BIM for General Contractor-Deriving the Best Project Outcomes

General contractors are in charge of construction projects, and are responsible for day to day site surveys, cost estimations, project scheduling and monitoring, liaisons across multiple disciplines and applying for various permits and licenses.

Higher predictability and on time completion of projects remains a major concern for General contractors. As the general contractors have volley of tasks that are based on predictions and assumptions, these are the people who value higher predictability in a project. And this is precisely the reason why, BIM for general contractors is an ideal solution.

Benefits of using BIM for general contractors include:

• Better construction planning – in terms of scheduling and workflow
• Higher collaboration and liaisons across disciplines
• Reduced risks
• Increased productivity
• Desired project outcomes

BIM allows the main contractors, create a virtual mock up for the construction process design, detect work flow based conflicts, and manage the man power and supply chain for materials on site.

However, while BIM is widely accepted by general contractors, the full benefits of 4D BIM (simulation based modeling for project scheduling) have not yet been fully realized across projects. One of the major challenges that hamper extraction of the best benefits from 4D BIM is to get their supply chain use BIM.

Now we call it as a challenge because although the adoption of is widespread it is still not standardized. Lack of software hardware interoperability also poses a problem. Additionally it is important to have experts who can use BIM to extract its full benefits. It is seen that when all those involved in the supply chain adopt BIM, there is definitely better collaboration and hence improved performance.

BIM adoption further helps the main contractors take better and informed decisions, as VDC capabilities offer greater predictability. As a result the projects are also completed on time, within the given cost constraints and as desired. Hence, general contractors can manage the projects well, and execute them for the best business outcomes.