I believe the ‘ I ’ in BIM has evolved over the years in two primary ways : the viable length of time the information is used and the expansion of its use cases and benefits .
Instead of the information only benefiting one phase of a project at a time , it ’ s now understood that it has full lifecycle benefits . Paul Teicholz demonstrated the importance of keeping consistent information in 2013 with his famous information loss curve , adapted here .
What has changed is that the technology used to capture this information and where it is stored has greatly improved , minimizing its loss . It ’ s also being used by non-traditional delivery team members like subcontractors , commissioning agents , and energy consultants .
These additional stakeholders lead us to the second evolution : expansion of use cases . With information becoming more centralized , reliable , and readily available , use cases like embodied carbon analysis , digital twins , and asset tracking are becoming the norm .
As previously mentioned , the term information has become not only important to project stakeholders , but international regulatory and standards bodies have inadvertently proven the ‘ I ’ is more important than the term ‘ BIM .’ In the latest publication of ISO 19650 , the term ‘ information ’ is mentioned over four hundred times without the context of BIM .
For entire project teams to really capture
all the benefits of the ‘ I ’, there needs to be , and what has slowly happened , is a shift in the way all team members approach digital delivery . Creating silos of information and information hoarding are tell-tale signs of a firm ’ s unwillingness to change its project delivery approach . On the flip side , those that are willing to improve project delivery not only for their team , but the entire delivery team are quickly adopting ISO workflows , and Common Data Environments ( CDE ) that are more agile in their approach .
Additionally , building owners and operators are quickly trying to catch up with their digital lifecycle initiatives . We have numerous clients purchasing CDEs , getting certifications in ISO 19650 , and writing RFPs , who are seeking guidance with these digital strategies .
A proactive approach
One of the challenges still facing the industry is that the information is standardized , collected , and used by completely different teams , sometimes years apart . Any ‘ kink ’ in the chain causes tremendous amounts of rework or wasted efforts downstream . Sometimes , it ’ s impossible to know what went wrong . These challenges are certainly being mitigated by CDEs , the rise of the Information Manager , and better contract language and standards provided by building owners .
As mentioned earlier , ensuring good information for the full lifecycle of a building will certainly impact our initiatives around embodied carbon , building performance , and energy efficiency . There are two ways we can approach these initiatives : reactively and proactively .
Unfortunately , many initiatives are reactive responses to something that has already occurred . A good example is a large commercial real estate client in the technology sector . They have some of the best and most visible sustainability goals ,
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