Are You Getting BIM?

One of the challenges that many owners have when they require BIM, for designers or builders, is validating that they ‘get what they ask for’. We’ve talked about the need for clear BIM language before on this blog, but there is more work that owners need to do to ensure that they aren’t the victim of Hollywood BIM. Since all BIM can look similar from the outside, to the untrained eye, it can be difficult to understand what has been delivered – until it is too late and a major problem has occurred on the jobsite.

Owners rely heavily on their AEC partners to provide BIM on a project. But because they have limited experience with the technology and process, they rely on those same partners to validate the quality of BIM, creating the potential for a less-than-transparent process. Some partners may have the best of intentions, but haven’t fully developed the skillset to deliver a built product utilizing BIM. Others may be willing to make promises and deliver only Hollywood BIM, which looks good but doesn’t have two legs to stand on.

One of Q5’s clients, Crate&Barrel, has revolutionized their process by utilizing BIM, creating cost and schedule efficiencies. Each of Crate&Barrel’s design consultants is required to use BIM to both author design and extract documentation. Crate&Barrel had issued an AIA-E202 (filled in with L)D400 and 500s) as part of the requirement. Key fabricators are brought into the process early and required to contribute to the models.

Q5 manages both the BIM integration as well as the quality control for Crate&Barrel. At milestone and handoff points, Q5 performs analysis on the models, finding issues related to interferences, completeness, quality, accuracy and nomenclature. Initially, having a third party serve as BIM integrator/facilitator held all parties accountable for their work. As the consultants worked with Q5 more and more, they learned the issues to avoid and started self-policing, enabling our team to search for more detailed issues.

There may be many ways to hold team members accountable for the BIM they promise and create. But until they are up to speed on technology, we find that detailed model reviews at milestone and handoff points works well. (Not to say that they only way to validate BIM is to hire Q5 – but it’s one way!)