B2 - Group E - Mohammed Alqallaf - BIM for Contractors

Before reading chapter 6 of the BIM Handbook which is about the integration of BIM in the construction industry/contracting I did some further research on BIM. I came to a full proper understanding of BIM, its impact, and how it’s utilized. BIM technologies and application have drastically improved the building design/contracting industry. It has given a chance for every sector in the building design/construction to be involved in making projects economical, efficient, and timely.

Specifically, BIM has given a chance for contractors to be involved in the design phase. This gives the opportunity for contractors to share their knowledge from the construction field to allow for better planning and design. The involvement of contractors can also help with cost estimation and field specific issues to be solved while in the design process. For instance, certain conflicts may arise with the engineer’s drawings. The contractor whom has a lot of field experience can intervene, hence avoiding a waste of time and energy to mitigate the conflict or fix it. Chapter 6 of the BIM handbook specifically mentions that contractors use BIM technologies for clash detection, quantity takeoff, cost estimation, construction analysis, planning, integration with cost and schedule control. The problem with BIM technologies is that it has a learning curve and some software is not very user friendly which makes most contractors resort back to using hand/manual calculations for cost estimations and etc. BIM has certainly evolved in the past few years to become more user friendly and easy for contractors to use.

Reflecting what I read to my experience in working with a large engineering design firm for my coop, has lead me to the conclusion that BIM is the future of the building design/construction. I worked with a vast amount of people from different departments. Although I have never worked with a contractor, my supervisor had a large project coming up and he would take me to meetings where the contractor would be there to discuss the future of the project and his input. The project the firm was accepting was a large project that completely utilized BIM technologies.

Comments:

Kai,

I found your blog post about interoperability very intriguing. In my previous experiences with BIM and working for an engineering firm during coop, I would say that it is the most important aspect of having an efficiently functioning engineering team. I have come to realize that having systems linked to each other properly saves a great amount of time and work. I remember coming across an issue when I tried linking a Revit drawing to an HVAC program that calculates cooling and heating loads. The Revit model did not have the proper design inputs so I had to change all the imported inputs to inputs I calculated manually. It was a waste of time and energy.

Kate,

I really enjoyed reading your blogpost it was very informative. I believe that the design/construction industry is seeing an increase in the utilization and proper use of BIM. The engineering firm I worked for during my coop had both large and small projects and all of them used proper BIM. My employer was telling me how the proper use of BIM has changed the industry and how it actually made things a lot easier than it was before. This in return gave way for more energy to be spent on thinking of ways to improve the building, giving time for everyone involved to further improve their input.

Eastman, Charles M. BIM Handbook: A Guide to Building Information Modeling for Owners, Managers, Designers, Engineers, and Contractors. Hoboken, N.J: Wiley, 2008. Web.