With the BIM mandate now upon us, CM’s round table brought together key industry players to gauge where the industry is at and discuss the findings of its online survey into BIM readiness. Elaine Knutt reports.
Meeting just a month ahead of BIM Mandate Day, the experts and practitioners convened by Construction Manager and BIM+ in the offices of law firm Olswang to discuss BIM adoption in the UK collectively seemed more confident than the same group 15 months earlier.
In the intervening months, predictions have become fact, PowerPoint presentations have filtered through to contractual requirements. Because, as opinions around the table were polled, the view solidified that a large slice of the UK construction industry was either already working to Level 2 BIM, or tendering on projects that required it.
Admittedly, the views of the Construction Manager/BIM+ online survey – totalling 557 respondents across the industry – indicated that the traditional fault lines on BIM between major players and smaller suppliers were still in place: overall almost 50% said that they had not yet been involved in a Level 2 BIM project, but this included 70% of contractors turning over less than £100m, 50% of specialist subcontractors in Tier 2 and 3, and only 22% of contractors with turnover above £100m (see chart, below).
And asked about their overall BIM confidence, 27% described themselves as “very unsure” and most clustered in the lower reaches of the BIM slopes.
But, for the representative slice of the industry gathered in the room, the debate soon moved on from the “whether” of BIM adoption, to what was truly driving it, and where it would go in the future. Is the government and BIM Task Group’s focus on asset management being realised, or do clients’ mixed capabilities mean that the 15-20% cost advantage is for others to pick up? The client-led theory has made COBie the organising principle of Level 2 BIM, but is its central position giving us the wrong compass readings? And what’s happening in the lower reaches of the supply chain – and should we stop hand-wringing over it?
