A common disclaimer that is a major roadblock to any progress with BIM

In the mid nineties, Mark Burry – a lecturer at VUW (School of Architecture) was photographed with a CD to promote his course. The capture said, ‘this is the medium soon entire buildings will be documented on and handed to contractors to build from.’ This quote is totally from memory – no offence intended for inaccuracy. This ad was published in the local newspaper.

I am still waiting to see the prediction happen;

These days DVDs do get handed over in Tenders and BID documents, they carry however information not much different from a trailer-load of paper drawings, printed specifications, graphs.

I don’t think that was what Mark meant when he was referring to digitally documenting yet-to-be-built buildings.

I dare to speculate, based on some hazy memories that he was predicting contractors setting the environment of building-communication where the digital data was carried between parties with data integrity intact.

Mark and I presented a conference paper in Vienna in 1997; During the research for my part I contacted Joern Utzon, in his eighties at the time. To my delight he responded;

In my numerous shifts over the years since, his letter got misplaced but I remember it as being encouraging of the use of digital tools to document complex buildings.

Picture book documenting tomorrow, today a common disclaimer.

Also a major roadblock to any progress with BIM.