Paper Example on BIM Importance

Introduction

Building Information Modeling (BIM) involves the process of generating and managing the digital representations of physical characteristics of a building or place. The BIMs are files that are not in proprietary formats despite carrying proprietary data that are extracted or networked to support the making of decisions concerning built assets or a building. Currently, the BIM is used by individuals, contractors, construction managers, government agencies and business who plan construct, design maintain and construct diverse infrastructures like water communication utilities, roads bridges tunnels refuse and buildings.

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A BIM involves the representation of design in combination of objects that are unidentified or vague, generic, solid shapes in forms of the shape of a room that entail their geometric attributes and relations. As a result, the BIM allows the extraction of diverse views from the building model for drawing. In addition, the BIM defines objects parametrically, meaning that the identification of objects is in terms of other objects and parameters. In this case, if an object related to the others is amended, the others in the system will change automatically with the same angle of change applied on the first one. Each element in the BIM model carries attributes essential for ordering and selecting the objects automatically, generating cost estimations tracking materials and ordering. For professional activities in a project, the BIM will be essential in enabling a virtual information handed to the team responsible for building or infrastructure design (landscape architects, civil building, and construction engineers)

This report, therefore, analyzes the importance of the BIM software on the lifecycle of construction and management, the impact of other technologies on the BIM efficiency and how a contractor or construction manager with or without the BIM works or how the BIM absence or presence affects the construction activity. In addition, this report entails an analysis of the applications of the BIM, advantages in the project cycle and case study illustrations of BIM applications besides other technologies in construction management.

Motivations of BIM Applications

During the process of innovation and implementation, the first step entails developing awareness of innovation and the perceived needs to adopt the BIM due to the substantial advantages of the project. According to Wong, Wang, Li & Chan (2014), there are substantial impacts of implementing the BIM in construction projects and the external motivation are critical drivers for a construction company to adopt the BIM. As a result, the motivation of applying the BIM in construction projects include the perceived usefulness of implementing the BIM, the innovativeness of the organization, subjective awareness and norms are the major motivations of adopting the BIM.

Perceived Usefulness is the degree to which a person believes in the application of the BIM in enhancing performance. The BIM in this case not only benefit the individuals but several corporations applying the BIM in their construction activities. The perceived usefulness (PU) measurement is in terms of the indirect and direct benefits of the BIM implementation. Some of the direct measures of the BIM include the reduction in the cost of the project, improvement in teamwork and time taken for completion while the indirect is the intangible effects like reputation and beliefs that cannot be identified in the short run. Innovativeness measures two aspects according to Wong et al., (2014). These include the individual innovativeness and the organization innovativeness. According to Wong et al., (2014), the innovativeness of the organization's leaders was a crucial initiator of the adoption of BIM. As a result, the proposed measures of innovativeness included the desire for building up the organizational competitiveness and essence of streamlining the workflow of the organization.

Another motivator for the application of the Subjective norm, that according to (Eadie, Browne, Odeyinka, McKeown, and McNiff, (2013) is the perception of an individual that most people who are important his or prefer them not to take a certain action on the project. Therefore, in the construction industry, the activities and operations contractually linked and the contractual mandate and responsibility are critical for an organization to accept technologies like the BIM. In the early stages of construction implementation, awareness is a critical component in motivating the application of the BIM since a comprehensive technological understanding will prompt the construction firms, engineers, and architectures to adopt the BIM due to its efficiency and cost-effectiveness on projects (Eadie et al., 2013)

The Advantages of Using BIM in the Project Lifecycle

The fragmented nature of the construction projects results in the separation of the BIM application in several stages in construction's project life cycle. These stages include the D-BIM, O-BIM and the D-BIM that are diverse BIM proportions. However, there is no information isolation within these stages since the sub BIM establishes Data by extraction, extension, and integration of the initial sub BIM. In addition, it adds new information essential for the progress of the construction project (Eadie, Browne, Odeyinka, McKeown & McNiff, 2013). The BIM application on construction project has many advantages as it captures reality, maintenance of control, improvement of collaboration, cost-effective, reduction in the errors and omission in documentation and reduces reworks, schedule litigation cases and finally higher quality of the built faculty (Hardin & McCool, 2015).

