Monday, September 27, 2010

BIM - How would you define it?

I was thinking the other day on how I would define BIM to someone. McGraw Hill defined it in their recently released Smart Market report on Green BIM. It defined BIM as follows:
BIM is a digital representation of physical and functional characteristics of a facility. As such, it serves as a shared knowledge resource for information about a facility and forms a reliable basis for decisions during its lifecycle, from inception onward. BIM also refers broadly to the creation and use of digital models and related collaborative processes between companies to leverage the value of the models.

Wow. That’s a mouthful. In short, it’s a great way to communicate between team members and external trades!

So, how would you define it? Do you feel that is an accurate definition?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

BIM is a process. This process is defined early in the development of the project and constantly evolves along the lifecycle of the project. Much like not every project is the same, neither are all "BIM" processes. But there is a common thread to BIM:

BIM is the process of developing, categorizing, and leveraging data to maximize the value and accuracy of our deliverable. That deliverable could be estimates, CD's, LEED accreditation, or even the building itself.

Much like the term "Green" of which there can be different shades of green and different kinds of green entities (roofs, materials, building systems, etc) there are different types of BIM and BIM deliverables. So here is BIM:

BIM is an improved process by which we can leverage available data to improve the final deliverable over traditional methodologies.

It's vague, but not more vague than terms like "Green" or even "Construction" which can mean so many things when not placed in proper context.

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caddguru said...

BIM is about adding more Information (for example time and schedules, estimates and costs) to the traditional Geometry-only CAD drawings or models. But more importantly, it's about adding Intelligence to the process via simulation and visualization, to find errors and conflicts earlier than usual, and to fine tune the design while it is still practical to make changes and improvements.