What is BIM strategy?

BIM has brought a new level of collaboration and with it huge opportunities for the construction industry at all stages of construction projects. With its growing popularity, building owners and investors have also increasingly started to include BIM requirements in their construction projects.

However, not all investors are aware of all the nuances and pitfalls of BIM and in such cases, the setting of appropriate BIM requirements should be left to the architect, BIM coordinator, or general contractor.

Why exactly?

BIM requirements

Because strategizing is the foundation that determines everything that follows and prevents costly and annoying problems.

By definition, BIM = Building Information Modeling, but the model itself also plays a major role. As project stakeholders interact with BIM (both the process and the model), BIM requirements need to be set for both.

The modeling requirements mainly relate to the efficiency of the collaboration process between different parties: data formats, data exchange processes, levels of detail, collision detection, visualization, tendering, and change management platform, etc.

The model requirements focus on the BIM model itself, which ensures that each project phase ends with a comprehensive BIM model that provides useful information for all stakeholders.

The requirements of both are interlinked:

Standardization is important here,

• as developing all the BIM requirements from scratch would be too time-consuming and resource-intensive,
• and customization, as each project is unique in its own way.

When project stakeholders fully understand and effectively use the potential of BIM, the cost of BIM workflow is quickly recouped through increased transparency and efficiency, avoiding problems, penalties, overtime, and delays due to poor performance.

But in many cases this does not happen in practice, for example because:

• the BEP (BIM Execution Plan) is copied from project to project without changes
• the investor urges the immediate start of the project without a concrete plan
• no CDE, the investor does not have access to up-to-date information
• project templates are used with little or no modification or project-specific information
• the client has no confidence in the new process, which means double work at the end of the day

BIM strategy steps

The BIM strategy contains all information related to BIM in the client’s organization.

The design must include 3 basic steps:

Evaluation (internal and external) – internal evaluation determines the state of the company and external evaluation determines its performance in the market. The aim of the assessment process is to identify areas and buildings where improvements can be made through the use of new technologies or processes, such as BIM.

Objectives and planning – to define the organizational objectives related to BIM, the sub-objectives leading to them, and the level of maturity of project management.

Progress and implementation – the final part of the BIM strategy development, it sets out the right approach for concrete implementation without time and cost overruns.

After the comprehensive design process, the project manager can prepare the BIM strategy, which details, among other things, the integration of BIM within the organization.

BIM strategy components

Developing a BIM strategy is a complex process with important components:

• Thinking about strategic goals – the BIM strategy must be in line with the company’s overall business strategy – without it, the use of workflow will be a waste of money.
• Involving and understanding all stakeholders – the project owner often has a single, very specific viewpoint, interpreting the whole company from a single fixed perspective, which results in a one-sided, inefficient project.
• Determining the starting point – the quality of the available toolbox will determine the project’s potential.
• Comparing different perspectives – looking at the strategy from an outsider’s point of view helps you to discover and solve problems before they arise.
• Visualizing opportunities – the best way to get the client side involved as early as possible in the process is through visualization tools; and this is essential to avoid problems.
• Map out the whole process – a proactive approach is based on identifying all potential problems before they occur.
• Justification of decisions – all decisions must be based on objective, well-founded calculations, even in the case of trade-offs, which is well supported in a data-driven workflow (Building Information Modeling).
• Plan the roadmap – making strategic decisions about the steps between the starting point and the target is almost a small matter.
• Set up metrics – measure, share and react to indicators and deviations, and then improve the process based on them, which BIM’s extensive digital toolkit is a very good way to do.
• Digitalization project team – a well-established team is essential for any company undergoing organizational transformation if we want to avoid a transformation that ends up being a well-written article instead of an actual change.

Defining both BIM requirements and a BIM strategy is therefore important for all organizations involved in construction projects.

Defining BIM requirements helps the parties to understand all the nuances of the project, while the BIM strategy is an essential step in the organizational integration of the different BIM processes.

We use our BIM services to help you identify and implement needs that have not yet been formulated.