BIM - It's time to reality check...

 

 

Before we dig deeper into Level 2 BIM and BIM standards (UK based) I really like to share some of my observations of recent time. There are lots of noise about BIM all over the world, loads of seminars happening every now and then, people of talking about BIM and predicting, how this is going to change/transform AEC industry. But the real question worth asking here “Is ground reality changing?” How much your staff, who actually delivers those projects, aware of this BIM thing. Is your Project Manager/Project Engineer enthusiastic about this or just ignoring it as some kind of new fashion fad, which will disappear eventually?

Do you want to get to the reality, look at the advertisement details related to the BIM (Job Title and Job Description)? Majority of those start with fancy title with BIM word in it and all job responsibilities are focused on drafting, modelling, and 3D software. Even most of the corporation who claims to have expertise in BIM treated it as new modelling, rendering and visualization tool and nothing more. Organizations around the world are focusing more on buying advanced design software and focusing less on key factors of BIM – Information and People.

Out of this two major factors, People is most ignored factor. BIM is not a new or improved way of doing existing things, it’s an entire new way of working and here People plays a key role. No matter how powerful is your IT system, how advanced is your software, if people are not excited and educated about it, it’s all just a dead cost to the organizations. Look at the NBS BIM survey of 2015, there is only slight increase in BIM confident Users (1%) compared to last year. There is major percentage, who don’t know who to turn to, when they require more information about BIM and it’s working. Only 48% are aware of the BIM and using its (there is actually as drop of 6% from last year) and another 48% (which have improved just 7% from last year) are just aware of it. BIM is fast becoming a movie who earns all the major awards on film festivals, lots of praise and articles about it pouring in, but when you ask for how many people have actually went to theatre to see it and understood it, the number is very low.

Let’s take the real word example, I work in world’s renowned AEC consultant and my organization is actively pushing forward in BIM through seminars, presentations, talks, forming a BIM group and lots of meetings. In last month, I carried out an informal survey about how much people know about BIM as I am hearing about it for more than two years. To my shock, most of our Project Technical leads strongly believes that BIM is related to 3D CAD and noting more. Almost all of colleagues have the same beliefs and our in-house BIM group is consist if only CAD Technicians and Designers.

All this things highlights the importance of making people aware at all level of the organizations. Carrying out organizations level BIM IQ or Awareness can be starting point of that. Assessing BIM IQ across all the organization will give a very clear picture of the ground reality of BIM status.

Next time we will explore more in ‘How to measure Organization's BIM IQ”

P.S. – I am not part of any BIM Group in my organization and carried out this survey by asking questions to many of my colleagues during our informal discussions.