Introduction

Perhaps the biggest recent change for clients in working with the construction industry is the arrival of Building Information Modelling (BIM). BIM has been around by that name since 2003 and the government decided in 2011 that all its work – 20% of the total – will use so-called ‘Level 2 BIM’ by 2016. That is, pulling the whole industry to adopt the digital work method.

This chapter assumes that the reader is unfamiliar with BIM and answers the nine frequently asked questions:

1. 1 What is BIM?
2. 2 What is in it for clients like us?
3. 3 Can you walk me through the BIM procedure?
4. 4 How do we become BIM clients?
5. 5 How do we appoint teams that can deliver BIM for us?
6. 6 How do we value the costs and benefits of using BIM?
7. 7 Can BIM help us with sustainability?
8. 8 Can BIM help us with asset management too?
9. 9 What comes next after Level 2 BIM?

This is a fast moving scene. Advice given in 2015 has the benefit of the relative completeness of the tool kit devised by the government’s BIM Task Group. But further tools are in development and methods will evolve quickly under the pressure of application. New software offerings will open up new possibilities. Client best practice will continue to evolve.

1. What is BIM?

From a client point of view, BIM is the use of integrated digital technologies in the design, construction and operation of buildings and infrastructure.

Only the government is a big enough customer to pull through change. After much lobbying, the UK government came out strongly, taking an international lead in devising a way for today’s available BIM to be used. A task group of industry experts has defined what is known as Level 2 BIM. Level 1 was the use, since the 1980s, of 2D and 3D CAD and document management.

Level 2 uses ‘object modelling’, where the computer recognises building elements and holds a database of geometry and other data about the element and the whole building. Each design profession continues to devise its own information model but comparison software enables the client and the project team leadership to view and coordinate the set. The models are ‘federated’ to reveal clashes between them and to run applications to rehearse the site assembly sequence and to derive costs. The client can require the final operation and maintenance information to be provided as digital data to use with their facility management software.

The earliest big BIM example in the UK was Terminal 5 at Heathrow airport, completed on time and budget and let down only by its errant baggage system. More recently, the Aon tower in the City of London – aka the Leadenhall Building or the Cheesegrater – demonstrates BIM’s ability to support prefabrication off-site. It was built quickly and economically, and without site errors. BIM is now being used successfully on projects below £20m in cost.

2. What is in it for clients like us?

For estate-holding clients, BIM offers not just the possibility of faster, cheaper and better quality construction but also a database of operation and maintenance information to support the life cycle. Clients who have preferred or required standards for their properties can hold these standards in a BIM library of model elements and provide them to design-build teams to incorporate into projects. Feedback can then add to or improve these standards.

Once the client and team are used to working in BIM mode, savings in time and cost should become apparent. BIM speeds up the process, provided that its required procedure is followed. Design decisions are concentrated into the early project stages while later production stages are partly automated. With the quantum leap in quality of information available to the builders, they can choose to use off-site prefabrication to speed site work; BIM can drive manufacturing tools. The builder can also organise the site more easily for efficiency and safety and schedule deliveries better; time is BIM’s 4th dimension. Its 5th dimension is that cost information is a byproduct of the modelling process. The 6th dimension is the asset information needed to operate and maintain the building, available immediately on handover.

Cost is reduced mainly because time is saved and risk reduced.

Quality improvements flow from the potential to achieve zero construction defects resulting from errors in design information. Modelling can also enhance quality in the performance of the building by simulation of energy flows or user circulation. Most improvement can come from the inclusion of Soft Landings in UK BIM practice. This process was developed by the University of Cambridge and its consultants to make sure that its new buildings performed as planned. The operational requirements of the facility managers become part of the brief and Employer’s Information Requirements. At commissioning stage, the operational pattern is trialled and debugged and the operators trained. After move-in, members of the design, contracting and subcontracting teams stay with the building for a proving period to make sure that all is working to plan. The typical ‘performance gap’ between design and delivered building is thus minimised. Government Soft Landings, the official version of the Cambridge scheme, adds user outcomes to the brief. In-use evaluation after two years’ use measures the results against the business case for the project. The O&M (Operation and Maintenance) database provided by BIM is fundamental to the quality of building performance and a major source of whole-life economy. FM functionality in BIM is likely to increase substantially in the coming years.

3. Can you walk me through the BIM procedure?

This walk-through is based on the RIBA Plan of Work 2013, described by Dale Sinclair in Chapter 6, which was created to fit the use of BIM. It has eight stages to cover the project life cycle (Figure 8.1). The recommended procedure deals not only with information management but also with long-standing weaknesses in the construction process and industry behaviour.

Stage 6: Handover and Close Out

This new stage results from BIM ways of working. Rather than just being the end of construction, Stage 6 prepares the building and its data doppelganger for handover to the client. The client will have asked at Stage 1 for handover information to form the basis of an Asset Information Model (AIM), including the O&M database. Each component BIM will be handed over in native software format, together with a federated version of the whole. They will have been formatted for O&M purposes, with excessive detail removed to simplify the model. A set of pdf drawings can also be provided, for use by staff. Finally, the data in the BIM can be provided in spreadsheet format using a tool called COBie (Construction Operations Building information exchange). This US Army devised schema allows translation of the data in the model into the chosen computer aided FM programme for building and asset management. It is also a checking tool, validating content against requirements to save substantial manual labour. COBie should ideally be run throughout the project, from Stages 1 to 6, to check information exchanges at each level of detail reached.

