The inverted (alternative) BIM triangle

When I first glanced over Pierre Venter’s comment from within a linkedin forum (link below) – 

I thought: exactly! 

Then I realised, he was not thinking the same way as I was when I initially tried to understand this graph/ic and immediately wanted to flip it upside down;

For me, BIM means literally, how Building Information is managed within the Industry;

Not just on what media or with what tools or by whom within the process but how its management adds or removes risks from projects and how that risks then get distributed to the various participants?

This may be a foreign concept for most people, but within the AEC everything lives or dies by how ‘information’ is managed i.e. used, abused and misused.

So, when I first saw the illustration, I thought that it was meant to be describing the development of BIM from a set level in time to a much higher level over time. It included CAD too, so I assumed the start-time was that of the emergence of CAD and related to ‘real (actual) time’.

By now it has been proven that I read the graph in a totally wrong way, for whatever reason, the closest may be what many implied, ‘I just did not get it’;

Let me note it here, that I still strongly believe the real (as opposed to an aspired to) level of BIM maturity changing over a set timeframe and across the AEC industry is worthwhile to be represented on a graph, and how that one would show a falling trend, no matter how many new tools and initiatives have emerged over the last 2 decades that have been added into the process of BIM and qualified as progresses.

So, to satisfy my need for such a graph I drew up a simple diagram and turned it into a slideshow:

http://www.slideshare.net/zolnamurray/the-alternative-bim-triangle

The fact that I use BIM interchangeable for BIModelling  and BIManagement is that in reality the two ARE inseparable.

There is no AEC project info management without ‘modelling’ there never had been. Before the emergence of the smart ‘multi D models’ of the current digital world, the models of yet-to be built buildings and other creatures of the AEC industry lived in their creators’ heads (pre CAD) and/or represented through scale models and/or drawn projections.

Modelling in AEC had not started with the official birth of the BIM acronym, not even with the development of the first digital modelling software.

Arguing to the contrary mocks a long line of history and the achievements of many competent people on one side, but also prevents any progress for those active nowadays because it is blinded to the real issues that stop the contemporary BIM from being effective.

http://www.linkedin.com/groupItem?view=&gid=98421&item=258616690&type=member&commentID=160669475&trk=hb_ntf_COMMENTED_ON_GROUP_DISCUSSION_YOU_CREATED#commentID_160669475