B3-BIM implementation in the future

From last week’s lecture, we watched the speech “The Future of BIM Will Not be BIM” from Autodesk University. Bill Allen talks about the future of BIM within the following 10 years, which will be a huge innovation in the AEC industry, and the iterative design will rapidly get into the way of automation.

The future of AI development could easily speed up the drawing phases and accelerate repetitive processes, which doing well on saving time and money for stakeholders. Programs like BIM could even be used to make decisions on choosing materials and narrow down the design choices since it integrates the design intent, engineering principle, and the site information. It will be utilized for bigger and complex projects and helps to check the design conflicts. From the BIM Handbook I read last week, it presents that BIM increasing the collaboration between architects and contractors. In design-build, BIM allows contractors to be involved into the progress since design stage to provide suggestions and cooperate on the design, which increase the productivity and efficiency of the entire team.

Automation will be developed rapidly in 10 years, and the popularity of AI programs will highly increase. I do think that the prospect of programs Bill Allen mentioned in the video will happen in the future; however, it may not be that fascinating for all workforce in AEC industry as a mainstream in only a decade. As a civil engineering student, I have heard about Revit, but I never got to use it before. Same for the students in mechanical engineering in our group. Civil engineers still use CAD as their primary implement from my co-op experience. Considering the popularization process of AutoCAD, which it was published in 1982 and used about 20 years to become the mainstream of design tool. Relative to AutoCAD, BIM is more technical, it will take more time to be developed among engineers in all the fields. During the discussion in our group, we thought there will also be a steep learning curve in the skills and knowledge of professionals with the technology for engineers. I do believe that the technologies explained by Bill Allen will be the future of AEC industry, but it needs more than 10 years for engineers in each field to cover up the gap, and to make the interoperability become practical between software.

Allen, Bill. “The Future of BIM Will Not Be BIM—and It's Coming Faster than You Think.” YouTube, 2016. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xq6yKyauu-o.

Comments:

Albert Hanan:

I cannot agree more that the steep learning curve for users would block the progress of the transition. It needs time for engineers like civil engineer and mechanical engineer to get into the BIM program, and to introduce BIM to all the engineers in high level education. However, I don’t see there are enough impetus for engineers and firms to make this transition in 10 years.

Nick Maloney:

I agree with you that the program Bill Allen mentioned in the video was very attractive, but there are many limitations can be thought of. The cost of BIM software you bring up in your post is very practical. I left this part over, but I agree it has significant impact on the propagation of BIM. As a civil engineering student, Autocad is enough for me to accomplish my work during co-op, and same for my colleagues. Then why should firms spend that unexpected money for that work they can handle?

Hailey Ihlow:

It is interesting to hear that engineers in all different age groups know some level of Revit in your office, which is totally opposite comparing to my co-op office. I guess the major difference is the job specification of the office. Architectural engineers do their work relay on Revit, but a large amount of civil engineers works with Autocad. It will be great to see that architectural engineers could lead this transition in AEC industry.