Figure 8.1: RIBA plan of work 2013: BIM Activity cycle

4. How do we become BIM clients?

Clients need to have a BIM Strategy. This starts with assessing the current level of maturity as a BIM user, identifies the level the client wishes to reach and sets steps for progress. Plans would include a process map of steps to integrate BIM into the estate management and development process, the information required to support BIM, the technological infrastructure needed and the education and training required by staff. Policy on selecting suitable suppliers and on use of contract tools would be on the list, as would development of a model BIM Project Execution Plan, the template for procedure.

The guidance to use includes PAS 1192-2 and its forbear, BS 1192.2007. These are the key guides to information management in construction. PAS 1192-3 covers asset information management, the start and end point for Employer’s Information Requirements in BIM practice. PAS 1192-4 covers COBie, the tool for converting model data into spread sheets and CAFM tools. PAS 1192-5 advises on how security can best be maintained in creating and sharing data. The reading list includes the CIC Protocol for BIM appointments and contracts, which includes guides to the role of the Information Manager and to the effect on insurances from using BIM. The important fact about Level 2 BIM is that the insurance industry agrees that nothing serious changes in the roles and liabilities of the parties at this level of use.

The top level source of guidance is the BIM Task Group website: www.bimtaskgroup.org. Most of the material is written for supply-side use but advisers will help filter it for client information.

It is not necessary for clients to invest in the level of technology, software or training which designers need to have. Clients can view the model using a normal PC/Mac and software like Solibri or Navisworks that opens models to see and check but not to affect them.

5. How do we appoint teams that can deliver BIM for us?

Consultants and main contractors are at varied levels of maturity in their use of BIM. Few specialist contractors are experienced yet and few product suppliers have put their information into BIM formats. These will all change over the next three years but now it is wise not to select firms without paying attention to their ability to ‘play BIM well with others’. It is a collaborative game but one with still-emerging standards for collaboration. One choice is to seek an integrated team with a record of collaboration and BIM usage. This could be a full contractor-led team from the start, with the contractor’s choice of designers and specialists. Or it could be an integrated design team put together by the client’s chosen architect, with the contractor’s team added no later than Stage 3. A ‘construction manager’ approach would put together a team based on proven compatibility but under client choice and leadership. Other team members, project managers, cost consultants and advisers need to be from firms that can or have worked together as people and with the tools intended. Central government has primed the market by forming frameworks of suitably qualified integrated teams from which they choose per project.

Clients should put out their Request for Proposals with a clear intention to use BIM at the level chosen. Employer’s Information Requirements should be part of the request and bidders should be asked to set out their capability to meet the EIRs. You should request a draft BIM Execution Plan to deliver the required information as a pre-contract basis for discussion. That document should include assessments of team member capability on a template provided by the Construction Project Information Committee (see cpic.org.uk).

Clients have a new job in appointing the Information Manager, usually from within the selected architect or contractor firm and with the role potentially moving from consultant to contractor at Stage 4. There are also BIM consultants available who will play this role from outside the design-construct team.

6. How do we value the costs and benefits of using BIM?

This is uncharted territory as yet. The expectation is that BIM will eventually bring a step-change in productivity in the industry. If coupled with good client and FM skills, risk will be reduced, time saved and costs reduced. As BIM practice advances further, these savings should increase and when coupled with Soft Landings should raise performance and reduce operating cost. It should also greatly reduce the likelihood of defects caused by information error. Facility management costs over the life cycle should come down substantially, as US experience suggests.

As a basis for valuing benefit, the following points are worth considering:

• Improved project outcomes flowing from better brief-making, earlier and better decision-making, use of library standards, Soft Landings and feedback from in-use evaluation.
• Decreased operating cost flowing from the Soft Landings process, better system performance and better comfort.
• Decreased FM costs flowing from easier access to O&M information.
• Reduced risk to project quality, time and cost targets from better information management.
• Reduced capital expenditure from shorter project time, reduced contingency and greater efficiency.
• Earlier availability of the asset from a shorter project timescale.
• Decreased risk of claims, defects and legal costs from better process.

As a basis for considering costs associated with BIM use, consider the following:

• Costs of setting up client systems and of training staff to work with BIM and COBie, spread over following projects.
• Additional cost of advisers at Stages 0 and 1 to define and prepare the project properly.
• Front-loaded consultancy costs to make and host models, potentially offset by reduced cost to all parties later in the project.
• Additional cost of Soft Landings service from consultants and contractors.
• Additional costs of in-use evaluation to gather feedback.
• Possible (once proven) cost of integrated project insurance held by the client, potentially recovered from consultants and contractors not needing their own cover.

