39 Facts About BIM

BIM software is used by individuals, businesses and government agencies who plan, design, construct, operate and maintain buildings and diverse physical infrastructures, such as water, refuse, electricity, gas, communication utilities, roads, railways, bridges, ports and tunnels.

Concept of BIM has been in development since the 1970s, but it only became an agreed term in the early 2000s.

Development of standards and adoption of BIM has progressed at different speeds in different countries; standards developed in the United Kingdom from 2007 onwards have formed the basis of international standard ISO 19650, launched in January 2019.

BIM is often associated with Industry Foundation Classes and aecXML – data structures for representing information – developed by buildingSMART.

BIM authoring tools present a design as combinations of "objects" – vague and undefined, generic or product-specific, solid shapes or void-space oriented, that carry their geometry, relations, and attributes.

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BIM applications allow extraction of different views from a building model for drawing production and other uses.

BIM software defines objects parametrically; that is, the objects are defined as parameters and relations to other objects so that if a related object is amended, dependent ones will automatically change.

Use of BIM goes beyond the planning and design phase of the project, extending throughout the building life cycle.

The BIM manager is retained by a design build team on the client's behalf from the pre-design phase onwards to develop and to track the object-oriented BIM against predicted and measured performance objectives, supporting multi-disciplinary building information models that drive analysis, schedules, take-off and logistics.

BIM additionally is able to aid in collision detection, identifying the exact location of discrepancies.

BIM could have in the model the specific valve size, manufacturer, part number, and any other information ever researched in the past, pending adequate computing power.

One of the challenges to the proper maintenance and management of existing facilities is understanding how BIM can be utilized to support a holistic understanding and implementation of building management practices and "cost of ownership" principles that support the full product lifecycle of a building.

BIM in green building, or "green BIM", is a process that can help architecture, engineering and construction firms to improve sustainability in the built environment.

The Ministry of Construction announced BIM was as the key application technology of informatisation in "Ten new technologies of construction industry" .

BIM implementation is targeted towards BIM Stage 2 by the year 2020 led by the Construction Industry Development Board .

MLIT announced " BIM will be mandated for all of its public works from the fiscal year of 2023, except those having particular reasons".

Small BIM-related seminars and independent BIM effort existed in South Korea even in the 1990s.

The first industry-level BIM conference was held in April 2008, after which, BIM has been spread very rapidly.

In 2016, the UAE's Quality and Conformity Commission set up a BIM steering group to investigate statewide adoption of BIM.

Czech BIM Council, established in May 2011, aims to implement BIM methodologies into the Czech building and designing processes, education, standards and legislation.

PTNB was superseded in 2018 by Plan BIM 2022, administered by an industry body, the Association for the Development of Digital in Construction, founded in 2017, and supported by a digital platform, KROQI, developed and launched in 2017 by CSTB .

BIM was piloted in many areas of German infrastructure delivery and in July 2023 Volker Wissing, Federal Minister for Digital and Transport, announced that, from 2025, BIM will be used as standard in the construction of federal trunk roads in addition to the rail sector.

July 2015 meeting at Spain's Ministry of Infrastructure [Ministerio de Fomento] launched the country's national BIM strategy, making BIM a mandatory requirement on public sector projects with a possible starting date of 2018.

BIM has been a subject of events by the Swiss Society for Engineers and Architects, SIA.

In June 2011 the UK government published its BIM strategy, announcing its intention to require collaborative 3D BIM on its projects by 2016.

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In November 2017, the UK BIM Alliance merged with the UK chapter of BuildingSMART.

Unlike some countries such as the UK, the US has not adopted a set of national BIM guidelines, allowing different systems to remain in competition.

The US National BIM Standard had largely been developed through volunteer efforts; NIBS aimed to create a national BIM programme to drive effective adoption at a national scale.

BIM is seen to be closely related to Integrated Project Delivery where the primary motive is to bring the teams together early on in the project.

BIM has the potential to play a vital role in the Nigerian AEC sector.

For instance, Utiome suggests that, in conceptualizing a BIM-based knowledge transfer framework from industrialized economies to urban construction projects in developing nations, generic BIM objects can benefit from rich building information within specification parameters in product libraries, and used for efficient, streamlined design and construction.

BIM Africa Initiative, primarily based in Nigeria, is a non-profit institute advocating the adoption of BIM across Africa.

South African BIM Institute, established in May 2015, aims to enable technical experts to discuss digital construction solutions that can be adopted by professionals working within the construction sector.

BIM is a relatively new technology in an industry typically slow to adopt change.

Yet many early adopters are confident that BIM will grow to play an even more crucial role in building documentation.

BIM contains most of the data needed for building performance analysis.

The building properties in BIM can be used to automatically create the input file for building performance simulation and save a significant amount of time and effort.

Construction sequences can be reviewed as a series of problems using 4D BIM, enabling users to explore options, manage solutions and optimize results.

However, there is less consensus about the definition of 6D BIM; it is sometimes used to cover use of BIM for sustainability purposes.