecture and engineering practices. By strengthening integration across disciplines and project phases, BIM Managers become the conduit for facilitating the information exchange between the design, delivery, construction, and operation of projects. They play a central role in deciding where BIM is heading. On a practical level, BIM Managers are the custodians responsible for innovation to occur within their organization and in collaboration across project teams. They empower project stakeholders to understand and engage with the high level of complexity associated with a BIM workflow. They help them to align their skills with the added benefits offered by data-centric and rule-based delivery of projects.

A Role in Transition

Describing what BIM Managers do is a difficult task. What was once associated with responsibilities for overseeing BIM model development is now more and more associated with information management, change facilitation, process planning, technology strategies, and more. Such is the veracity and speed of development surrounding BIM that the job description of any BIM Manager is in constant flux. Given the ever wider group of stakeholders BIM encompasses, there exists an increasing fragmentation of the BIM Manager's role into specialized responsibilities: On one end of the spectrum the role of Model Managers emerges, who assist in-house teams on individual projects, at times complemented by specialist BIM Librarians (or Content Creators). On the other end of the spectrum, Model Coordinators specialize in the oversight of the multidisciplinary integration of BIM. BIM Managers may now also report to Design Technology Leaders or Project Information Managers who directly report to upper management. In some instances, an organization calls for a Strategic BIM Manager (as opposed to providing more technical support on the floor). All of the above descriptions depend on the size and characteristic of an organization. In smaller companies, the BIM Manager may well be tasked to incorporate all those roles, while acting as Project Architect and BIM Modeler at the same time.

There is likely to be a time where BIM Managers become obsolete and their responsibilities will become part of project management in general. A good number of Change Management activities will have been implemented and construction industries globally will accommodate BIM as a matter of course in their project delivery methods.

For now, we still go through a major transition in adopting BIM. BIM Managers need to balance between the possible and the appropriate. Their strategic view will influence which opportunities can and should be aligned with the cultural and professional context of their organization. They also help to map out how such alignment can be achieved. In the end, BIM Managers may not be the ultimate decision makers in facilitating change. They are the ones who provide upper management with decision support in order to do so and they are the ones accountable for BIM implementation “on the floor.”

Figure 1–1 Mapping out a possible role distribution surrounding BIM in a larger size design firm.

© Dominik Holzer/AEC Connect

What makes a good BIM Manager, or even an outstanding one? In order to answer that question feedback is consolidated here from the world's top BIM Managers to make it accessible to everyone. These managers work for leading Architecture, Engineering, Quantity Surveyor (Cost Engineers or Cost Managers in the United States), and Construction firms. They report on pitfalls and the common mistakes associated with BIM to then highlight what makes BIM tick in practice.

The Rise and Rise of BIM

BIM use has been expanding continuously since 2003,¹ making BIM Management a moving target. Back then, BIM became the accepted industry acronym for a range of descriptions such as Virtual Design & Construction (VDC), Integrated Project Models, or Building Product Models. Until that point, different software developers had branded their tools with these varying acronyms, while essentially talking about the same object-oriented modeling approach that was first introduced to a wider audience by Chuck Eastman in the mid-1970s. Around 2002–2003, it was AEC Industry Analyst Jerry Laiserin² who played a pivotal role in promoting the single use of the acronym “BIM” which had been coined by G.A. van Nederveen and Tolman in 1992³ and which later became the preferred definition of Autodesk's Phil Bernstein. It was the starting point for an industry-wide journey to holistically address planning, design, delivery, and operational processes within the building lifecycle. This journey raises a great number of culturally sensitive and professionally relevant issues: By nature a disruptive process, the adoption of BIM overturns decades of conventions related to the interplay between architects, engineers, contractors, and clients. BIM Managers are drawn right into the center of these changes in practice.

Despite the clarity about BIM's origin, there is no clear starting point to the commercial breakthrough of BIM; conceptually, BIM dates back to the early 1970s with the introduction of mainframe computers.⁴ Some of the key BIM software platforms in use today have their origins in these early developments. The increase in processing power, the drop in price for computer hardware, and the connectivity offered via the World Wide Web gradually led to an increased adoption of BIM in the early 2000s. During that period, a critical mass was reached. BIM software became affordable and it matured to the point where its user-friendliness offered a viable alternative to existing CAD platforms. From that point onward CAD Managers were those individuals most likely tasked with the oversight of the implementation of BIM. With documentation output in mind, CAD Managers were supported by senior drafting personnel who were responsible for generating the contractually relevant 2D plans/sections/elevations from virtual models. The process of BIM modeling remained limited to Architectural Designers and Structural Engineers. The limited scope of BIM existed much to the frustration of Services Engineers and Contractors who had to wait for the availability of BIM tools to serve their purposes until 2007–2008. From 2010 onward, developments surrounding BIM accelerated. Increased software interoperability and an ever-expanding BIM tool ecology resulted in BIM becoming more and more accessible to Quantity Surveyors, Contractors, Facility Managers, and Client Representatives. The ever-expanding list of BIM stakeholders introduced a plethora of opportunities to manage information across disciplines and project stages. Significant consequences followed from this development.

Figure 1–2 Detailed facade systems generated via BIM and visualized as a 3D rendering by COX Architects.

COX Architects

With the broadening scope of BIM comes a diversification of what BIM Managers do: The more information can be exchanged by various stakeholders, the greater the possibilities and challenges for managing that information across those stakeholders. This expansion in scope has by no means occurred in a well-orchestrated fashion. On the contrary, it has evolved organically at different speeds and veracity throughout markets and industry contexts. In some cases there now exists a level of regulation about how information gets shared via mandates or incentives, in other cases the evolution of BIM depends on client demand or simply on the skill level of operators.

One commonality among these diverse ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• INTRODUCTION: WHY BIM MANAGERS COUNT!
• 1 BEST PRACTICE BIM
• 2 CHANGE MANAGEMENT
• 3 FOCUS ON TECHNOLOGY
• 4 BUILDING UP A BIM SUPPORT INFRASTRUCTURE
• 5 DAY-TO-DAY BIM MANAGEMENT
• 6 EXCELLING YOUR BIM EFFORTS
• EPILOGUE
• INDEX
• EULA