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BIM's Seven Deadly Sins

BIM as the building information modelling, has become very popular nowadays. Professionals from a diverse range of backgrounds in the building industry such as architects, have high expectations towards BIM for efficiency gains and for more integrated collaboration with their partners. The first sin is Technocentricity - focus on software instead of design culture. BIM is often misconceived as being a new version of what the industry associates with CAD and its uptake over the past two to three decades. CAD helped designers to carry out these processes on the computer for higher speed, accuracy and for real visualisation. However, the difference is that a technology-centric view on BIM will inevitably lead to fundamental problems in understanding BIM as a method for conceiving buildings in the first place. By talking about culture, when BIM gets introduced to a practice some staff will find it easier than others to embrace the new possibilities it has to offer. A practice's leadership is well advised to consider those who will be taken out of their comfort zone and who will be anxious about the changes BIM may bring to their work. The second sin is Ambiguity, during the Australian industry forums on BIM, building industry's workers agreed that one of the major hindering factors in the adoption of BIM in design practice is the high level of ambiguity about the range of services it constitutes. Lacking a differentiated view on the value BIM adds to projects, clients are likely to be reluctant to compensate their consultants for BIM related services. Less well informed users may be tempted to associate BIM with everything interesting on could achieve in architecture with the help of computational design. This is not helped by the fact that the term "Building Information Modelling" is general in nature and it could be used to describe any activity that involves 3D architectural design. BIM users experience an overall increase of the interfacing capability between multiple, previously segregated, areas of computational design. BIM's potential for linking intelligent building information throught various types of enquiry and during various stages of design should prompt users to define a spectrum of BIM related activities. The third is Elision, one diagram in particular has been central to progagating the benefits and effects of BIM in the building industry. It is a graph created published by the American Institute of Architects via one of their members, Patrick MacLeamy. Base on the graph, it shows a positive contribution to the progagation of BIM in the industry as it communicates in very basic terms what can be achieved through BIM and it highlights the ineffciencies of pre BIM work methods. When considering the MacLeamy diagram in retrospect and in more detail, it seems to present processes in the uptake of BIM in an overly simplistic manner. The smarter the BIM, the more useful information it will contain specific to each of its contributors. In order to achieve a high level of usefulness, that information needs to be managed, coordinated and associated with individual objects in the BIM. The forth is Hypocrisy - the IPD excuse. BIM by itself makes little sense in design practice. Integrated Project Delivery is hailed as BIM’s twin sister as it associates project procurement and a predefined partnership among collaborators with the appropriation of design data through BIM. IPD allows us to tap into the potential BIM has to offer, based on procurement and collaboration principles that foster teamwork rather than litigation. Fifth is Delusion, despite the continuous development and industry uptake of BIM over the past 8-10 years, the ultimate deliverables for designers still remain the submission of 2D documentation.While the end product has stayed the same, the means of achieving it have changed drastically. The effects of BIM on any established work methods are disruptive by nature.The process change intrinsic to BIM implementation is substantial, and it requires a venturous mindset plus the willingness to take risks by a practice’s leadership in order to succeed. A step by step approach with small increments will in many ways not suffice to enable true change.