BIM gowth continues
I just read a post on the Building Design & Construction Network (www.bdc.com) that talks about BIM adoption amongst US firms. If you are a regular reader of blogs in the construction space (including Extranet Evolution), you may have noticed that BIM is becoming more and more common throughout the industry. It is no longer a question of whether BIM will replace traditional CAD systems, but when.
Essentially, the report states that BIM adoption has reached that tipping point. Indeed, the title of the article is "BIM adoption rate exceeds 80% among nation's largest AEC firms". This is certainly no surprise, although it is less obvious how extensively BIM is actually used in these organizations. Having a BIM license is not the same as using it! But BIM was always going to be adopted first by the very largest companies working on the larger projects, where complexity and coordination issues are magnified.
The interesting point will now be two-fold:
- When will BIM penetrate down into the not-so-enormous firms? and
- When will BIM systems allow central hosting of the model with people able to remote access and *edit* this model without having to download it?
Sure, people can use collaboration systems to store, distribute, share and even view BIM models (Aconex and others allow all these functions now, which is great for most users), but the real nirvana will be when the BIM model can be manipulated remotely. Bring on the future!
Have a look at http://www.graphisoft.com
The recent release of the Graphisoft BIM Server addresses many of the issues of remote access to BIM models. Other vendors will presumably respond with similar features.
It still doesn't quite address the problem of 'everybody' (clients, consultants, contractors) interacting on a single model, but it is a great start.
Fergus Hohnen : December 29, 2009 8:58 AM
Robert Phillpot : December 30, 2009 10:05 PM
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