Feature BIM +

We need to make our housing stock more energy effi cient, and the types of product used lend themselves to componentising. That’s where BIM can marry into this. This is a crisis that’s already happening but we just don’t know it

Martin Chambers

There’s a strategic discussion to be had with government about education and working with professional bodies to tackle the issues. As we move to level 3 BIM and we have a low basis of level 2, we need to work with the middle strata to get them up to speed.

Eddie Tuttle

Clients need help in developing consistent sets of information and EIRs. And it would help them if we could get some early case studies of clients who have taken BIM from early in the process to the operation of the building , so they can see the evidence.

Peter Trebilcock “

>improvement in terms of assets managed and benefi ts realised.” Jaimie Johnstone is a director of

architect Bryden Wood, and his experience spans the UK’s public and private sectors, as well as overseas clients, so he is in a position to make cross-cultural comparisons. “Almost all our new clients are asking for BIM,” he said. “People know they’ve got to ask for it – although they don’t really quite know what they’re asking for. They’re trying to build it into procurement processes but don’t have the experience yet. “Internationally, people are slightly

better: they don’t come with the same baggage as in the UK, where they think they need to understand it more so as not

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to embarrass themselves. [Overseas clients] use it to drive the endgame – they understand its point better.” But any UK clients with hang-ups about their less-than -perfect understanding of BIM would have found a sympathetic hearing around the table. “We’re asking clients to be experts in IFC [industry foundation classes] and interoperability but that’s not their forte,” points out Balfour Beatty’s Trebilcock. “Clients say they want BIM level 2 but when we ask what assets they want the information for, and for each asset what technical data they’re looking for, they can’t articulate that. It’s ‘why do I have to become a COBie expert? I just want my FM data’.” Responding, Simon Rawlinson,