Dive Brief:
- Building owners and developers have a solid interest in seeing building information modeling — BIM — used in projects they're paying for: It can reduce their costs.
- BIM's ability to show conflicts in structures and systems before work begins can reduce the hold-ups and change orders that would be required if no one knew a pipe had to go through a beam until they were ready to do it.
- Having BIM details of a building also can benefit operators after all the construction crews are gone, giving them a very detailed picture of where all their building's systems are, facilitating inspections and repairs.
Dive Insight:
Perhaps it is easier for developers to be more cheering for BIM than for the designers and contractors who have to pay for the software and be sure that as-built information is always being fed into the model, but it is easy to see why they are enthusiastic about the big-picture benefits that BIM supporters promise. Since they have the money and money speaks loudly, it is to everyone's advantage to be BIM-ready in contracts so everyone has a clear understanding of how they are going to use modeling.