Information that is not clear between the construction managers and the designers may lead to minor and major reworks on the constructions project that might lead to high financial constraints for the engineer or the construction company. As a result, to the adoption of the BIM application into the construction site will center update or even make changes made by the construction stakeholders by immediately reflect leading to uniformity of construction information that leads to no errors in construction (Eadie et al., 2013). Therefore, a construction engineer without the BIM application in a construction site is more likely to use high finances in reworks than the one with a BIM application. In addition to this, the construction engineer without the BIM technology will develop buildings or infrastructure that are conflicting the client's interests and expectations since there was no integration of efficient communication and information updates regarding the construction project. Therefore, an engineer without a BIM application on site will incur high expenditure on reworks and this will decrease his work portfolio and image. On the other hand, an engineer using the BIM application and technology on site will use little finances infrastructure, high-quality service delivery by completing the project according to the client's needs and specification. In addition, there is an efficient and easy communication and transmission of information between the project architecture and the engineer. It is important to apply the BIM application on construction site for good service delivery (Eadie et al., 2013)

According to Eadie et al., (2013), the adoption of the BIM application will provide similar related works and documents to the construction projects essential for referencing and comparison. Despite scores substantiating the infrastructural design of 2 and 3D drawings, they miss essential information like the contract details, bills purchases, and bids. Therefore, the BIM application comes in here to fill up the data holes that brings up a unified and overall project coordination. In addition, the BIM improves the 2-D drafting that gives an all-angle view of the elevation and the building that assist in rectification of errors present before starting the actual project. As a result, an engineer omitting the application of the BIM program in construction activities will fail in information integration and actual project completion. This is because he or she will have problems due to the missing information relevant to the contract. In addition, there will only approximate values in terms of billing and biding that are against the National construction rules and regulations. On the other hand, an engineer with the BIM will enjoy efficient communication and systematic transmission of the contact information that will ease and reduce the time taken to complete the construction project (Hardin & McCool, 2015).

Another advantage and importance of BIM application in a project lifecycle are it upticks productivity and reduction of costs. According to Khosrowshahi and Arayici (2012), this is through by cutting down the cross-referencing and time taken for project approval during the construction phase of the project. This leads to increased efficiency in productivity and quality of the project completion. In turn, the productivity has an overall reduction in the cost and time of the project. As a result, an engineer using the BIM will have an economic and management advantage over an engineer who does not use the BIM application in their construction projects. With the overall efficiency in coordination and completion of the project on time and meeting the consumer's expectations leads to customer satisfaction. The BIM enhances the speed, quality, information consistency and transparency before and during the construction process that enables the clients to be satisfied and be happy with the works of the engineers. However, an engineer who does not use the BIM system is most likely to take a longer time in delivering a complete project, and in most cases, there is a high chance of customer dissatisfaction on the project. In addition, there are no homogeneity and consistency in the information during and after the completion of the project (Zhou, Whyte & Sacks, 2012).

During the design phase of a project lifecycle, the BIM is applicable and essential since it eases the activities in this phase by reducing the cost in changing the electrons in this design phase than using a jackhammer in removing a wall (Jung & Joo, 2011). Therefore, to engineers using the BIM application, it is easier to change the electrons compared to an engineer who does not apply the BIM. According to Jung and Joo (2011), the process of Value engineering VE, the BIM enables projects to conserve energy by enhancing an easier feedback of data that in interactive concern the consequences of the decision-making. It is advantageous in using the BIM in a construction project since it provides a virtual walkthrough of the current 3 D designs and providing an electronic model analyzed mathematically for the compliance with the system's codes. In the model of collision detection, the BIM will allow conflict elimination leading to change orders through a pipeline collision model of detection. Design information plays an important part in the formation process of collision by obtaining the spatial data needed by the collision model first. In addition, there is generation geometrical data like the coordinates, sizes structural components pipelines connections, equipment and the types of components for building. The extracted information is combined into one subsystem forming the sub model of collision by first entering the appropriate indicators of detection and the empirical data or regulatory requirements (Zhou, Whyte & Sacks, 2012).

How Other Digital Technologies Can Enhance the Benefits of BIM

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