Enhance your operational BIM

Ever since the bid of the new Royal Adelaide Hospital, BIM captured my imagination from an Asset Management point of view. It’s been around for a long time, particularly in Construction, but not yet well done during the operational life of the building. The Carlton Connect Initiative (now Melbourne Connect) was a game changer for the industry and enabled me to push forward those ideas of how the operations should be using BIM into a long-term delivery contract. Although I didn’t personally take it through the build phase (my son did that), I have been able to see those ideas come to fruition.

But we still have some way to go to maximise the benefits which can be derived from the system. BIM is often now seen, by the operational teams, as a repository of construction facts overlayed by an intuitive interface, but it is so much more. BIM gives the operator the ability to put on x-ray specs and see past the external veneers of the building and see the services hidden behind. This ability alone provides time (and therefore cost) savings to the operations whenever a problem is raised or a modification is considered. How often in the past one had to rely upon as-built drawings (or worse design drawings) which didn’t quite match up with reality when you needed to find that value.

Recently I was looking at a video from “OpenSpace” which enables a photographic view of the build phase over time, linked to the BIM model which further enhances that cost saving paradigm. Now you can actually see where the plumber, or electrician actually installed that fitting behind the wall!

But operations needs to get smarter as buildings are often changed over the decades and we need to use similar technologies to enhance our BIM models with all the modifications made over that time!

This is only one aspect of the benefits to this type of technology which reduces the whole of life cost of a building. I encourage comment, criticism or other ideas to enhance the way we operate today.