Building Information Modeling is a system’s approach to show from design and construction to maintenance use, demolition and reuse of built assets.
The first leap towards the use of 3D technology in the construction industry was marked by the introduction of 3D solid modeling in the late 1970s. During this time, manufacturing industry was already carrying out product design, analysis, and simulation of 3D products.
Dissemination of 3D modeling in the construction industry was supposedly impeded merely because of the cost of computing power and later by the successful widespread adoption of CAD. The manufacturing industry on the other hand flourished having spent more resources in technology and as a result reaped the deserved benefits and moved toward factory automation.
Later on, construction industry realized the basis of 3D modeling and certain market sectors such as structural steel used the parametric 3D modeling. Of now, various BIM instruments are readily available throughout the construction industry as a result of construction industry’s dedication to Building Information Modeling for the last 20 years.
Construction industry too has now started to garner the true benefits of technological advancements. The industry now understands that the two dimensional drawings (manual or computer generated) are prone to errors and contradictions and the increasing complexities of the designs demanded a better paradigm.
A lot of issues which were considered irremediable at one point like labor efficiency gap, cost overrun, quality issues and other inefficiencies in delivery procedure can be closed now via the BIM concept.
Building Information Modeling is nothing more and nothing less than a system’s approach to the design construction, commissioning, ownership, administration, operation, maintenance use, demolition and reuse of built assets.
Building Information Modeling is the process and practice of virtual design and construction throughout its lifecycle. It is a pedestal where sharing of knowledge and communication between undertaking participants takes place. In other words, Building Information Modeling is the process of developing the Building Information Model .
The construction Information Model is basically a three dimensional digital representation of a construction and its intrinsic characteristics. It is built up of intelligent construction objects which include data attributes and parametric rules for each object. According to the National BIM Standard, construction Information Model is “a digital representation of physical and functional characteristics of a facility and a shared knowledge resource for information about a facility forming a reliable basis for decisions during its life-cycle; defined as existing from earliest conception to demolition”.
BIM allows use of a parametric 3D model to auto generate traditional building documents such as plans, sections, elevations, details, and schedules. Drawings produced using BIM-supported software are not of manually coordinated lines, but interactive representations of a model. The changes made in this Model are automatically coordinated throughout the undertaking, which eliminate the coordination mistakes, improve overall standard of the work.
construction Information Modeling instruments like Revit, Tekla framework, Bentley BIM suite and DProfiler etc. on the other hand are very well accepted and are capable of 3D detailed architectural, structural, mechanical, electrical, and generative components modeling.
BIM so far has proved to be an extraordinary paradigm that has offered a means for “rethinking” how we design, construct, and operate our environment.
BIM offers the potential for many direct and indirect benefits to the built environment sector, including:
The United States of America is leading with the highest percentage global BIM users. While some countries have already acclimated to BIM, some countries are still looking for expertise to make it implementable. The key reasons for low BIM adoption include low availability of skilled staff and high cost of BIM implementation. In the Middle East, awareness percentage of BIM is higher than the real users.
Since BIM implementation is a costly affair, one needs to question himself before bringing it up in a project. Questions like: What type of relevant information is needed in the model to offer value to each project participant? Who is going to develop, update, and maintain the BIM? How is the BIM going to be shared? What BIM instruments are going to be used? The questions and answers would depend on the needs of the project team.
1) Helps improve coordination : BIM offers improved coordination among various disciplines involved in various project phases. For instance, through BIM, a model created by an architect can be studied by structural designer, MEP consultants or facade consultants for their respective domain-specific design and engineering tasks.
2) Expedites pace of the building Cycle : BIM helps improve building cycle by completely eradicating plagiarism and identifying standard and redundant components.
3) improve visualizations: 3D visuals generated via BIM provide clarity on the product to various stakeholders, thus providing them adequate visibility of the practical challenges.
4) Reduced wastage and Cost : BIM users can resolve coordination issues, produce a near ‘zero-defect’ design and predict the substance needed more accurately, leading to reduced wastage on site during the building and maintenance processes.
5) Refined end product : BIM guarantees a better certainty of the end product over traditional CAD technology.
6) Improved project monitoring : BIM also assist a user in keeping a check on the progress of a project across all the phases of design development to construction to project operations and the maintenance phase.