Blog Post 2: Chapter 4: BIM for Owners and Facility Managers

The title of the 4th Chapter of the BIM Handbook is BIM for Owners and Facility Managers. It starts off with a summary of all the reasons why owners and facility managers should utilize BIM. The sections that follow further explain why owners should care about BIM, how owners can use BIM, and what types of guides and tools are available. The text explains how to implement BIM into a project as well as barriers to its implementation, including risks and commons myths. Finally, guidelines and issues for owners to consider are addressed involving the adoption of BIM.  

The chapter covers all the points I would expect an owner to want to know about when researching whether or not to utilize BIM. After reading, you understand why you should care, what the exact benefits of using it are, how to implement it, and things to look out for. The text provides specific examples of newer project strategies and how essential BIM is in the process (Eastman, 2011, p. 153-154). One of the best benefits of using BIM on a project is modeling the building and all of its systems together in 3D space. This will point out clashes before construction so that they can be avoided. This saves a ton of money and keeps the project on schedule (Eastman, 2011, p. 169). There is a section that explains all of the tools that would improve the project in various ways. For example, the BIM estimating tools allow for faster and even automatic takeoffs so that the estimating process is quicker and more accurate (Eastman, 2011, p. 170).  

The owner benefits from BIM when a project utilizes the technology throughout the life of the project. Projects are more streamlined which means less problems and less change orders. This results in less delays during construction which keeps the project on schedule. At the end of the day, the most important things that an owner wants is for the project to be completed on time and there to be little to no change orders. BIM has been shown to produce these results so owners should definitely adopt BIM and be ready for upcoming technology which will benefit them in the future.

Source:

1. Eastman, Charles M. BIM Handbook: A Guide to Building Information Modeling for Owners, Managers, Designers, Engineers and Contractors. Vol 2nd ed. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley; 2011. http://ezproxy2.library.drexel.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=nlebk&AN=364239&site=ehost-live. Accessed January 22, 2019.

Comments on Other Posts

1. Adam Raifsnider

I like that you used your real life experience to relate to the text that you read. There are some companies that are actually having a more difficult time using BIM because not everyone wants to adopt it. We know as young engineers how beneficial is it compared to traditional construction processes, but there are people who have been doing things the same way for a long time and do not like change. One of the only ways to get them to change is to make BIM technology mandatory for all contractors on your projects which has worked well for some companies that I have heard about.

2. Aaron Goldberg

This is an interesting topic that is discussed in Chapter 2. When we are working on projects and can't seem to export models to other programs we want, it's nice to understand why which many of us did not. Hopefully, we will get to a point where all software that we use can interact with each other easily.

3. Nana Lin Rasmussen

Interoperability is an important issue that we have to work with today and I have never known about the history of it. It would be great if every relevant program could work together with ease, but as you mentioned, it becomes increasingly difficult with more and more complex models in each program. Let's hope that Kayleigh and her team can streamline their own process and share it with the rest of the industry someday.