Overview of the UK BIM Strategy

Introduction Building Information Modelling (BIM) sits at the heart of the digital transformation of construction. With the sector forecast to be worth some $15tn (£10.6tn) globally by 2025, BIM provides strategic capability to significantly improve performance and outputs across the industry.

BIM involves the use of digital tools to collaboratively manage information and data across the design, delivery and operation of built assets. In the UK, its broad adoption has improved sector performance and generated shared benefits for public built assets, public spending and industry. Based on the UK Government’s construction benchmarking report, its BIM programme contributed to combined savings of £2.2bn ($3.1bn) between 2013 and2015, making it a significant tool to meet its target of 15—20% savings on public construction costs.

Since its launch in 2011, the UK Government’s BIM programme has attracted global interest from governments, public procurers, infrastructure and estate owners, and policy makers aiming to adopt the principles and learning from this UK success and its industry transformation.

The UK programme has received international awards and recognition for its scope, domestic impact and influence internationally. Its appeal is due to the reliability of its model and its transferable attributes, including the: • • • • • •

• • •

ability to help deliver better value for money, higher productivity and improved quality levels on built assets; use of public procurement to foster a step change in the sector’s performance; alignment of client demands with supply chain standards in order to propagate existing best practice; open and shareable principles relating to procurement, technology and data, process and people issues; phased implementation roadmap to allow client and industry capability development; broad scope and applicability to infrastructure and buildings, to new build and renovations, to small one-off projects and large scale developments, and to capital delivery and operational phases; non-discriminatory and non-proprietary criteria ensuring market competitiveness and encouraging innovation; development of a cohesive set of openly available policies, standards, tools and guides that form a collaborative and common level of performance for BIM; and funding and resourcing of a stewardship group to implement the strategy with public sector clients, industry and academia.

The guide is written for this global, public sector audience. It aims to inform the public stakeholder about the steps to adopt the UK’s approach to BIM. It addresses commonly asked questions, including: • •

Why did the UK Government decide to actively encourage BIM adoption?

What is the UK’s ‘Level 2 BIM’, and its value proposition?

•

How might a national government or public agency adopt the key principles of the UK approach to the benefit of their own policy making and built assets?

Who is this guide aimed at?

This guide draws on the collective knowledge and experiences of those closely involved with the UK BIM strategy and industry experts immersed in the UK’s approach to BIM. This experience identifies the key lessons from the UK BIM strategy and provides an insight into how this learning can be applied in national BIM initiatives around the world.

The guide is aimed towards international public stakeholders that develop policies relating to economic developments and the infrastructure and construction sectors, or stakeholders that procure, own or operate built assets, for public infrastructure or buildings.

Broadly the users of the guide fall into three groups: • • •

a public policy user, involved in the development of policy for infrastructure or construction sectors; a national or local public client/procurer user, primarily concerned with procurement of services; and an operator user, responsible for the on-going management and operation of the built asset.

For these users, the guide will provide an authoritative and strategic overview of the UK BIM strategy, its value proposition and how its principles, approach and standards can be adopted to inform their own national and local BIM initiatives.

Building Information Modelling (BIM) Before considering the strategy, developments and value proposition of the UK Government’s BIM programme we must first ask; what does BIM mean to governments and public asset owners?

BIM can be thought of as ‘digital construction’. It is similar to the technology and digital process revolution that entered the manufacturing sector in the 1980s and 1990s to improve productivity rates and output quality. It combines the use of 3D computer modelling with asset and project information to improve collaboration, coordination and decision-making when delivering and operating public assets.

BIM is part technology, part process, and partly a culture shift in the approach to construction that makes the complex understandable, and outcomes more predictable. For public clients and governments this translates to more being built and maintained for the same or less public money, a lower risk of cost overruns on public infrastructure projects, improved project transparency and greater stakeholder engagement.

HS2 Ltd, 2016 UK BIM — Level 2 BIM and its value proposition The UK Government’s Construction Strategy 2011–2015 was introduced in response to increased constraints on public spending and the recognition that full value was not being extracted for the taxpayer from public construction. There is significant opportunity to exploit the use of public procurement of construction and infrastructure projects to drive efficiency benefits and economic growth.

The objective of the strategy was to drive public cost savings of 15–20% during the term of government.

Combined with other procurement measures, the strategy mandated the requirement to use “collaborative 3D BIM” on all centrally procured public construction projects by 2016.

The strategy recognized the risk of asking the private sector for ‘just BIM’ in public tenders, without definition or support. The lack of consistent processes, differing data structures and inadequate legal provision for working collaboratively with BIM, would have resulted in low adoption, constrained efficiencies and limited public cost savings. Therefore, a cohesive and linked set of developments were called for, across: • • •

procurement and contracting policies, to enable sharing of data and new ways of working; technical protocols, for process standards and data specifications across capital and operational phases; and guidance and tools of best practices, to support industry capability development.

Level 2 BIM is an organized framework to work collaboratively with managed information across projects and the asset life cycle. It describes a common level of performance across procurement, technical and people matters and it provides a common language for both industry and the public client, which normalizes consistent ways of working.

This creates a repeatable low-risk process to efficiently deliver and operate built assets. Level 2 BIM delivers a generic, proven, reliable and value-adding basis for whole sector adoption of this innovative and beneficial tool.

Maturity wedge model One of the most powerful lessons from the UK programme is the need for a common method, a common language and consistent demand from clients over an extended period of time. The UK developed a series of levels to provide the sector with the time it needed to mature capability and build capacity.

The global opportunity BIM is becoming a global language for the infrastructure and construction sector, enabling greater collaboration and movement of capabilities across borders. This guide seeks to develop the opportunities for consistent global approaches in the new era of digital construction.

It proposes a proven approach based on universal principles, non-proprietary practices and open standards. This approach can be adapted and adopted by international public agencies in their own markets to deliver the following benefits to the public estate and sector performance.

• • • • •

Greater productivity of the sector, which delivers more built assets for the same or less expenditure Improved quality of public built assets Increased transparency of construction performance New opportunities for sector growth, through exports and additional service offerings A stronger and digitally-skilled sector attracting talent and investment

We offer this guide to be used as a contribution to the national and regional public sector agency collaborations emerging in Europe, Asia and Latin America; and we welcome cooperation to develop shared public and private benefits from the new paradigm of global digital construction.

Disclaimer This document is issued for information only. It does not constitute an official or agreed position of BSI Standards Ltd. The views expressed are entirely those of the author(s). All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, no part of this publication may be reproduced without prior permission in writing from the publisher. Whilst every care has been taken in developing and compiling this publication, BSI accepts no liability for any loss or damage caused, arising directly or indirectly in connection with reliance on its contents except to the extent that such liability may not be excluded in law. While every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders, anyone claiming copyright should get in touch with the BSI at the below address.

The availability of this Guidance document has been made possible due to sponsorship from the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills and the Building Information Modelling (BIM) Task Group.