by Shane Henson — January 29, 2014—Building professionals not using building information modeling (BIM) could be slowing their construction projects down, considering the numerous benefits that contractors are experiencing using the technology, according to a new report by McGraw Hill Construction.
The The Business Value of BIM for Construction in Major Global Markets SmartMarket Report reveals that contractors in nine of the world’s top construction markets using BIM report that it helps them to improve productivity, efficiency, and quality on their projects. Just as important, the use of BIM helps to increase the safety on their projects, as well as their own competitiveness.
For the report, McGraw Hill Construction surveyed professionals in markets with well-established BIM use, such as Canada, France, Germany, the U.K., and the United States, as well as those in markets that are still in the initial stages of BIM adoption, such as Australia/New Zealand, Brazil, Japan, and South Korea.
“The markets that are just beginning to adopt BIM have really benefitted from the experience of other regions,” says Steve Jones, senior director at McGraw Hill Construction. “These results are exciting because they demonstrate that these newer-to-adopt markets are already outperforming the more established regions in several key areas, including ROI, offering innovative new services, and using BIM in the non-building sector. It suggests that BIM is set to transform the approach to construction globally.”
The results also provide evidence of unrelenting growth in the use of BIM that can be expected in the near future, says McGraw Hill Construction. Over the next two years, contractors expect the percentage of their work that involves BIM will increase by 50 percent on average. Given the fact that the study also demonstrates that companies more engaged with BIM achieve more benefits and realize a stronger return on their BIM investments than those less engaged, these results position BIM for powerful growth in all these markets in the next few years. For example:
- Half of the contractors with a very high BIM engagement report returns in excess of 25 percent on their investments in BIM.
- Forty percent of the contractors with very high BIM engagement levels report that BIM significantly reduced rework on projects, resulting in a significant cost savings.
“As greater industry demands unfold, BIM is emerging as a vital process to promote efficiency and leaner operations throughout a construction project’s lifecycle,” says Lisa Campbell, vice president, Industry Strategy and Marketing at Autodesk Inc., which was the study’s premier partner. “And contractors are poised to see tremendous benefits from BIM across all regions.”
The study provides further evidence of strong future growth in the use as contractors report making aggressive investments in their BIM programs. All eight potential BIM investments measured in the survey, including investments in training, processes, hardware, software and custom three-dimensional (3D) libraries, were considered a top priority by at least one third (32 percent) or more of the contractors surveyed.
More contractors with a very high BIM engagement level (61 percent, which can be considered the bellwether for future behavior regarding BIM) are investing in mobile devices than the average across the contractors (38 percent), demonstrating that the future of BIM for contractors lies in getting it more widely used in the field.
As mentioned above, Autodesk was the premier partner on the study. AECOM was the corporate partner, and the BIMForum was the association partner.
