BIM in the Future

To this day, BIM has been very successful with its users and many companies benefit from it daily.  With this being said, we can expect great things in the future.  Considering the importance of data management throughout project constructions, BIM generates the data from beginning to end and from multiple users.  As an effective source of communication, BIM can solve many problems to clients as everything is made available to them.  An obstacle that exists nowadays is the fact that some people don’t know of the existence of BIM and don’t fully understand its advantages.  There will always be the people who don’t like change and are used to the way they have done it for some may years, call it the “old-fashion” way, and feel like there is no need to bring in anything new and ‘complicated’.  Due to this and in order to overcome this obstacle, colleges should introduce BIM to their students so that by the time they graduate college, they can be proficient and apply their skills in the workplace.  I agree with my fellow classmate, Gabriel Carpenter, who predicts what will happen in the workplace soon after the introduction of BIM: “either CAD drafters are expected to learn the new technology, entry-level engineers – who specify that they know the technology – are recruited to draft, or companies have to reach outside the company to hire another firm to do their BIM work for them.” In the end, the industry will be using and expecting everyone to use BIM.

            According to Mr. Eric Kuszewski, a BIM expert who has heavily worked with AutoCAD and Revit, admits that there are some challenges with BIM in the current time.  These include the learning curve and training, level of detailing, interdisciplinary workflow, IT infrastructure, and communication.  He expressed that nowadays BIM has these limitations that might make companies hold out and hesitate on using BIM.  Yet to counteract this argument, Dell and DB+C claimed that “in the United States, architects are the heaviest users of BIM, using it on more than 60% of their projects, compared with 43% of architects who claimed to be BIM users in 2008".  From this, we can deduce that in the next five years twenty percent more, approximately a total of 80%, of architects will be using BIM.  In addition, Jennifer M. McGregor, Executive Director of Obelisk, predicted, “In the next three years, we’ll all be converted to using BIM”.  These optimistic expectations are enough proof that the BIM world is quickly spreading throughout the industries.  

Sources:

http://www.wbdg.org/pdfs/1103_dell_bdc_whitepaper.pdf

http://iidahq.wordpress.com/2010/01/27/the-future-is-here-and-its-bim/