Building information Modelling can be a very difficult topic to define. Just try to discuss it with a colleague and - more probably than not - you'll end up discussing endlessly overlapping topics. For example, you start to discuss BIM's effcts on industry and you end up comparing software solutions. Or, the topic starts with how to collaborate around the digital model and the discussion shifts to argueing risk-shedding vs. risk-sharing, insurance coverage and design fees. It doesn’t stop there, if you try to explain to how a small-sized company typically migrates from 2D to 3D or implements a basic BIM tool and the conversation shifts uncontrollably to model-servers and complex integrated practices.
This episode is available in other languages. For a list of all translated episodes, pleaser refer to http://www.bimthinkspace.com/translations.html. The original English version continues below:
This ‘confusion’ is not only detected at individual practitioners' level but is omnipresent in industry presentations, guidelines, writings and specialised forums. Just Google the term BIM and read the countless informed and not-so-informed entries about it. To highlight this issue, try reading the below argument which I rephrased from six different highly informed sources:
BIM is a catalyst for change (Bernstein, 2005) poised to reduce industry’s fragmentation (CWIC, 2004), improve its efficiency/effectiveness (Hampson and Brandon, 2004) and lower its high costs of inadequate interoperability (NIST, 2004). BIM is a methodology to manage the essential building design and project data in digital format throughout the building’s life-cycle (Penttilä, 2006). Building information modelling is a new approach to describing and displaying the information required for the design, construction and operation of constructed facilities (CRC-CI, 2006)
Just by reading the bolded text of the above few sources (out of hundreds of definitions and assertions out there) and BIM is a sounding more like a super TLA – a belated Three Letter Acronym that defines nothing in particular. One is left wondering if BIM is something you can buy off the shelf? Is it a change process or a construction procedure? Is BIM a GSA requirement, an NBIMS guideline or what exactly? If it is all of the above then isn’t it true that the breadth of a definition is inversely proportional to its usefulness?
Figure 6.1: BIM's recurring themes
Faced with all this ‘BIM chatter’, AEC stakeholders will understandably find it difficult to pinpoint what they actually need to do to reap the promised benefits of BIM. The chatter causes the change process to sound more difficult, extended and complex than it should be...This need not be the case at all.
To clarify the BIM topic, a ‘systematic analysis’ of the BIM domain will need to be performed. This should hopefully yield a clear, methodical and fuller description of what BIM is, is NOT as well as how to implement it in an incremental and sustained fashion. To systematically analyse then understand a loosely-defined concept like BIM, we first need to subdivide it into its components and analyse the relationship between them. The next few BIM episodes will do just that.
Based on my ongoing research (academic and professional), I will attempt to simplify the discussion through ‘decomposing’ the BIM term into three complementary dimensions: BIM Nodes (players and deliverables), BIM Stages (evolutionary steps) and BIM Lenses (multidisciplinary analysis). I will later use these three dimensions to generate some BIM Steps – those elusive incremental steps needed to migrate from a 2D based workflow all the way towards an Integrated Practice.
Figure 6.2: BIM Framework: the three dimensions
To be continued; next Episode will discuss the first dimension - BIM Nodes (update: now called BIM Fields)
July 20, 2015: Video now available explaining the Tri-axial Model on the BIM Framework's YouTube channel:
References:
Bernstein, P. (2005) Integrated Practice: It’s Not Just About the Technology, http://www.aia.org/aiarchitect/thisweek05/tw0930/tw0930bp_notjusttech.cfm, last accessed on December 5, 2005
CRC-CI (2006) Open Specifications for BIM: Sydney Opera House Case Study. IN Mitchell, J. (Ed.) Delivery and Management of Built Assets. Brisbane, Cooperative Research Centre for Construction Innovation (click here for PDF)
CWIC (2004) The Building Technology and Construction Industry Technology Roadmap. IN Dawson, A. (Ed.) Melbourne, Collaborative Working In Consortium.
Hampson, K. & Brandon, P. (2004) Construction 2020: A Vision of Australia's Property and Construction Industry. Australia, CRC Construction Innovation.
NIST (2004) Cost Analysis of Inadequate Interoperability in the U.S. Capital Facilities Industry. IN Gallaher, M. P. O. C., A. C.; Dettbarn, J. L., Jr.; Gilday, L. T. (Ed.), National Institute of Standards and Technology.
Penttilä, H. (2006) Describing The Changes In Architectural Information Technology To Understand Design Complexity And Free-Form Architectural Expression. ITcon, 11, 395-408.
