White Paper: Top 10 Ways BIM Will Change Your Business

White Paper: Top 10 Ways BIM Will Change Your Business

White Paper: Top 10 Ways BIM Will Change Your Business

Contents 01 Introduction 01 How BIM Will Change Your Business 03 Who Should Be Using BIM

White Paper: Top 10 Ways BIM Will Change Your Business

Introduction Building complex projects in the 21st Century demands unprecedented attention to detail.

For years, construction professionals tracked these data points on blueprints and paper sketches, but a wave of technology has swept across the industry in recent years, simplifying and streamlining the process with digital models.

Known as building information modeling—or BIM—this hot computer tool empowers building experts to track, share and compare every variable with their partners, colleagues and clients at the touch of a button. By stocking a virtual, three-dimensional visual model of a building with exhaustive information about every construction component involved, BIM is changing the entire industry.

With a 75 percent growth rate over five years, the BIM adoption rate is still rising fast.

From veterans to recent hires, people across the industry are using BIM to save time and money at every stage of the process. A recent McGraw-Hill Construction study found that fully 71 percent of architects, engineers, contractors and owners have used BIM files on their building projects. And with a 75 percent growth rate over five years, the BIM adoption rate is still rising fast.

As BIM spreads quickly through the industry, building professionals are discovering many new ways to use the powerful tool. With precision data at their fingertips, building owners, engineers and managers can use BIM models to save time and money at the design stage, the construction phase, the structure’s working life and even its eventual demolition.

Top Ten Ways BIM Will Change Your Business 1. BIM enables collaboration.

Equipped with building information models, any architecture, engineering or construction firm can not only save time and money, but also gain an entirely new ability - fully integrated collaboration. Long before breaking ground on a new building site, partners, suppliers, and clients can compare notes, make revisions, cut costs, stick to their schedule and meet contract obligations. The M Moser Associates architecture firm rang up big savings with its CLS Bank project in New York City through frequent collaboration with BIM files. “By minimizing conflicts early in the design stage, we helped to prevent problems later—saving an estimated $185,000,” said Chris Swartout, a senior associate at the firm.

2. BIM will change the way we work.

As an instrument for design, BIM will do more than merely replace previous tools, it will empower a new working process. In recent decades, veteran designers have seen pen-andink drafting tables give way to computer-aided design (CAD) and watched two-dimensional CAD evolve into three-dimensional CAD. The difference now is that BIM does more than just combine 3-D CAD models with material specification lists. Instead, BIM enables a new philosophy of virtually designing, constructing and living in a building before it is ever created in the real world. DPR Construction used this approach to save serious money on

01 Top 10 Ways BIM Will Change Your Business

building the Sutter Health Castro Valley Clinic project in California, using BIM to prefabricate custom drywall panels through off-site construction instead of working around complex mechanical, electrical and plumbing equipment on the job site.

Professionals are already using these first-generation digital collaboration suites to reduce risk, iron out feasibility wrinkles, estimate costs and schedule project completion dates.

3. BIM can streamline the designer’s toolbox.

Unify the complex array of computer programs into a streamlined network that spans related approaches like virtual design and construction (VDC) and integrated project delivery (IPD). Professionals are already using these first-generation digital collaboration suites to reduce risk, iron out feasibility wrinkles, estimate costs and schedule project completion dates. BIM will support these applications to enable faster, more accurate performance and to extend their effectiveness into new areas, such as avoiding conflicts between different building trades (aka “clash detection”) and identifying discrepancies between data sets. The Chicago, IL, construction firm Navigant Consulting used BIM to ensure it stayed under budget in a regional medical office building. “Typically, there’s a wide gap between what you estimate at the end of a schematic design versus what you actually get when those construction documents are almost done. Our gap was very, very tight,” said Jay Dougherty, an associate director with the company.

4. BIM can help engineers design greener buildings.

Achieving LEED certification for a structure is not only a major marketing benefit but can also help to reduce environmental impact and save money over the building’s lifetime use by slashing energy bills. BIM can make it happen when engineers and architects use computer models to collaborate on issues like energy modeling, airflow analysis and daylighting studies. That was the plan when WSP Global designed an expansion for the Battelle Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, WA. The building scored a prized 10 LEED Gold rating by balancing the heating and cooling needs for its biological and computational science labs.

