Feature BIM +

It’s about those people who lead projects: helping them is how we break through. And maybe we also need a “crisis” – other industries have re-engineered themselves after a challenge they couldn’t ignore.

Simon Rawlinson

We are not addressing the fact we are taught in different blocks, and we don’t have any of that collaboration in classrooms and universities. We should be telling colleges and universities to collaborate in their process so people are learning collaboration, not just BIM.

Chris Chivers BIM: is the industry ready?

To launch the BIM + site, we gathered a panel of industry experts to debate the question of the moment. Elaine Knutt reports

BIM: IS THE INDUSTRY READY? Judging by the responses around the table at the debate that CM put together to launch the BIM + channel on its website, the answer is a variation on “Yes, but...” Yes, but there are still major developers and clients out there asking “What’s BIM?” Yes, but we might not have a contractual framework that really supports collaboration. Yes, but but we might fi nd we get overtaken by Asian economies. And yes, but as we have no way of measuring the extent of BIM

12 | JANUARY 2015 | CONSTRUCTION MANAGER

adoption, how will we ever actually know? These were some of the topics that came up in the BIM + launch debate, hosted by law fi rm Olswang, just 15 month before the government puts billions pounds of work on a BIM footing. The participants were all engaged with BIM, so were perhaps more positive about it than a random cross- section of the industry would be. But, as shown by the reactions as various curveballs were tossed around, that doesn't mean there’s nothing to debate.

The discussion was informed by the fact

that BIM is being used on £9.76bn of live public sector projects, either onsite or in pre-construction. That fi gure, revealed by David Philp, the head of BIM implementation at the government’s BIM Task Force, is large enough for everyone to realise that the new era has begun; small enough to remind them that the adoption curve will soon have to climb at a steeper gradient. So the starting point was whether

contractors were fi nding evidence of BIM