A lighting scheme designed using 3D (and 4D) BIM techniques. – Bentley
Because of the efficiency and cost saving advantages of BIM for construction professionals – including electrical contractors – it has slowly been gaining ground as a technique. But are these professionals ready to use BIM in anticipation of the 2016 deadline after which all publically funded Government building projects must use BIM? James Hunt reports:
The Electrical Contractors’ Association (ECA) has just published a survey on its member firms’ ‘BIM readiness’. The results indicate that most are aware of BIM and some are BIM ready, or nearly so. However, a larger proportion of them are clearly not ready to use this technique, which can provide many benefits to building designers, builders, contractors, managers and users.
This is a very important finding, bearing in mind that the UK Government is aiming for all publically funded works started post 2016 to be carried out using BIM. This is because the previous coalition Government embarked with industry on a four-year programme for sector modernisation to reduce capital costs and the carbon burden from the construction and operation of the built environment by 20%. BIM is an important part of this plan.
Why use BIM?
So, how does BIM benefit building and electrical professionals?
Building Information Modelling (or Building Information Management) concerns generating and managing intelligent information about a building or location throughout its lifecycle. It is a shared resource and a process involving the generation and management of digital representations of physical and functional characteristics of buildings.
The reasons for using this technique are mainly those of efficiency, and to avoid the typical construction problems that often occur on building and other sites. The correct use of BIM minimises waste and streamlines construction through the use of detailed, intelligent investigation techniques, as well as evaluation during the design phase. BIM, therefore, enables more efficient methods of designing, creating and maintaining building assets.
Electrical engineers and contractors would do well to consider using BIM techniques for projects large and small now.
So BIM is almost certainly destined to evolve quickly and will become ‘mainstream’ for new buildings and related infrastructures, as well as potentially for refurbishments and retrofits. But is this in fact so? Are construction professionals – including electrical and mechanical contractors – ready to use BIM to its optimum extend for any particular job? Do they, in fact, understand BIM properly? The ECA aimed to find out.
The ECA’s BIM Readiness Survey
The ECA therefore conducted a survey on its member firms’ ‘BIM readiness’. This has now been published and is entitled ‘ECA BIM Readiness Survey 2015’.
Those companies surveyed were building services contractors (40.4%), main building contractors (16.3%), building services consultants (13%), suppliers and distributors to building services – such as electrical wholesalers (7.2%), building services manufacturers (5.7%), plus others (17.5%). Turnovers varied from up to £100,000 to over £20 million (38.3%), with 20.8% having turnovers between £1 million to £5 million, so the demographic of this survey represents a broad spectrum of firms that are, or likely should be, BIM ready for 2016.
The results
Questions posed included whether respondents’ companies each had a ‘BIM champion’ or BIM planning group, the answers being ‘yes’ (54.3%) and ‘no’ (45.7%) for the former question, and ‘yes’ (41.0%) and ‘no’ (41.8%) for the latter – though here, 17.2% didn’t think they needed a BIM planning group. So at least the issue was being seriously considered in many cases. The respondents then gave their views on BIM in terms of statements they agreed with, such as ‘the future for project information (59.8%), a tool that will help achieve useful change in construction (58.6%) and others. The broadly positive results suggested that respondents were reasonably clear about BIM benefits.
The next question examined respondents’ firms’ state of BIM readiness in terms of if a client or buyer specified in Quarter 3 that a forthcoming project should use BIM, what was their actual state of readiness’? Here, there was a divergence from earlier results – only 16% of firms believed they were fully ready, with the ‘not ready at all’s’ being over 27%. Even so, in terms of firms already having the necessary hardware to run BIM software to enable the management process, over 70% thought ‘yes’.
Replies to other questions tended to show that the respondents were generally less ready than they should be to meet the forthcoming BIM challenge. Typically, half either don’t know what the various BIM processes are or are not ready for them. Furthermore, in terms of firms’ understanding of barriers to BIM working, one is typically seen as not being relevant to what they do, followed by their projects being too small for BIM.
Other worries concerning barriers to BIM working are a lack of freely available BIM objects, a lack of standard tools, protocols and training, no current demand, a lack of in-house expertise, the cost and time needed to engage with BIM, and the commercial benefits being seen as unclear.
One survey question was concerned with respondents’ answer to a question that might imply a way forward – better communication. In answer to being asked whether respondents thought there was sufficient practically useful and publically available information on BIM, nearly 62% thought not, while only just over 38% thought there was.
So it seems clear that there is a need to better communication of BIM’s benefits. The Government – perhaps – should provide much more accessible and better quality ‘BIMformation’, while other information trade sources could better help too.
Voltimum UK produced a VoltiTECH on BIM a year or so back, and interested users can access it here: http://www.voltimum.co.uk/articles/all-you-need-know-about-bim
To read the full article on BIM and the ECA survey results, go to: http://www.voltimum.co.uk/articles/eca-carries-out-building-information-modelling-bim-survey-ahead-2016-deadline
