It might seem daunting, time consuming & prohibitive for smaller practices, to implement BIM. Not with Driving Vision!
This article, part of a blog series on Building Information Modeling (BIM), explores the challenges and benefits of using BIM in the construction and handover phases. Before that, we have to clarify what BIM means in the construction phases.
With BIM you link people, technology, and processes to improve the quality of your construction.
Using the BIM process when designing, building, and operating a building, all stakeholders collaborate, and coherently operate a system that incorporates people and technology in streamlined processes that:
BIM is more than software or just a 3D model. The model contains all the necessary elements and related information required to build the project and hand over the maintenance details to the operation team. In traditional workflows, you rely on multiple file formats and disconnected processes that do not document all changes made, so you end up with disconnects and incomplete documentation.
BIM is a dynamic workflow that synchronizes a common approach amongst the various stakeholders through coherent project management allowing you to:
BIM requires change management expertise and automated processes to help you:
When BIM goals are understood by every team member, planned for, and delivered, a streamlined process helps you to collaborate easily, visualize projects and train all team members.
Technology integrated into your workflows like Procore helps to:
By optimizing digital technology, in the absence of true face-to-face interaction, the tools have become essential to maintaining schedules and good communication on job sites, enabling teams to close the distances and utilize time more effectively.
Construction is a 'team sport' with a multitude of different disciplines coming together (at various stages) to work on the delivery of a project. Ever closer collaboration is key to realizing the benefits of a BIM approach and therefore how the information will be delivered across the project lifecycle needs to be carefully considered from the outset. The Driving Vision tool kit allows you to:
Exchange information on a BIM project successfully. It is necessary for all contributors to understand what they need to provide (and what others will be providing too) and how this information will be both presented and used. Driving Vision automated templates allow you at the beginning of a project to decide with your team how the information is exchanged.
Plan your execution for each project, you should define the required information, in an agreed format, to be delivered to the client at key points during the project lifecycle. At these information delivery points, data can be analyzed and decisions can be considered, based on the information available to multiple stakeholders. This information ensures that projects are properly validated and controlled as they develop.
Build information As a BIM project progresses it provides the right level of details, at the right time, to the right people.
How to deliver the information From the outset of the project, and across the project lifecycle needs, you have to allow the supply chain to exchange their own information as frequently as they wish even if not exchanged with the owner.
With Plannerly the deliverables and milestones related to the goals and objectives are easily planned and monitored. Plannerly's document module allows you to rapidly create BIM contracts by dragging and dropping from industry-standard BIM templates, from your company standards, and/or from previous projects.
The concept of “Failing Fast” experimenting and trying new things leading to failure first, then to other iterations, and eventually to success would be too expensive in the real world of building and construction. But nothing prevents you to try and fail, as often as you need, in the digital space, before the diggers hit the ground.
With BIM, you collect information digitally, you make it available when needed, wherever you need it, to whoever needs it.
Adopting BIM means information is captured through all phases of constructing and operating a building, establishing a continuous flow of information. BIM offers efficiency, accuracy, collaboration, and cooperation between all stakeholders, automated processes, and data driven decisions. BIM is part of the “Fourth Industrial Revolution,” where connected machines, feeding on data, exponentially transform processes in every industry.
This is quite challenging as it requires shifting most of the effort in the design project to avoid correcting errors when the construction has started to:
The construction industry uses and generates huge quantities of data. Data might be generated by a very wide variety of sources, in different formats. To streamline your processes and manage your data, the data transfer should only use one standard, resulting in an accurate and optimized building design, cheaper and quicker to construct, and of better quality:
The challenge is to make sure that all drawings are captured into one common file to avoid information loss, and to speed up the decision making based on accurate data:
Change orders are common in most projects, and quite common on large projects. After the original scope (or contract) is formed, complete with the total price to be paid, and the specific work to be completed, a client may decide that the original plans do not best represent their definition for the finished project.
There are several design process maps, or plans of work, used throughout the world to guide clients through briefing, design and construction, handover, and beyond. In most countries, the process maps are set by the professional institutes or by sector bodies.
Some have pre-design stages, some do not. Some go beyond the completion of construction, others do not. All have a construction as a single stage.
There are several key differences between these international plans of work:
Some incorporate tendering stages, while others are procurement agnostic, focusing on the design rather than the procurement process.
The number of design stages varies from two to four. This underlines the challenges in the design process and the need to divide the design into a number of coherent stages, each with a clearly defined purpose, prior to construction commencing but with the input of the contractors.
Few consider the importance, and benefit, of a good briefing, including identifying the need for a building at the outset and how to use feedback from previous projects to inform the brief.
Not all consider the life of the building beyond construction. However, some are beginning to address this, and how the design process and the building’s handover processes impact a building’s performance.
Although each of these plans of work is different, they all have the same goals: to provide the project team with a road map for promoting consistency from one stage to the next and to provide vital guidance to clients undertaking perhaps their first and only building project.
Once the construction is completed, the final version of the model will make the facility's management decisions for preventative maintenance and repair easier.
Define the Who, What, When, and Why. Set your information delivery milestones. Define Geometry, Information, and documentation requirements to ISO 19650 level of information need to fluidify communication amongst the supply chain teams.
Cloud-based PCs allow project teams to take the office to the field.
Including estimators earlier in the planning stage and incorporating accurate cost and scheduling data in your cost estimation and visualization helps the construction:
Thanks to good coordination and clash avoidance, BIM allows you to better coordinate trades and subcontractors, detecting any MEP, internal, or external clashes before construction begins reducing the amount of rework needed on any given job by avoiding clashes.
Drag and drop to assign to Teams and/or more detailed Team Member assignments.
Let task teams use simple browser-based task editing to prioritize their work for clash avoidance rather than for clash detection and remove hours of rework from your BIM schedule.
Capture logic between tasks to show relationships on the schedule. Print tasks for in-person pull planning and Lean design and construction management workflows
Mitigate risks and reduce costs. 75% of companies that have adopted BIM reported positive returns on their investments.
These benefits are available to all types of contractors and subcontractors on almost all types of projects.
Driving Vision research demonstrates that in general companies have embraced BIM as a tool but are not fully aware of the BIM requirements in the delivery process, the selection of service providers, and the approach to projects necessary to fully realize BIM’s benefits.
Amongst companies using BIM
The ever-evolving nature of BIM makes it difficult, daunting, and time-consuming to implement, especially for smaller firms. Driving Vision has developed diagnostics to analyze your current operation, so we can propose a bespoke solution to keep you up to date with the latest trend in the industry.
In the BIM Readiness diagnostic, Driving Vision evaluates your BIM capabilities, if your culture is compatible with the BIM philosophy, and the investment required to make you BIM Level 3 ready.
Your BIM readiness report looks at your capabilities, your culture, and how well you use the technology and recommends actions to close the gaps.
A Driving Vision expert will conduct the interviews online and will issue a report and discuss our findings with you. Together we will decide the best way to implement the solutions at your pace and according to your budget.
In this diagnostic, we evaluate which skills you have and if there are gaps to be filled either internally or externally to be BIM Level 3 ready.
Implementing BIM can be daunting, but Driving Vision is here to help you at the pace you are comfortable with. Get started by getting in touch now
Of practices using BIM made positive ROI
Of practices using BIM improved health and safety
Of practices using BIM decreased errors and omission
Of practices using BIM enhanced their practice image
Of practices using BIM claimed less litigations
Of practices using BIM reduced rework
It might seem daunting, time consuming & prohibitive for smaller practices, to implement BIM. Not with Driving Vision!
