Tran - Blog post 2 - BIM for Owners and Facility Managers

At a glance, The BIM Handbook provides an insightful understandings of the BIM concept, the related approaches and processes, and the major enabling technologies in building industry. At first, as I read the title of the book, I thought it was going to present the detailed technical aspects of BIM technologies and its tools. But instead, the book addresses the business and organizational issues of BIM implementation for each participant of a building process. Chapter 4: BIM for Owners and Facility Managers introduces the potential areas that BIM processes can contribute to the owners’ success. The beginning of chapter 4 discusses the numerous benefits that BIM. BIM is the key enabling technology for Intergrated Project Delivery (IPD) approach which “harnesses the talents and insights of all participants to optimize project results, increase value to the owner, reduce waste, and maximize efficiency through all phases of design, fabrication, and construction.”  

I find section 4.2 of this chapter quite interesting and well-written by organizing all the application areas of BIM and their potential benefits to all owners along with relevant case studies into a table. For example, BIM are used by designers and engineers to produce energy analysis or building system analysis to improve sustainability and building performance. In addition, BIM can be applied to quantity takeoff and schedule simulation to help owner communicate schedule visually or provide reliable earlier estimations.

Section 3 of this chapter introduces specific tools for each owners’ need. There are 3 main categories including estimating tools, facility and asset management tools, and operation simulation tools. Software such as U.S. Cost or Exactal’s CostX can provide quantity takeoff by importing building models. The owner’s maintenance team can use BIM to support commissioning and maintenance of facilities. In addition, there are also risks associated with using BIM for example the training costs are high, there are still many legal and contractual barriers to facilitate the use of BIM.

Source

C. M. Eastman, “Chapter 4: BIM for Owners and Facility Managers,” in BIM Handbook: A Guide to Building Information Modeling for Owners, Managers, Designers, Engineers, and Contractors, 2nd ed., Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2011, pp. 151–191.

Comments

Dung Tran,

Your summary of Chapter 2 is really interesting. I have seen a similar situation during my co-op with Philadelphia water department. I agree with you that BIM would become an essential part for every building project in the next few years.

Thomas Sisson,

I totally agree that BIM is so beneficial to the building industry that it allows the collaboration of multiple discipline on a single model, or be able to import/export their model to another discipline without any fuss or long halt.

Zac Arnold,

I agree that BIM not only help the owner and engineer but also the contractors to produce lean construction which aims to do is lessen the amount of waste by upwards of 90% and economically benefit all participants of the project.