US and UK Building Owners Expect to Increase Their Involvement With BIM in the Next Two Years

McGraw Hill Construction today released its new SmartMarket Report, TheBusiness Value of BIM for Owners, which demonstrates that owners expect to grow their involvement with BIM rapidly:

• 40% of U.S. owners and 38% of U.K. owners expect that more than 75% of their projects will involve BIM in just two years, with a particularly high level of growth in the U.S.
• Growth in the U.K. is being driven by the approaching implementation of a central government mandate requiring use of BIM on all national public projects by 2016, with over two thirds (67%) of U.K. owners reporting that the mandate has a high impact on their use of BIM.

"The McGraw Hill Construction report clearly shows the most important driver of BIM use in Singapore and the U.K. has been their national BIM mandates," says Phillip G. Bernstein, Vice President of Strategic Industry Relations at Autodesk. "With these two governments continuing to make infrastructure development a high priority, the adoption of BIM has become a critically important step towards minimizing lifecycle building costs and improving the design quality of their built assets.  The report makes evident that the desire to become an industry leader is an aspect of the BIM policies of Singapore and the U.K. To this end, a significant impact of these BIM mandates has been to ensure that construction sectors are becoming more globally competitive."

The influence of the mandate in the U.K. is driving a much higher general level of involvement with BIM by owners than in the U.S. The study suggests the impact of the mandate in several key areas.

• U.K. owners are more aware of BIM use by the core project team members (architects and general contractors) than their U.S. counterparts.
• Most U.K. owners (88%) are formally measuring the impact of BIM, but only 18% of U.S. owners are.
• More U.K. owners agree that they have experienced key BIM benefits like enhanced visualization, fewer problems due to design errors, coordination issues or construction errors, and beneficial impacts on project schedule and the control of construction costs.