The business drivers and barriers for companies to adopt Building Information Modelling (BIM) technology across the building industry has been examined in a new CRC for Construction Innovation report.
The two-year Business Drivers for BIM research project investigated the nature of economic, process and industry constraints to BIM adoption and identified business strategies and models that may support adoption of BIM in the architecture, engineering, construction and facility management sectors.
The research team reviewed the use of BIM in a number of case studies including:
- A $300 million high-rise commercial redevelopment in central Melbourne
- A $4 million small, low-rise mixed commercial development in inner Melbourne
- A $280 million medium-rise office redevelopment of an entire city block in central Sydney
- A large $300 million high-rise commercial/residential development in Hong Kong, and
- A characteristic $10 million government police and watch-house complex in rural Queensland.
The study found significant variations in the business case for BIM from one project to another.
At its present stage of development in Australia the predominant form of available BIM software is model-based CAD systems and the predominant BIM user is the project architect.
The report’s findings, while not finding a single business case model applicable for different developments, does offer significant value to organisations considering (or reviewing) the implementation of BIM, and presents a checklist of issues that should be considered.
The study found that BIM offers advantages to those businesses that embrace it. These advantages include improved efficiency and collaboration by reducing re-work and early detection of potential problems as well as improving the management and communication of information generated by the model. There were some benefits specific to a certain type of project or group of stakeholders – for instance, the need for interoperability, an enhanced confidence in design outcomes, and the ability for small engineering and architectural practices to become more efficient and competitive, thus increasing their ability to bid for larger or more complex projects.
Findings from the case studies showed that implementing BIM in the one company, that is not directly sharing the model with consultants, still resulted in benefits which justified this type of implementation. Furthermore, attempts to fully implement BIM between stakeholders resulted in issues of compatibility – not only between different packages, but even within different solutions from the same provider.
The cost of software and hardware were not considered as serious impediments, however, the issue of training current staff and the lack of available trained recruits was viewed as the largest deterrent for adoption of BIM by the Australian architectural, engineering and construction industry. The lack of ready-to-use BIM parametric libraries (architectural and engineering) content was cited as another deterrent, as these required time and money to develop in-house.
The case studies demonstrated that BIM implementation should be undertaken in a fully committed fashion since fall-back strategies (for example, design and document in the traditional way) were not seen as financially viable.
The report authors recommend companies should consider implementing BIM on smaller projects which are more easily managed and controlled.
A further Construction Innovation project is establishing national guidelines for the development of integrated BIM solutions that will enable even small companies to implement BIM to improve their productivity and competitiveness.
For more information, please contact Peter Scuderi:
