Who earns from BIM?

On Friday, 15th February, people from different firms and disciplines within Swedish building industry gathered at Clarion Hotel in Stockholm to hear more about BIM (Building Information Modeling), this time with a focus on the financial gains of the technology. The seminar was jointly organized by WSB consulting company and Byggindustri magazine. Here comes an elective summary:

The session was initiated by Mats Lindgren's report on the actual situation of implementation of BIM around the world: Adoption of BIM in the United States is, in brief, broad but not mature enough. In Scandinavia, Finland, Norway, and the Netherlands are more advanced. Mandating BIM deliverables for public projects is planed to be enforced by 2016 in the UK. South Korea, Singapore, and Hong Kong are the pioneers among the east Asian countries, while there is no accurate evaluation of the situation in China. Australia and New Zealand are fairly progressive, while AEC firms in the Middle East, India, and Africa have stepped in, but with a slow pace in comparison.

Facility managers, who where not that interested in BIM technologies in 2009, are now more avid according to studies on perceived usefulness of BIM across actors and disciplines. PEAB has a considerable rate of BIM implementation in the design phase, but their construction sector yet largely relies on previous work flow configurations.

Ewa Hedberg presented an interesting report on results of surveys on the perception of BIM by Swedish AEC/FM companies. Attitudes span over a wide variety of standpoints and strategies from a total indifference, through implementation but no engagement at managerial levels, to some type of strategic agenda with no actual manifestation. An amazing conclusion was that a great number of actors believe that this is the owners and facility operators who can get the most out of BIM. There will thus be no incentive for design and construction crew in providing elaborate BIM's, if the eventual end-users are not willing to pay for their efforts.

Some positive views around BIM are as followed: problems are more easily discovered during the design phase rather than construction using BIM; BIM is definitely a time-saving tool; BIM tools are modern and cool! BIM helps attracting smart people to firms. Fewer errors, higher quality, and efficient use of resources are undoubted gains in the construction phase. According to Rikard Espling from Skanska, the profits gained by BIM are measured according to effective material use, reduction of accidents, quick preparation of quantity take-offs, and discovery of mistakes from design.

Perceived obstacles, on the other hand, are: organizational problems, staff engagement, and lack of expertise; many prefer to continue with prevailing traditional routines that they are accustomed to; specially the older generation find BIM only an unnecessary pushing force with no considerable positive effect; small firms can not afford rather high expenditures of establishing BIM systems; there are numerous uncertainties on what exactly BIM is, how exactly it should be implemented, what types of information it requires and from which resources should such data be obtained, and is it only confined to new construction?

Despite a unanimous positive view of all actors, not sufficient thorough studies have yet been conducted on indicators for usefulness of BIM in facility management. People are often bewildered about how to translate visions into concrete outcomes and scale down the concepts to tangible daily applications. Nonetheless, some advantages are now being more clearly pronounced and comprehended: enhanced computerized problem reporting, quickly articulating optimal solutions, fast and accurate area calculation for commissioning and ordering commitments, provision of detailed information for operational decision making, etc.

The event was concluded with a intriguing panel discussion among Staffan Åkerlund (Byggindustrin), Malin Lösjögård (Svensk Betong), Anne-Therese Albertsson (Trafikverket), Rikard Espling (Skanska), and Pontus Bengtsson (WSP). One of the audience suggested a thoughtful explanation on why the building industry is always lagging behind others in application of new information technologies such as BIM: what is missing here is the global market pressure and competition that other disciplines such as car industry are constantly exposed to.

The uncomfortable truth, at the end of the day, is that almost a decade after advent of Building Information Modeling tools, there is still need for introductory clarifications for the industry. Moreover, as almost all speakers declared, there are not fully established methodologies for quantifying the gains brought about by BIM. Participants mentioned however some approximate figures ranging from one to 15 percent as the ROI incurred by implementation of BIM. One aperture of hope is that more light has recently been shed on the importance and profitability of BIM for facility owners and managers, meaning that a higher demand from the real end-customers of building information models could be conceived and expected in the near future. This means stronger motives for the authors of BIM content and shiny prospects for an efficient, informed, and collaborative equilibrium for building industry.