With many construction companies still not utilising Building Information Modelling, GroupBC reviews the benefits to businesses and discusses how software vendors can do more to encourage adoption, especially by SMEs
Despite acknowledging the future importance of Building Information Modelling (BIM), less than half (42%) of the businesses surveyed regarded themselves as compliant with the requirements of BIM Level 2, highlighting that the industry’s digital maturity is still underdeveloped.
A sceptical attitude to digital solutions is stunting productivity at a time when it’s also facing difficulties from staff shortages and increasing costs. Without digital methods of working in place, projects take longer, risks of mistakes increase, and costs can be uncontrolled.
Ensuring better collaboration across the construction industry is the secret to higher productivity and greater stability. With technology paving the way for improved collaboration on projects, how can digital solutions such as BIM enable the construction industry to maximise collaborative approaches to working?
How can the industry combat its stigma?
The hardest battle facing the construction industry is its own complexity and lack of repeatable processes. The majority of construction projects involve multiple companies of different natures; it is no wonder the industry has gained an unfortunate reputation as being fragmented.
Digital solutions such as BIM offer a host of benefits including better communication, better cost estimation, earlier project visualisation, risk reduction, improvement in productivity and stronger facility management and building handovers. Information can be readily accessed and trusted as being up to date.
Less waste, less cost
Teams forge better collaboration across supply chains, primarily because BIM’s highly structured environment ensures all parties come on board early in the project and have access to the right information, at the right time.
Through the execution of a clear BIM strategy, large savings during the design and procurement stages can be achieved. A study published by the Get it Right Initiative identified the total costs of error range between 10% and 25% of project cost. Its findings highlighted that the top 10 root causes of error and waste included poorly communicated design information and ineffective communication between team members.
With the presence of BIM, however, relevant parties can be informed of change or access any relevant, latest documentation themselves as information is stored in one, secure common data environment (CDE).
On the way to digital solutions
Digital construction specialist GroupBC set out to encourage the take up of BIM, especially by SMEs and regional contractors, with their simplified ‘out of the box’ CDE that helps companies achieve BIM Level 2 compliance fast.
With large client organisations such as Heathrow Airport, Highways England and Thames Water already using BC solutions and making BIM business as usual across their projects, so software vendors also have an obligation to develop user-friendly and affordable CDEs to spread the enthusiasm across the supply chain and enable them to benefit themselves.
The BC Projects CDE does this with, for instance, a user-friendly interface, templated workflows and automated file-naming convention, all features that have been very well received by our users, as well as providing a robust audit trail of every document version, action and interaction.
If you’d like to find out more about how GroupBC’s digital solutions can help you, visit our website to book a demo today.
GroupBC
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