The passion of the BIM

For me industriously struggling with inefficiencies of AutoCAD for almost a decade, possibilities brought about by BIM technologies (Building Information Modeling) have been astonishing, tempting and irresistible since I got to know it. Here are only some examples of typical difficulties in architectural design and producing construction drawings using traditional CAD: tedious and  iterative drafting jobs when something is being changed at a late phase in design, difficulties with incorporating construction details from manufacturers' catalogues to drawings of various scale and absence of the time factor in workshop drawings which in turn resulted in a rupture between design and construction procedures. Nonetheless, I was mostly occupied by studio-based design jobs at the time and had thus no idea of the most substantial strengths of BIM.

As part of my role in a research project at KTH, I have now the opportunity to dig deeper into the contemporary challenges on use of BIM and its prospects and risks. 

A shallow study led me to the following conclusions regarding hinders and hesitations of the practitioners (mostly AE firms since they are those in the forefront of acknowledging, implementing, using and promoting BIM):

• Segregated use: while it is not feasible to leap into BIM in full capacity due to logistics, learning curves, market inertia, etc.), using BIM in a limited way and with limited staff is in contrast with the nature of this tool.
• Lack of content: a BIM model is hungry for being filled up with detailed and accurate information to deliver the optimized output it is expected to produce. This, however, requires adoption of the tool by other partners or time- and cost-taking manual work which is not always affordable. 
• Using BIM in full capacity: the very eventual goal of BIM technologies is to realize an integrated design and construction procedure, while practical problems hinder free flow of information required for this purpose and limits the use of BIM to some secondary areas e.g. conceptual massing and clash discovery. 
• Legislative limitations: documents required for bids and project delivery are not updated. Required formats should thus be extracted from the BIM repository or simply specs and BOM's sould be used for the purpose of submission for bids,contracts, etc.
• Market inertia: this one of course applies to all new software and even new versions and variations of an existing software family. Actors in various fields, scales and economies require time to comprehend the added-value of using BIM in their specific area of expertise, examine, adopt and master it and in turn spread the word to others within the huge community of building and design.

Undoubtedly, the list can be complemented with many more items depending on location on earth, building styles and user groups. 

TO BE CONTINUED...