ConstrucTech Article

Good morning all!

I had a couple moments prior to the Holiday break to write an article as requested by the folks at ConstrucTech magazine. Of course, this got me to thinking about how to make the article unique and somehwat valuable to the AEC industry at large instead of the usual "What is BIM?" that we've all heard.

After talkig it over with the folks here at Barnhart, we thought it would be a good idea to go through the books and look at exactly how much the BIM department costs to each job. This then sparked a whole new idea that we should look at BIM from a business perspective and that it would be good to look at BIM from the business side of it's use. Since this first article, I have now been asked to write up four more that further outlines the "Business Case for BIM".

I encourage you to check out the first article at your leisure here or better yet order the magazine, which has the included graphics.

While it expands on the already well known McLeamy curve it was very interesting to look at the use of BIM from the GC's perspective during the construction process. Again, the bulk of effort/money is spent up front in pre-con coordination and use, however it ramps up again prior to project closeout, in the preparation of the As-Constructed BIM which added an intersting twist.

We are also looking at how we can be more cost effective on medium to smaller sized jobs as the delta between these types of projects and the larger jobs is significantly less. We are even looking at training a small batch of Superintendents into "Super Users" that limit the amount of effort (time and money) that we need to bill towards these smaller projects while maximizing the value and pre-existing expense.

Article two, will be about balancing people with software and measuring internal efficiency.