Top 5 Advantages of Building Information Modeling from Design to Construction

Building Information Modeling or BIM offers a plethora of benefits right from the design stage all the way until completion. BIM reduces costs, improves productivity, and manages to make sites safer during construction.

The benefits don’t end there, once the project is passed on to the facility managers, elements within the models provide feedback and data for maintenance work, allowing anticipation of maintenance costs.

By visualizing all the building elements in a virtual environment, the pre-construction team can enhance coordination among stakeholders like owners, contractors, architects, and designers. BIM model helps with clash detection, better budget estimation, better managing project expenses, scheduling and alleviation of project risks.

Coordination between Trades

One of the most significant benefits of BIM is the improved project coordination among all stakeholders. All project collaborators use CDE or common data environment, which acts as a repository for all project related work. Any change is the model is reflected instantly in the CDE and a notification of the modification is sent to the relevant stakeholders.

BIM shows how even a minute change can influence the entire project, making it easier to estimate the project cost and time.

BIM also addresses the issues of keeping data isolated from the other stakeholders. Project objectives can be jeopardized when the right data isn’t getting communicated or is accessible.

Clash coordination is necessary to solve issues before they get to the site. BIM automates the clash coordination process, which gets updated with even the smallest change in design. Any design can have as many as 6,500 clashes, and coordinating these in the pre-construction stage can save a lot of project cost, time and rework.

Digital Prefabrication

Besides more specific scheduling, BIM makes digital prefabrication a lot easier than before, which yields a wealth of benefits. When components are assembled at a factory location, the supply chain can be controlled better, and there are fewer work stoppages due to weather.

Prefabricating different elements of the construction process speed up installation and improves the overall construction schedule. When you can manufacture components in a factory, you can access the right tools and experienced workforce. This saves you the cost of transporting equipment on-site and securing equipment and materials on-site.

Safety

The statistics show that almost 27% of architects, contractors, and project managers report they saw an enhanced overall project safety using BIM. 37% of owners cited more than a 5% decline in reportable fatal accidents on site.

The Building Information Modeling Process

BIM includes building geometry, geographic information, spatial relationships, and quantities and properties of building elements.

Construction projects have three stages:

· Design or Pre-construction Stage

· Construction Stage

· Operations & Maintenance Stage

Building Information Modeling plays a crucial role in each of these three phases

In the pre-construction stage, BIM can help stakeholders visualize projects, detect clashes, and estimate project costs and time. BIM induces efficiency in workflows with prefabricated designs.

During construction, stakeholders can rely on one consolidated knowledge base, a BIM model.

In the post-construction stage, BIM helps manage operations and maintenance and offers a base for future upgrades. Facility teams can effectively use BIM to support building operations. The data collected during construction can be useful during the maintenance and operation stage.

Conclusion

Implementing BIM requires a fair amount of investment. If you’re doing it in-house, you need to invest in training your employees to use it to its full capacity. Although it allows your bottom lines to go up, you need the right training and experience.

This is where we step in. Pinnacle provides cost-effective BIM solutions to architects, engineers, and contractors. We have over 21 years of experience in successfully executing 5590+ projects in 40+ countries. From airports, residential towers, stadiums to other complex infrastructure projects, we have the requisite expertise and talent to chart out the success story of your project.