5 Steps to successful BIM adoption
Today, the clients are demanding that the AEC professionals provide them with accurate deliverables, smarter processes and more efficient buildings. They want all this in faster turnaround times and in competitive prices. This is indeed a tall order. To meet these demand the AEC professionals are gradually realizing the importance of Building Information Modeling. It provides them with the ability to manage and create the project from start to finish, makes it possible to solve problems in the early stages, collaborate with the stakeholders more efficiently and has significant time and cost saving rewards.
Looking at the emerging problems and the various advantages of BIM it is becoming increasingly clear to the AEC professionals that they need to slowly migrate from Drafting Services to BIM. Whether they wish to adopt BIM to fulfill their requirements from clients or to optimize their workflow a successful BIM adoption is done considering all resources and in a systematic manner. In the current article we state the five steps to a successful BIM adoption.
1. Analyze your equipment:
The first step in a successful BIM adoption would be to take an account of the hardware and software requirements. BIM has some specific hardware and software requirements in terms of processing speed, the amount of information the software can handle etc. This step also requires that company adopting BIM chooses the BIM software they wish to use like ArchiCAD, Revit etc. and then getting its license and setting it. They can always do a thorough research or even consult others from their field and make an informed choice.
2. Get your team onboard:
This is a very crucial step. This might be a little difficult especially since they have been operating CAD for a period of time and may not always be keen on a change. Here, they must be explained the need for adopting BIM. Moreover, it is not that every employee needs to right from the starting learn and use BIM. The aim is to only create a pilot team who can start with small projects and perhaps in the future even train and support the rest of team. The team members who are chosen for pilot project must have some level of BIM exposure, have domain specific knowledge, should be willing to learn a new software and even train others down the line.
3. Launch a pilot:
Ideally, instead of jumping directly into the competitive market where there are high chances of repercussions like customer satisfaction, monetary loss etc. it is ideal to run a pilot project or a few pilot projects. It provides a controlled environment and allows the learn and document how BIM operates. This provides them a guide on certain problems that they will face and prepares them for real projects. Additionally, always start with small projects and then move to projects with high stakes.
4. Get your finances in order:
To migrate to BIM will take some amount of investment. Firstly, the price of requisite software and hardware investments as well as the cost of training or hiring human resources. Along with it there is also a period of transition where you might not make the same level of profit as before. In this situation it is ideal to have a long term financial plan which takes into account all contingencies. But one thing is for sure that once the company gets used to BIM it will definitely reap a lot of monetary rewards.
5. Then there is outsourcing!
Finally, a lot of companies who don’t have the time to actually migrate from CAD to BIM Services also choose to outsource their BIM requirements. This takes away all the hassle involved in the process and allows them to focus on their core services. Moreover, it also means that they can get access to an expert team of professionals who the experience in providing BIM Services.
