BIM
Perhaps now, as BIM gains momentum, it’s time the rail industry took a step back and looked at the process as a whole says Allan Hunt
S
ome years ago, BIM (building information modelling) was just a dream on the horizon – or a nightmarish vision depending on your viewpoint. Now, as
embracing BIM increasingly becomes a necessity and not a luxury - with government making BIM for public projects mandatory by 2016 and with wholesale adoption likely to follow – those with responsibility for built estates can no longer escape its inevitability. Nor can they avoid its ubiquity: magazines devote multiple issues to it, endless conferences are held, and designers fall over each other to champion the BIM revolution – whether in the spirit of genuine innovation or blind panic. Nevertheless, and while debate is shifting, there remains a frontloaded bias to this enthusiasm. Despite claims of BIM’s long-term benefits to the client – and to those, like facilities managers, who must manage an estate long after the architects and contractors have left the scene – debate still remains fixated at the early design and construction phases. Certainly contractors are embracing
BIM – as are many owners of large estates. However a design bias has skewed debate in
two key ways. The first way in which the design
perspective may have clouded perceptions of BIM – though thankfully this is now shifting – lies in its discussion as another representational tool. Of course it is commonly understood that BIM is in fact a ‘live’, real-time model – a building in digital format. We also know that it constitutes a radical shift both in ways of working and thinking, which transform and streamline the entire design and construction process, bringing both benefits – increased economy, efficiency, safety – and also challenges – potential legal wrangles as the ‘ownership’ of data becomes blurred in levels of collaboration and data-sharing we are wholly unused to.
A sophisticated knowledge management system Nevertheless, for some time BIM was still discussed all too often from the sole viewpoint of platforms and implementation, as well as in relation to its imaging capabilities, which may have unwittingly given the impression that BIM is a sort of exceptionally advanced CAD package. Indeed the oft-quoted
‘drawing-board switchover’ metaphor, while compelling, may also have inadvertently emphasised this perspective. It is only recently that the focus has rightly shifted towards BIM’s true nature as, in fact, a highly sophisticated database or knowledge management system. In using this language, and taking this focus, we may also have undermined clients’ appreciation of BIM’s genuinely radical potentials across the life-cycle of a building or estate. What do end-users make of BIM mania? There is a danger to the onlooker that BIM appears to be only the latest in a long line of CAD-fads, a ‘novelty’ with its genuine relevance being trumped up to justify insider-excitement - an acute case, as they say in business, of ‘shiny kit syndrome’. Furthermore, since technology now moves at a frighteningly rapid pace, to perceive BIM too much in terms of specific packages and platforms means we risk failing to keep up with – let alone be in a position to drive – further conceptual advancements. In fact, BIM is not really another representational system at all, though it can certainly be used as one. It is more like a live building model and BIM’s genuine and long-term value is lost when we fail to grasp its power as an ‘embodied database’. As the building life-cycle progresses, the BIM model’s capabilities and benefits radically shift. At the front-end, its use as real-time representation is at the fore – clients want increasingly accurate imaging – however when it reaches the contractor its imaging capacities may amount to only a quarter of its useful value. After handover, the relevance of this graphical aspect dwindles even further; rather BIM’s full capabilities at this stage are almost entirely as a sophisticated database of knowledge. Given the quantity of information that is ordinarily wasted at key handover points in the build cycle, the power of BIM to retain highly detailed and comprehensive building data cannot be underestimated.
What does BIM mean for facilities management?
The second way in which a design bias has skewed perceptions may not be so clear. When debate is focused on the design and build phases, we risk becoming blind to one of the most important potential benefits of BIM. This is related, too, to crucial
June 2013 Page 89
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