5. BIM can cut construction waste.

This single benefit can save big money for all the parties in a project and justify the financial investment of adopting BIM hardware, software and training in an office. The details embedded in BIM models allow sustainable building techniques by supporting “cradle-to-cradle” project analysis and “lean construction” methods. The approach can add up to big savings. Canada’s Landmark Group of Builders slashed materials waste for its residential homebuilding sector with BIM. “On average, in conventional construction, you see about 20 per cent waste in framing materials. We’re down to under five per cent,” said Landmark CEO Reza Nasseri.

6. B IM is already evolving to become more powerful in business applications.

To emphasize the difference between full BIM functionality and basic three-dimensional computer modeling, many users are talking about “five-dimensional” BIM. These new extensions are not new layers of physical space, but actually the attributes of time and cost. Adding these features to an architectural model allows users to quickly create accurate estimates of cost, efficiency, endurance, maintenance and other attributes of a building’s lifecycle.

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7. Your rival firms in the construction industry are already using it.

Companies that delay the adoption of BIM platforms will quickly fall to a competitive disadvantage to competing firms. Across the industry, BIM adoption surged from 28 percent in 2007 to 71 percent in 2012 and are still rising fast, according to McGraw-Hill’s BIM SmartMarket Report. Those rates apply about evenly among contractors (74 percent) architects (70 percent) and engineers (67 percent).

8. BIM pays off fast with a high return-on-investment.

Despite the pressures of the recession, BIM adoption grew fast over the past decade, helping construction companies return to profitability. “The results point to the increased business benefits that all users derived from using BIM, such as better profits, more accurate documentation, less rework, reduced project duration, fewer claims and the ability to offer new services,” Phil Bernstein, an executive at BIM provider Autodesk, told McGraw-Hill.

9. BIM models can help you pitch a project to clients, partners and investors.

Arriving at the presentation meeting with a fully stocked virtual model of a complex building project can empower professionals at every stage of the process to help customers visualize the nuances of architectural design, understand the intent of the structure and drill down deep into the details of the materials, costs, deadlines, tradeoffs and other aspects of the initial design process. Vico Software in Boulder, CO, specializes in extending BIM models from a pure building construction focus into a powerful tool for general contractors to bid on new projects. A strong 5D BIM model can allow a builder to walk into a business presentation with an instant competitive advantage on quoting precise quantities, locations, means and methods, Vico says.

A strong 5D BIM model can allow a builder to walk into a business presentation with an instant competitive advantage.

10. BIM can boost the entire economy.

As widespread sectors of the building and construction economy adopt the technology, every player in that arena will boost its productivity, leading to higher profits for all and a competitive advantage for those who move first. Three-quarters of contractors worldwide report that their BIM installations have notched a positive return on investment (ROI) in productivity, efficiency, quality and safety, according to McGraw-Hill Construction. The firm measured BIM efficiency in both established markets such as Canada, France, Germany, U.K. and U.S, and in emerging BIM regions including Australia/ New Zealand, Brazil, Japan, and South Korea.

Who Should Be Using BIM Almost any organization that interfaces with the building can use BIM programs to streamline operations and beat the competition for valuable contracts. Initially used mostly for building design, the computer tool is now popular for collaborating between contractor companies, consulting between architects and their clients, reducing running costs for facilities managers, managing upgrades and remodels and even aiding in disaster recovery operations.

Examples of big BIM projects can be found across the globe. The Danish architecture firm Bjarke Ingels Group used it to create the award-winning “8 House” in Copenhagen and the Danish Pavilion at the Shanghai World Expo. For each job, designers used BIM for concept sketching, smooth workflow and compiling a library of building components.

03 Top 10 Ways BIM Will Change Your Business

Other projects include sports stadiums like Skanska USA Building’s $1.6 billion New Meadowlands Stadium in East Rutherford, NJ, and Turner Construction Company’s $1.5 billion new Yankee Stadium in the Bronx, NY. Designers also used BIM to save money and speed completion on health care and cultural projects such as the $86 million Miller Children’s Hospital pediatric inpatient tower in Long Beach, CA. Whatever the construction task may be, BIM gets the right information to the right people at the right time. BIM is a fast-moving field, but with the proper training program, any organization can easily teach its employees and professionals to use this powerful tool.

BIM is a fast-moving field, but with the proper training program, any organization can easily teach its employees and professionals to use this powerful tool.

04 Top 10 Ways BIM Will Change Your Business

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