Defining BIM: Vision meets reality

In last month’s article (“BIM: Pipe Dream or Promised Land?”), we contemplated a vision of a well-designed and implemented building information modeling system with the potential to revolutionize home building. By automating critical design, costing, and build functions that now require remarkable talent and/or burdensome amounts of time, home builders could attain the kind of productivity improvements seen in almost every other industry over the past 30 years — except our own.

Is this really such a big deal? I spent four hours one evening searching the Internet for productivity growth figures of U.S. industry versus those of the construction industry. As you might guess, there are many calculation methods and many different sources. Some cite labor only, while others add material productivity and even energy productivity. The search was both illuminating and exasperating.

With eyes thoroughly glazed-over, I reached this conclusion: Since the 1950s, the productivity of U.S. industry as a whole has increased around 300 percent, accounting for our remarkable standard-of-living growth (the debacle of the past five years notwithstanding). During the same 50-year period, the productivity of the U.S. construction industry has increased 33 percent. On the surface, that is a 9-to-1 ratio, but it’s worse than that for two reasons. First, the construction industry data weighs down the total U.S. figures. Pull those numbers out and the U.S. productivity number goes up, thus the ratio grows.

Second, the only lucid studies I found lumped commercial and residential construction together. Anyone who has studied the building industry knows that commercial construction, although a poor performer on its own accord, has outpaced residential building in productivity. If we consider both of those factors, the ratio could be as high as 15 or 20 to 1, but let’s settle on a conservative 10-to-1 ratio and project that home building’s increase in productivity since the 1950s is at most 10 percent of that of the rest of the economy. I hope that disturbs you as much as it does me because the cost implications cannot be overstated. It should also excite you because the opportunity to reduce cost and increase profit is almost limitless. If BIM shows any potential to help us increase productivity and get at that cost, we owe it to ourselves to take it seriously.

What is BIM?

As I researched details for this special, three-part series on BIM, I discovered that even those involved in BIM implementation often have a hard time articulating the technology in a succinct manner. I once heard someone say that when you hear building information modeling, think “builder information management,” and I’ve found that helps. When you contemplate the overwhelming amount of information that can be brought together in plans, specifications, construction details, costs, and schedule, somehow the idea of a system to “manage” that information is easier to contemplate than a system that “models” it.

If you are having trouble keeping it all straight, you are in good company. There is a large BIM subculture out there, evidenced by the 9,100-member BIMexperts Group on LinkedIn. Recently, a member posed a question to the group: Describe BIM in 10 words or less. It was a challenge from his boss. The 131 comments to date (in less than a month) are both enlightening and confusing. Here are some highlights:

1. Integrated design, engineering, and building management through a data-rich 3D model
2. Processes fostering improved communication for building design, construction, and maintenance
3. Utilizing tools and procedures to design, construct, manage, and collaborate
4. Creating, developing, and managing all building information digitally
5. Life-cycle management of buildings supported by technology
6. Digitally building what one does not yet know how to build
7. BIM isn’t software, it includes people, processes, standards, and methods
8. Most managers just refer to BIM with another three-letter acronym: WTF.

The first five on that list are educational, but the last three are particularly revealing. The sixth one (digitally building what one does not yet know how to build) is a truly big idea. This requires setting some substantial egos aside, but if BIM can bring the constituents together in a true learning mode, we will see dramatic improvements in efficiency.

What is needed is the eastern concept of Shoshihn, roughly translated as “beginner’s mind.” Shoshihn is defined by Webster as: An attitude of openness, eagerness, and lack of preconceptions when studying a subject, even when studying at an advanced level, just as a beginner in that subject would. The best athletes, artists, scientists, and educators practice Shoshihn, even if they never use the term. It’s time that builders, architects, and engineers adopt Shoshihn. Given our astounding lack of progress compared to other industries over the past 50 years, has our supposed expertise moved us forward, or held us back?