The advantages of BIM: How has Building Information Modeling changed our way of working?
The advantages of BIM: How has Building Information Modeling changed our way of working?
The possibility offered by BIM to produce a virtual model of any civil engineering project, before even starting the construction process, has opened new scenarios and new possibilities for the construction industry.
For the first time, even in the costruction industry, we can now assess the project prototype and allow the various technical disciplines, each of which is involved in the various stages of design, building and management of the construction. An approach that has long been the case in the manufacturing sector.
The advantages of BIM
Working with a BIM on a virtual model, makes it more convenient to have a shared and collaborative approach between all the professionals involved, unlike the more traditional “sequential” process, characterized by integrations and corrections both in the design phase and in the implementation phase.
These advantages are particularly noticeable in the well-known graphic representation developed by Patrick Mac Leamy, shown below.
The curves show how design effort, when concentrated in the initial stages of design phase (typical of an integrated approach) has a positive impact on cost (in terms of reduction).
This is what we usually find in reality, where the traditional process sees the completion and refinement of the project in more advanced stages with significantly higher costs.
It is not, as it is evident, reduced design “efforts”, as the commitment can only be commensurated with the quality of what is meant to be achieved (the points of maximum of the two representative curves of BIM-oriented and traditional processes are almost identical), but to anticipate such efforts over time.
BIM: new method in design
There is therefore a new way of dealing with design, the result of its “technical viability” is made possible by the availability of the building’s virtual model, but above all of the economic convenience resulting from its commissioning. Convenience is clearly evident by analyzing the trend of the design change cost curve, further lowering the corrections and additions.
Starting from the prototype, new collaborative processes are taking shape thanks to the BIM methodology, which requires the involvement of all design roles from the very beginning of the design phase.
A new paradigm of the building process is going to take shape, from traditional mode to an “integrated process”, where the presence of the building company is also prefigured from the “conceptualization” stages as a value-adding aspect to the building product.
It is evident, therefore, that one of the fundamental drivers of the current revolution is the availability of the virtual model.
Click here to download Edificius, the architectural BIM design software
