There is less than one year to go until the 2016 UK government mandate, requiring all centrally procured construction projects to be delivered using BIM (building information modelling). Architects, engineers, contractors and suppliers to this sector are having to rapidly upskill, in order to deliver projects to the required standard PAS1192-2:2013 (specification for information management for the capital/delivery phase of construction projects).
But even if you do not work in the UK public sector, both public and private clients here in Ireland are also beginning to make BIM a requirement under this standard. To remain competitive and relevant, companies have to understand their role in a BIM process.
It is important not to see BIM as something extra that you simply add on to a traditional design-management process, but rather as an alternative methodology – a far better and more sophisticated way to produce, manage and exchange project information. BIM is a process carried out within a digital 3D object-based modelling environment, where each object in the virtual building assembled in software represents a real-life building component, and these objects act as the primary placeholder for vital information about that component.
Multiple traditional drawing and schedule documents can be derived/output from these models, but the usefulness of BIM, as an approach, is that all the information is captured in one place – and, if a change is required, all the information is managed in one place, so that all documents can be kept coordinated and up to date. This brings about enormous efficiencies in creating, managing and exchanging information and avoids the duplication of effort associated with the traditional exchange of paper-based information.
Extended BIM and why employers want it
The ability to view, navigate and explore all the project information in this data-rich 3D building model, gives every stakeholder a much better understanding of what is being proposed, and how it will fit and work together, facilitating far better communication, decision making and sign-off, for a much more efficient and effective design coordination process. The ability to analyse these digital models, with software for structural performance, energy performance, quantity take-off, clash detection and programme sequencing, gives the team the ability to optimise design solutions, reduce uncertainty and risk, and help better inform the client and other stakeholders.
Lastly, the process of gathering and managing vital information about the building assets in this digital environment, for both design and construction process, ensures that this information will be available to the facilities management team at handover, in a useful format to bring into their operational systems.
One of the main reasons the UK government, as a client, is demanding BIM is to gain significant benefits of cost, value and building performance, and improve the way projects are procured. It is about government clients becoming better informed – and better at procuring both the physical infrastructure and the information that facilitates its development and ongoing operations. It is no wonder, therefore, that a key component of the
PAS1192-2 process is the
Employers Information Requirements (EIR), a document that should clearly define the information about the built asset being procured and the process for information development, management and delivery during the project work stages.
This is something new for construction clients, who may be used to describing the physical functions and features of the building they want, but not being experts in information management, may find it difficult to describe their information requirements. This was less of an issue in the traditional paper-based environment in which the construction industry is used to working. Clients trusted their design and construction teams to produce and deliver the information required to build and operate their facility as printed drawings, specifications, schedules, reports etc. As long as the printed documents conveyed the right information, it did not really matter what method or standard was used in the background to create that information. As long as they could print it and read it, that was fine.
