Revit Future Problems - Week 3 - Group A - Castonguay

What are the possible future problems with Revit/BIM?

After reading BIM: Trends, Benefits, Risks, and Challenges for the AEC industry, I learned about many future challenges BIM faces. The main challenges for the future are technical and managerial. Management issues include the implementation and use of BIM. At this moment, there is no common agreement on how to implement and use BIM. There isn't one single document giving instruction on BIM's application and use right now. According to an artile on Ralaw.com, not much has been done to diminish this issue and create BIM contract documents. In the future, this will definitely need to be addressed. Also, the BIM process is commonly not used a a whole. Often times firms will use certain aspects of the model, but no he entire process, which could defeat the purpose for using BIM all together. In the future, there needs to be some way to standardize the process and create guidelines for using BIM.

Another topic brought up in the article is how we will need to figure out issues of ownership and risk management. Facilities managers are not usually included in the building process, but involving them more could help them implement maintenance strategies in the design process rather than just based on the as-built condition. Finding a time for facilities managers to be included in the BIM process could be challenging but it would resolve many problems.

Something else that could be an issue for the future is the development of content in Revit. Manufacturers have been slow to develop their content and some create content that lacks quality. As time passes and many new products are developed, Revit needs to be able to keep up with it. All of these products need to be updated in Revit so they can be modeled. I see this as a huge issue for the future because of how fast new products are being manufactured.

Additional Comments:

Catherine Stevens brought up the idea of future issues with legal ownership of BIM data. I definitely agree that there is no simple answer for the true owner of a BIM project. Licensing issues could definitely develop major issues with BIM.

Ilana Ritvalsky discussed BIM's effect on employment rates. I agree that it could take jobs away from some people who are less experienced technicians, but this is also what happened with AutoCAD drafting and the industry seemed to survive. As times change, people need to adapt to be able to make it and I think that the adoption of BIM won't have too much effect.

J Schwakoff brought up a great point about keeping models up-to-date. After buildings are created, many things get changed and upgraded. There should be someone specifically in charge of editing these models so they can continue to be references throughout the buildings life cycle.



Azhar, Salman. "Building Information Modeling (BIM): Trends, Benefits, Risks, and Challenges for the AEC Industry." Leadership and Management in Engineering 11.3 (2011): 241. Web. 27 Jan. 2015.