If you are, or have been involved with BIM in any sort of
form, move past the cheesy headline of this post and think: are you truly confident
that this ‘BIM’ thing is working?
That an approach that arguably has been in existence for 3
or thereabouts decades, had everything going for it in the way of technological
developments (hardware, software) and is serving one of the biggest global
industries – made almost no impact on the world-and its targeted industry in
real (and even less positive) sense.
Sure, people involved in it (including myself) are able
to rattle lists of areas where BIM ‘is useful’, ‘may save money…xxxx % or more’,
‘raise productivity’ or ‘help achieve targets’, but these claims are often
fuzzy and unsubstantiated and never scientifically quantifiable.
After all, there almost never are two projects available with
exactly the same set of base conditions, done in parallel, one with and one
without BIM.
And even if there were, who is to say that the personnel
of one would not make one work (there are still plenty on non-BIM projects that
perform well) or the other fail, for a successful and valid appraisal of the
entire approach.
There are many BIM professionals, that have managed to
squeeze out a career of BIM, spanning 1-2+ decades and had done well from
partaking in never-ending travelling circuses called ‘BIM conferences’. Most have
instinctively learned, to fine tune their stories that accompany the same set
of 3D slides of pipes, columns and complex staircases, to the ultimate BIM
truth, they themselves have figured out: they’d done everything they could, but
the industry is ‘just reluctant to change’.
But, that is an easy way out, both for the said practitioners
and the industry.
Surely, there is more to it, than ‘just’ accepting that
an industry that employs zillions is purely made up of the type of people, that
cannot recognize, what is good for them and ‘do as they are told’.
So, here is the secret, I was referring in the headline:
BIM is not working, because, it is a fundamentally an
approach designed and built for a ‘collective psyche’ while the industry on all
levels (from very small, to very large) works mostly on the success and even
more, failure of the ‘individual’.
In an environment where the existence of the individual
is constantly threatened, the individual’s focus is on survival as opposed to
investing in skills and efforts for a ‘better (BIM) world’.
Sure, some people will train in BIM to enhance their
chances of employability, but ‘one Revit modeler will not make global BIM’ not
even a hundred thousand of them.
A company, similarly may write an elaborate BIMmisation
Plan to enhance its market presence, but all of that is just window dressing, when
it comes to true BIM empowerment of the industry.
If one carefully examines the fundamentals of the
approach as presented by ‘leading BIM practitioners’ to identify the reasons
for its failures, one must wonder if this is some sort of a bizarre, left over
virus, that escaped from the dying communist era and is relentlessly sharing
the mantra of ‘play together nicely’.
Even more bizarre is that they are targeting the global
industry that is probably up there with international politics on its inability
to ‘play nicely’, at any level.
So, let me say it simply: BIM does not work, cannot work,
unless every part of the organism it is applied to practices it in full.
Meaning: buys into the philosophy of it and works it ‘hands-on’.
Let me not elaborate on the exact level of ‘hands-on’-ness
here, as there obviously are different levels allowed for different parts of
the ‘organism’ but it is important to note as illustration the cliché, that the
‘chain is only as strong as its weakest link’ - or the one that refers to
absoluteness as ‘one cannot be partially pregnant’.
There cannot be functional BIM projects with partial uptake
– no matter whether they are single houses or international airports. Similarly,
companies cannot claim BIM success, with uptake of less than close to a 100%,
again, regardless of the scale, a 2-3 people boutique architectural studio or
an AECOM-type giant, spanning the globe.
If this claim of mine does not ring true for you, then
maybe ‘you’ are better informed than me and have seen ‘real’ improvements in
the industry from partial BIM dissemination here-and-there, through selected
trainings, single-digit software purchases, pilot projects and government-mandated
showcases – or maybe are just blinded by own vested interests in the above
trainings, software development etc. etc and unable to see the truth.
Hoping and promoting that ‘gradual’ improvement will lead
to high levels of uptake from the above named endeavors, is also false if not
straight misleading to those less informed on the topic. If a company of 200
trains 5 people in any BIM software, than the company gets just that, 5 people
that had done a training (not even sure that those will grow into anything
BIMishly useful).
If an airport project, that employs thousands mandates an
‘evolving BIM modelling approach’ that is created and truly accessible by a
small ‘BIM group’ (and often totally out of whack with the rest of the project),
than the project is getting exactly that: a handful of people with some
modelling skills playing forever catchup within a real project.
In reality, nothing wrong with either as long as everyone
knows what they are getting for what.
Let me close on a positive note: I am a BIM believer,
have been for 3 decades and I believe that where close to 100% uptake is
achieved, its success is inevitable. Nothing less, nothing more.
