[ Spotlight: BIM ]
BIM: KEY QUESTIONS ANSWERED
Here, we address frequent queries raised by members
I’ve been told that we must adopt BIM by 2016 – is this true? Not necessarily. Those who are working on central government contracts will be required
to adopt BIM by 2016, although you can encounter non-government contracts right now that require you to join a BIM project. However, the government’s 2016 target has brought BIM to the fore. Increasingly, non-government contracts are also expected to require BIM – and possibly more advanced BIM than required by the government – sooner or later.
Will BIM change our contracts?
The legal or contractual issues you face will depend on the sort of BIM you become
involved with. There is a ‘BIM maturity diagram’ that typically
shows levels of BIM capability from Level 1 to 3. Level 2 BIM represents the provision of object information in a 3D environment, with each member of the project team creating and maintaining their own model. These models and databases then ‘fit’ together using proprietary technology. Level 2 has been selected by government with a view to not ‘rocking the contractual boat’. For example, the architectural information is still created and published by the architect, who retains the copyright and intellectual property. As such, Level 2 BIM should not require a significant commercial change. That said, in practice, Level 2 maturity includes a spectrum of different capability levels. Extra legal, contractual and insurance issues will tend to appear as BIM becomes increasingly collaborative. At ‘advanced’ Level 2, current contracts may still require some amendments. Level 3 BIM maturity, on the other hand, involves a single project model, that is accessible early on, by all team members. This is ‘fully collaborative, real-time BIM’, and many anticipate that this will introduce the additional legal, contractual and insurance issues that many people are wondering about. It could be that clients and main contractors will increasingly want to operate at Level 3, irrespective of the government 2016 target.
I have been talking to a contractor who says they are working to BIM Level 4.
What is that? 62 ECA Today June 2013
It sounds like a misunderstanding. There is no recognised BIM Level 4 (one wonders what it
Increasingly, non-government contracts are also expected to require BIM – and possibly more advanced BIM than required by government – sooner or later
would even look like – BIM Level 3 is a ground- breaker for most companies). Your contractor probably means they use so-called ‘4D BIM’. While 3D BIM uses width, length and depth to represent information-rich objects, 4D BIM is basically ‘3D BIM plus time’. It deals with resource and quantity scheduling and any modular prefabrication, to support tracking and project phasing. This makes 4D good at spotting potential bottlenecks, for example. In case you are wondering, there is also ‘5D BIM’, which is 4D BIM plus the ability to estimate costs.
The new BIM documents refer to an information manager and a lead designer.
What is the difference? Can they be the same person?
Conceivably, they could be the same person. The two roles are different, but sometimes
there can be overlaps. A lead designer is responsible for coordinating the work of the various designers and checking their design information. Effectively, PAS 1192-2:2013 states that, when applying BIM to a project, a designated lead designer is responsible for the coordinated delivery of all the design information. This role is central to enabling effective design decision-making in a collaborative team. The information manager is also a pivotal member of the design and construction team, but this role tends to be more about managing the inputs of each designer into the BIM project model, ensuring that all the designers are using and sharing compatible software, and that the right party is working on the right aspect of the design at any given time. This is done by managing the design programme, which dictates when each party enters shared information into the project model. If there is a lead designer, the information
manager’s role must not conflict with the lead designer. So, if project partners decide that the information manager has some – or even all – of the roles of a lead designer, then this should be identified and dealt with in the ‘BIM protocol’ – otherwise there is a very serious risk of conflict over the design and design-coordination roles. The nearest we now have to a UK-wide BIM
protocol is the recently-introduced CIC Protocol (which specifically requires the ‘employer’ to arrange for an information manager).
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