The topic of Building Information Modeling has been on everyone's lips for some time now, but in practice, the principle has been rather slow to catch on in Germany. "A building data model for interdisciplinary project management" - what sounds forward-looking at first often proves difficult to implement in practice. But why?
Let's think about how planning offices work today: Drawing is done in 2D, as this is the logical progression from hand drawing and is well mastered by most graduates. Instead of an ink pen and a drawing sheet, software is now used - not so long ago, the CAD industry took off with this concept and made everyday office life much easier. For the renderings, the 3D model is pulled up in parallel in the corresponding visualization software. These two processes remain fundamentally separate, as the exchange between CAD and 3D programs is not exactly clean, and both also contain completely different data. While the CAD plans are based on the line representation and contain textual information, we want our visualizations to primarily impress with a great combination of colours and materials.
Now BIM is coming and, of course, the increase in efficiency recommended by the software manufacturers is expected. Immediately. Which brings us to the problem.
BIM software offers a great deal, but it also requires special expertise and a certain training phase, as it works completely differently to CAD. The analogy to manual drawing is completely eliminated, which requires a fundamental rethink. The building model is stored in a database that contains properties such as resources and costs. Of course, this data pool must first be entered and maintained correctly.
In the past, CAD standards were defined once, usually containing layer structures, plan headers and plot styles, but with BIM we primarily need a precise statement of what information the building model should contain and how it should be entered - because the possibilities are almost unlimited. At this point, the new job description of a BIM manager is currently emerging, who manages and organizes the project from an interdisciplinary software perspective.
In the USA, the BIM concept certainly seems to be catching on faster: as various studies by McGraw Hill show, half of architects in the USA have now switched from CAD to BIM, and more and more authorities are using BIM software to process projects (see also: McGraw Hill - Construction Research and Analytics ).
One thing is now clear - the future lies in BIM. The only question that remains is what is the most efficient way to get there.
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