Week 4: Future Problems with BIM

What are the possible future problems with Revit/BIM?

As previously discussed in class, the possible risks and challenges of BIM tools like Revit are inevitable. One potential problem is the legal risk of ownership of the BIM data and how to protect it through copyright and other laws. For example, an owner/patron is paying a design company to create a BIM model and the company team members are providing propriety information for use on the project. The question of ownership of the BIM data has no simple answer. Various problems like licensing issues and responsibility for any inaccuracies can arise. The integrated concept of BIM blurs the level of responsibility. For example, if the owner of the building files suit over a perceived design error, the architects, engineers and other contributors of the BIM process can point finger at each other and proving fault may be difficult. (Rosenburg, 2007)

Although BIM's productivity and economic benefits are increasingly well understood, the adoption is much slower than anticipated. For example, my previous co-op employer was a smaller company that did not utilize BIM. They mainly do low-rise buildings and houses that can easily be designed with AutoCAD. The two main reasons are technical and managerial. According to Bernstein and Pittman, the three main categories for technical difficulties are as follows:

1. the need for well-defined transactional construction process models to eliminate data interoperability issues
2. the requirements that digital design data be computable
3. the need for well-developed practical strategies for the purposeful exchange and integration of meaningful information among the BIM model components

The managerial issues include implementation and use of BIM. There is a need to standardize the BIM process and to define the guidelines for its implementation. In addition, there is an issue of how the developmental and operational costs be distributed among the stakeholders. Another issue is the fact that contents of the BIM softwares, including the interface, change every time they create a new version. This is a problem that I encountered when I was creating a Bookcase family assigned this week.

In the midst of the developmental stages of BIM technology, sociological problems are possible. That is, the convenience of inputting information on the computer may cost people there jobs. The ease of modeling systems using BIM may require medium sized companies to retain only one BIM technician and terminate 9 others.

Comments:
J Schwakoff's blog discussed the possible problem of updating information after the structure is built. This is an interesting issue because majority of the projects I worked on during my past co-op were renovations. Most of them were built way before BIM was even invented. During the renovation design, site visits were necessary to examine the structures currently present. This would not be necessary if BIM softwares would have some kind of solution to this problem of information updates. He also mentioned his concerns regarding relying too heavily on computer models and losing human interaction. From a business standpoint, I don't think this matters as much. I do think that the benefits outweigh the risks. If I were the owner of the design company, I would only care about the productivity. However, we also can't ignore the fact that common sense is important in the design process. If the users completely lose common sense, then the computer results may shoot out numbers that are way out of range and the designers won't even know it until the construction process.

Zilong Xiao brought up a good point about the lack of artistic touch in the software-generated models. I think that because companies try to make sure all products coming out of the software are uniform, people are less likely to appreciate individuality.

References:

Bernstein, P.G., and Pittman, J.H. (2005). “Barriers to the Adoption of Building Information Modeling in the Building Industry”. Autodesk Building Solutions Whitepaper, Autodesk Inc., CA. 

Thompson, D.B., and Miner, R.G. (November 23, 2007). “Building Information Modeling - BIM: Contractual Risks are Changing with Technology” [WWW document] URL http://www.aepronet.org/ge/no35.html 

Rosenburg, T.L. (2007). “Building Information Modeling.” [WWW document] URL http://www.ralaw.com/resources/documents/Building%20Information%20Modeling%20-%20Rosenberg.pdf