Overall, costs are likely to reduce more in the build and operate phases than in the design phase. This pattern would parallel the trend in manufacturing where research and design are now a larger part of overall costs, with fabrication and operating costs a lesser part. Higher performance, quality and value can be achieved by this trend, increasing competitiveness for the client and for suppliers. Given that there is expected to be continuing upward pressure on capital costs from world demand for materials, rising sustainability goals, increasing energy cost and skilled labour shortage, the countervailing savings from the use of BIM and its associated processes is a promising way to contain these inflationary forces.

7. Can BIM help us with sustainability?

The sustainability of our civilisation is a major challenge to the current economic model. Market forces are not generally showing the potential to solve this challenge, leading to the declaration by Lord Stern that this is the greatest market failure in history. For clients with a commitment to more sustainable development, the cost of reaching higher standards is a constraint. BIM can help in two ways: improving the design and commissioning process to achieve higher performance more easily, and reducing whole-life cost to make investment in higher standards more affordable.

BIM as a design tool provides the basis for simulating performance. Analytical applications can be run on the model. These can simulate space use, environmental performance, fire behaviour, structural stresses and, doubtless, an increasing number of useful properties. All these simulations can reduce overdesign and increase safety.

The economic advantages of BIM-based working can counter inflation. Clients can choose to reinvest some of these savings into higher building sustainability without sacrificing other goals. Significant whole-life cost reduction is part of the Construction Industry Strategy for 2025, as is capital cost reduction and carbon reduction. BIM is one of the major tools available to achieve more with much less.

8. Can BIM help us with asset management too?

The arrival of BIM marks a switch for the construction industry from considering buildings as projects to considering them as assets. The circular model of the asset life cycle replaces the linear model of a project. For clients with estate or infrastructure assets, the working method of BIM promises to serve them better.

9. What comes next after Level 2 BIM?

Level 2 BIM is required on work for central government departments from January 2016. It will gradually spread to become the basic working tool of the industry, starting as it has already with interested clients in local government, universities and commercial development. Level 2 is an entry-level BIM concept, one which clients and suppliers are expected to use without remodelling any other aspect of their way of working than the information management changes outlined in this guide. There is, however, an expectation that BIM will move onto a more ambitious plane called Level 3 in the 2020s and that many other relevant changes will occur.

Level 3 BIM is expected to centre on shared use of a single model held in the common data environment, rather than the federation of separate models. The CDE will also probably be provided in the cloud rather than on a dedicated server, unless security requirements are overriding. This would enable rapid integration of contributions from all users and further accelerate project progress. Collaborative contracts, which support integrated teamwork but provide less potential to pinpoint liability, are seen as important to effective BIM working. These contracts, notably NEC3, PPC 2000 and JCT-CE, are being used now with Level 2 BIM. The Ministry of Justice is using PPC 2000, a partnering contract. The necessary commercial pressure is provided by the clients’ power of patronage to give future work. The whole team stands or falls by its performance rather than being adversarial internally.

Significantly, BIM diminishes the potential for adversarial relationships between clients, consultants and contractors through the following:

• Prompt payment guarantees, including the project bank account and removal of retentions. These methods increase the comfort of tier 2 suppliers and levels below, increasing their commitment and protecting their viability. Their prices should reflect that. Lead contractors may seek additional preliminary payments to replace the cash they used to hold back.
• IPI: this approach is being trialled now. It replaces the separate insurances of the designers and constructors, which push them apart when problems arise, with a single policy held by the client.
• Integrated regulations checking. It is possible to use BIM to manage statutory regulation of design, either by building the approved design standards into design software or by having designs checked automatically against regulations.
• Completion of the full menu of interoperability rules: the many types of software used across the industry can talk to each other if they have been written on the basis of a convention called IFC (Industrial Foundation Classes). IFC conventions are well advanced but also require completion of work on an international data dictionary and a standard for processes in data management.
• Product information standards: at present product manufacturers do not have a single format for the provision of digital information about their products. A medley of alternatives exists to allow use with varied BIM platforms and to serve the requirements of particular contractors. This costly anarchy needs to be replaced by a standard format.
• Internet of Things (IoT): this term describes the use by devices of the Internet Protocol to communicate. It enables devices to supply data into analytical algorithms to support a wide variety of applications. Low-cost sensors are now arriving which can make a building or infrastructure asset capable of being managed as are jet engines and Formula 1 cars: automatic, real-time control to meet changing circumstances, plus full reporting. IoT is likely to join with BIM and Soft Landings as complimentary concepts. The Smart City concept parallels IoT for buildings, offering multi-facetted management of urban areas and infrastructure use.

It is probable that the combination of these potentials will define the next level of BIM, and BIM may come to be seen as a component of wider synthesis of digital asset and city management. Most of the potentials described here will mature before 2020.

It will be obvious from the above that BIM is not a fixed concept but one which will continue to develop with emerging technology and changing market offerings. Clients who start down the road to BIM usage should be aware that the road does not end at Level 2. The outline plan for Level 3 was published in early 2015, under the title Digital Built Britain, as a vision for the next decade of development. Level 2 provides a landing on the grand staircase. ◼