Is BIM Right For You?

While times have been tough for some construction firms, many have weathered the storm well and are now in prime position to take advantage of the burgeoning recovery.

These companies set lofty goals like saving a client millions of dollars or accelerating a project schedule by 10 percent. They create bids so confidence-inspiring they leave competitors flat-footed. Mere pipe dreams? Not for companies that adopt building information modeling (BIM).

BIM is an integrated process that allows architects, engineers, contractors and owners to explore a project’s key physical and functional characteristics digitally-before it’s built. On a project that takes advantage of BIM, information is coordinated and consistent, spurring efficiencies throughout the project lifecycle.

BIM holds promise for all construction firms-from a small firm with design-bid-build projects to a larger company specializing in design-build projects. In fact, despite economic uncertainty, BIM users expect to ramp up their investment in BIM in 2009, according to research firm and publisher McGraw-Hill Construction. Why? Because BIM can help improve planning, cost forecasting and project control-while making it easier for teams to collaborate and communicate. The tangible benefits of BIM include everything from fewer RFIs and change orders and lower costs to faster schedules and well-orchestrated field work.

So, how can BIM help your firm? By making significant improvements in the following areas of your business:

• Winning new work
• Increasing estimating power
• Coordinating and detecting interferences
• Interpreting design intent in the field
• Predicting and communicating the schedule

The best part about BIM? You can start small, bringing BIM into problem areas first-and then extend BIM everywhere over time.

Win Big

BIM makes some of its biggest contributions to the project before you begin work. Setting your firm apart during the bidding process is much easier when you can demonstrate BIM experience and expertise. Owners typically worry that something will go wrong with the project. Someone will get injured. Work will go over budget. Unforeseen problems will delay completion. BIM can help you set potential clients at ease. While your competitors resort to explaining bar charts, you can immerse the owner in a visual experience that demonstrates your understanding of the project-and that you have a methodology for resolving problems before you break ground.

You can use BIM to win work by creating a conceptual building model of the project to show the owners. They can “fly” around seeing it from all angles in 3D, while you demonstrate how you’ve thought about phasing, safety, environmental and site challenges. You can underpin your bid with an explanation of the BIM methodologies you’ll use to keep projects and teams on track, and if you’ve completed a BIM project already, you can provide examples of how BIM helped you save money and time and avoid problems in the field. By communicating your experience dealing with the issues the owner may worry about, you win their confidence-and perhaps the work.

Boost Your Cost Estimating Power

Generating reliable project estimates is a challenge for most construction companies. If your firm undertakes construction-management-at-risk projects, a bad estimate could spell disaster. In an effort to cost correctly, many firms have their most experienced people conduct cost estimating, because they know how buildings come together, can accurately take into account complexities and understand where things could go wrong. Unfortunately, these highly skilled workers spend an inordinate amount of time performing menial counting and measuring tasks.

BIM can help you change the equation for cost estimating. It enables more accurate and faster cost estimates by letting you extract accurate property data and 2D and 3D design data from various applications as you calculate material quantities for all building systems and components. At even the earliest design stages, you can use BIM technology to perform a takeoff of an entire building information model. With BIM, you build a preliminary budget early in the design phase, and build on it as more information becomes available. And because BIM automates so many aspects of measuring and counting, your talented people can use their experience and time to provide cost information on design options-such as adding a sun shade, solar panels or low-e glass to a design-rather than counting all the doors on a floor.

Understand Design Intent

If you can’t understand an architect’s design intent, it’s pretty hard to evaluate that design for constructability. Misunderstood design intent can cause serious problems both in the planning stages and in the field. But when you use 2D tools, there’s a significant amount of guesswork involved interpreting the designer’s intent-and determining design constructability. Flat layers are overlaid to depict different building elements, and it can take years of experience for someone to look at these drawings and know whether the elements can be constructed as easily or cost-effectively as intended.

By representing designs realistically in 3D, BIM allows you to see how designs come together-there’s no interpretation involved. Even if you don’t receive a 3D model from the architect, you can build a construction model based on their 2D drawings to confirm their design intent. You can use this model to do everything from determining constructability and verifying quantities to scheduling and construction sequencing. As a result, you can help owners understand how various design choices impact cost, schedule and logistics.

Manage Conflicts

When problems are discovered during construction, it wastes money. It’s not unusual for companies to spend $1,000 an hour on jobsite workers who can’t do their jobs until an issue is resolved. Manual processes make it difficult to find inconsistencies and conflicts before construction. It’s virtually impossible to identify all potential conflicts by overlaying individual drawings on a light table or using 2D CAD tools to overlay CAD layers. This process is slow and costly, and often leads to mistakes. Knowing this, many firms lack confidence that everything will fit as designed-so trades don’t bother using more cost-effective offsite fabrication.

With BIM, you use a 3D digital model to gain a whole-project view. The model lets you check time and space coordination to help improve site and workflow planning, and check for interferences so you can identify and solve conflicts before they halt work in the field. With earlier insight into design problems, teams can discern how to improve the design while they produce coordinated, accurate construction documentation. BIM also gives trades more confidence that everything will fit, so they can effectively fabricate more in the shop, shortening project timelines. And because you find problems before construction begins, you reduce requests for information (RFI) and costly change orders and minimize field coordination problems.

Predict and Communicate Schedules

On a well-run jobsite, everyone understands who is going to do what-and how and when they’re going to do it. Safety is considered at every turn and trades are seamlessly coordinated. Too often, jobsites fall short of this ideal simply because firms rely on bar charts to communicate project plans and schedules. These fail to show how or why certain construction activities are linked in a given sequence and cannot accurately calculate the critical path to completing a project. That’s because the critical path method scheduling software many firms use to create, update and communicate their project schedules do not capture the spatial components related to these activities. Therefore, it’s difficult for project managers, project engineers, subcontractors and owners to understand the schedule or identify potential safety or sequencing problems.

With BIM technology, you link 3D model data to project schedules created in scheduling software to quickly visualize construction schedules and logistics in 4D. When stakeholders see the schedule, they can clearly understand the sequence, logistics and relationships between all activities-and identify potential problems. For example, when viewing a 4D schedule, you can immediately see that it’s impossible to install a roof chiller before the roof is constructed. You quickly make adjustments, coordinate your trades effectively and keep the project moving forward without delays.

BIM Works

If you’re still not sure about BIM, consider this-Gilbane Building Company, in Rhode Island, credits its BIM solutions with helping the company decrease RFIs and change orders by up to 70 percent, save clients more than $1 million on typical projects, accelerate project schedules by as much as 10 percent and increase the use of cost-effective prefabricated materials.

You can start realizing the benefits of BIM by implementing it incrementally. The first step is getting the tools you need to create building information models for your projects, whether you’re enhancing a 3D model provided by architects or creating a model from their 2D drawings. Armed with this model, you’re ready to begin finding problems early, coordinating and communicating seamlessly and completing more projects on time and on budget.

Construction Business Owner, November 2009