Build Magazine June 2015

Build Magazine 12 In the end, BIM Managers may not be the ul- timate decision makers in facilitating change. They are the ones who provide upper man- agement with decision support in order to do so and they are the ones accountable for BIM implementation “on the floor.” What makes a good BIM Manager, or even an outstanding one? In order to answer that question feed- back is consolidated here from the world’s top BIM Managers to make it accessible to everyone. These managers work for leading Architecture, Engineering, Quantity Surveyor (Cost Engineers or Cost Managers in the United States), and Construction firms. They report on pitfalls and the common mistakes associated with BIM to then highlight what makes BIM tick in practice. The Rise and Rise of BIM BIM use has been expanding contin- uously since 2003,making BIM Man- agement a moving target. Back then, BIM became the accepted industry acronym for a range of descriptions such as Virtual Design & Construction (VDC), Integrated Project Models, or Building Product Models. Until that point, different software developers had branded their tools with these varying acronyms, while essentially talking about the same object-orient- ed modeling approach that was first introduced to a wider audience by Chuck Eastman in the mid-1970s. Around 2002–2003, it was AEC Industry Analyst Jerry Laiserin who played a pivotal role in promoting the single use of the acronym “BIM” which had been coined by G.A. van Nederveen and Tolman in 1992 and which later became the preferred definition of Autodesk’s Phil Bern- stein. It was the starting point for an industry-wide journey to holistically address planning, design, delivery, and operational processes within the building lifecycle. This journey raises a great number of culturally sensitive and professionally relevant issues: By nature a disruptive process, the adoption of BIM overturns decades of conventions related to the interplay between architects, engineers, con- tractors, and clients. BIM Managers are drawn right into the center of these changes in practice. This is an edited extract from The BIM Manager’s Handbook –ePart series, (ePart 1 Best Practice BIM (ISBN: 9781118987858) by Dominik Holzer, published by Wiley in six parts, with paired releases – May, August and November, 2015, £9.99 each, E-books. www.wiley.com/go/bimmanagerhandbook