Who Will Champion BIM?

Public Owners? Private Owners? Contractors? Architects?

BIM needs a champion. Most BIM today is really 3D design +. The main hurdles to BIM adoption are: 

• developing a national standard for tagging the millions of pieces of information in a project
  
• changing the culture of design
  
• getting building owners to pay for it
  

Architects are likely to provide the BIM model or most of it, but they don't benefit from it. Contractors may contribute to the BIM model, but their gains in productivity are mostly going to pass through to the Owner. Ultimately it is the owner of the building who receives the majority of the benefits.

In my experience government is good at asking for the latest technology, and bad at using it. So government entities may take the lead and start requiring BIM on projects; but they won't know if it was done well or not. Nevertheless this might create earn-as-you-learn opportunities for architectural firms - getting paid for a BIM model while learning how to do it.

The other group who may take the lead is private enterprise wherever there is a large, long term interest in their buildings. Would buildings with lots of anticipated change be candidates - office high rises, hospitals? I suspect a building with a mostly stable future, like a server farm, makes a better candidate.

What do you think?

orig post date Apr 2013