BIM Sadly Robs My Time - A Plea for Smarter BIM

That's it. I've said it, and it's something I've wanted to say for a while: BIM (Building Information Modeling) has needlessly and ruthlessly taken time away from what I should be doing.

Now I know what you're saying: "What are you talking about!? BIM saves hours upon hours in rework and labor in the design and construction process. Keep in mind we used to draft by hand, and that took forever." I want you to know that I completely get it. I agree that BIM has already saved the industry countless wasted hours and multitudes more in cost. However, this isn't exactly what I'm trying to get at.

This article comes from the perspective of a fresh intern who ran the metaphorical BIM-coffee in the department. I won't discount this experience for a hot second, but it cannot be ignored that for the typical BIM professional, current software solutions are a tedious waste of a BIM specialist's time, mental effort, and the company's money, and it's not just me thinking it.

Let me get more granular with an example. One huge inefficiency I have spotted in the industry is the practice of General Contractors wanting to work in BIM, however, they receive 2D CAD drawings from the designers. This in turn leads companies to send the CAD to a 3rd party (or if they are a large firm, their in-house army) who sits semi-monotonously clicking away to turn those lines into walls, columns, ceilings, etc.

One BIM Manager I spoke with told me it takes his team of three almost 2 weeks to convert drawings to BIM for the average project, which I have low-balled to be a cost of approximately $2,400. One quote we received for a decently-sized project at our company was around $7,000 and a month to do a conversion at LOD 400.

How long would it take your team to model something like this from 2D CAD lines?

This cost is nominal, however factor in the opportunity costs of not catching design issues ASAP and the ever-changing design in this phase of the project, and the costs are much higher. For many stakeholders, this causes them to say it's too much trouble to even work in BIM. This also exists with creating 5D schedules, converting point clouds to BIM, and many other functions. We aren't even factoring in the inevitable human error that comes with this. The cost is nominal at best.

The first thing I hear when talking about this with peers is such: "If designers were already working in BIM, we wouldn't be doing this! This is a real issue." Sure, this is the crux of it, but from my standpoint, this finger-pointing is not getting anyone anywhere. Some may disagree, but I don't think this industry will transfer to BIM in the time frame we want without a boost from smarter software tools for our existing workflows.

I don't want the message to come off as cynical or whiny; although if you want to say I'm complaining about my job, I am because I know there is a better way. Would you blame the farmer working with a horse-drawn plow for complaining after seeing his neighbor pick up a mechanical tractor? I think not.

I chose BIM because it is the future of construction. It's where I'm staking my flag as an established frontier of progress in the industry. Think of this more as a call to attention for the small inefficiencies in our programs. The little things that incite a grumble from a mis-click. The click-a-thon happening for 3 minutes as you parse your way through a model to get what you want. The hours of assigning the X parameter to the Y element. This stuff adds up.

Most of this inefficiency comes in the first creation of the BIM asset, whether it be the model, a 5D schedule, or a quantification. Smarter software can make these decisions for us from raw data such as a drawing, a point cloud, a schedule, or a spec sheet. If we want BIM to truly be adopted in the industry, we need these benefits to be as easy as the click of a button. Is it difficult to do this? Yes, but not impossible.

Just as the problem is not singular, neither is the solution. BIM360 Coordinate is an example of interference clash detection done with more real-world context ("No, the hanger hitting the joist is not a clash, stop counting 2000 of them"). Pype, which was just acquired by Autodesk, is an example of a solution that (mostly) just works by converting point cloud data into piping elements and doesn't require hours of human labor to process data (trust me, I've done it the harder way). Firmus shows a promising solution that should save hours in the constructability review. We've also seen the community come together to create time-saving Dynamo scripts and plug-ins, but nothing else comprehensive other than named above.

So what are we saving all of this time to do? "Do you want to keep your job?" is what one peer asked me. BIM experts can replace the endless clicking in the computer with publishing accurate quantity takeoff data to the estimating team, detecting and communicating issues with the building design to stakeholders, bringing BIM to the job-site foremen, and experimenting and researching the next time-saving solutions for their companies. This is where a BIM specialist delivers their value, not hunched over engrossed in the model, but showing the model to others and teaching them to use it. This is what my article is trying to convey, and I'd be curious to hear the perspective of others.

The TL:DR of my article is simple: it's time we start actively questioning the picks and clicks we work with every day and begin finding the solutions that save us time to do true value-added work. Let me know what you think below in the comments, it's going to take us all to move this ship forward.