How can consultants meet the challenge of BIM Level 2 delivery?

Mac Muzvimwe, Graeme Wildridge, Mark O’Connor

For the third in our series of digital debates, in partnership with the Centre for Digital Built Britain, senior consultants discussed their experiences of working to BIM Level 2 and how they can improve delivery of a digital built Britain. CM reports. Photography: Julie Kim.

Consultants need to listen carefully to clients’ requirements and support them in finding the best way to implement BIM on their projects. That was one of the key messages that came out of CM’s latest digital round table organised in partnership with the Centre for Digital Built Britain (CDBB).

More digital debates

• How BIM Level 2 is changing tier 1 contractors
• Is education helping to deliver a digital built Britain?
  

The event, the third of its kind hosted at the Chartered Institute of Building (CIOB) central London office, asked consultants to examine how BIM is currently being adopted to inform the future CDBB agenda, as well as highlight some of the constraints they are facing. The discussion was chaired by Terry Stocks, leader of the CDBB BIM Level 2 workstream, and Fiona Moore, BIM Level 2 programme manager at CDBB.

From the start, it became clear the consultants used BIM chiefly on projects where the client requests it.

James Colclough, technical director at Aecom, explained that having clients who fully understand the value of BIM helps to drive its adoption through the supply chain. “It is easier where the clients are telling project teams: ‘You have got to do this’. It gives us the ability to communicate why they have got to do it. Change happens more quickly,” he said.

Sarah Davidson, associate professor at the University of Nottingham, who also provides consultancy to Gleeds, agreed. “Client leadership is helpful for driving consistency and a whole-project-team approach so that we are, as a team, focused on data,” she said.

Consultants generally have a “vanilla” BIM offering, but anything more is usually client-dependent.

Mac Muzvimwe, BIM and digital transformation lead at Arcadis, said: “We design in a 3D environment as a starting point, up to LOD [level of detail] 3. That is a core service. Beyond that, more fees are involved. Our challenge is, the client often doesn’t want to do anything extra.”

“Tier 1 constructors reported that their digital approach is similar, in our last round table,” noted Stocks.

Selling the benefits of BIM

However, while many tier 1 constructors saw benefits from internal efficiencies or risk mitigation in their digital strategies, this was less the case among consultants.

“The challenge that we have is that senior people want to talk about BIM Level 2 and smart cities, whereas others are still asking what BIM is. As a business we have to bring those people up to speed,” said Muzvimwe.

Colclough felt that project managers can be particularly challenging in this regard, given their focus on capital delivery. “It is quite easy to sell BIM at a high level because they understand the benefits. Project managers are inherently risk averse,” he asserted.

Debate participants

Back row, from left: Grayham Roper, Hoare Lea; Jason Whittall, One Creative Environments; Nicola Pearson, change manager, CDBB (observer); Joe Stott, AHR; Graeme Wildridge, BIM lead, Defence Infrastructure Organisation (observer); Fiona Moore, CDBB; Julian Kent, Buro Four; Sarah Davidson, University of Nottingham; Mark O’Connor, Wood; James Colclough, Aecom.

Seated: Terry Stocks, CDBB; Emma Hooper, Bond Bryan Digital.

Not pictured: Mac Muzvimwe, Arcadis

Julian Kent, project director at Buro Four, countered that project managers are often under a lot of pressure: “The client only wants to spend a certain amount of money for each stage of the project because of the risk profile. There is a huge amount of pressure on the team not to overspend.”

Typically, if a project manager sends requests for proposals (RFPs) out to consultants and asks them to price the project for BIM Level 2, a higher price will come back which can be hard to sell to the client, Kent added.

“Project managers understand the cost, but they don’t understand the value,” he continued. “That can be compounded by many clients taking a short-term view; they are simply concerned with whether or not a project is viable.”

A barrier to BIM adoption frequently identified by this group was procurement (see box), while clients were also criticised for being “vague” about what they want.

Joe Stott, architect and BIM manager at AHR, said the best clients are very prescriptive on BIM. “We work with some who take real ownership of the process,” he explained. “They will come to us and say: ‘I understand the requirements of BIM Level 2 and I have interpreted it this way, and this is exactly what I want.’

“Quite often one of my senior managers will ask: ‘How do we price BIM?’ They don’t necessarily understand it and see a risk element.” The cost concerns do not arise when the client has clearly described how BIM will be used, he added.

“So there is a role here for consultants to engage with their clients, and support them in developing their data and delivery requirements, to aid clear articulation in the construction tender,” observed Stocks.

Mark O’Connor, asset management lead for Wood’s environment and infrastructure division, said he encourages clients to think about the whole life of their asset. “When they start the procurement process or inherit an asset, we say that they don’t inherit assets, they inherit liabilities. And it is only through a strong, quality-assured process and data that they drive that value and turn their liabilities into assets,” he said.

Barriers to early BIM use

Other barriers cited by consultants included limited time to facilitate BIM use early in the design process, which they also saw as an obstacle to design for manufacture and assembly (DfMA) (see below).

“The real benefit of BIM and collaborative design development is to get things right first time, coordinating designs so that errors are made in a virtual (and cheaper) world,” said Stocks. “This means increasing the proportion of early stage fees expenditure away from the more traditionally procured projects who follow the traditional S-shaped curve of fee expenditure: more spent earlier in the process, compared to traditional routes, should give better outcomes – but should not necessarily mean more fees overall.”

Jason Whittall, director of One Creative Environments, said he frequently saw confusion about what the BIM process actually involves.

“I see a lot of BIM execution plans and proposed BIM deliverables and there is a huge variety in what people think BIM Level 2 is and what they think the process is. PAS 1192 is quite a clear process but it is amazing how many different ways it is interpreted – and these are the people who are advising clients,” he said.

Emma Hooper, digital information specialist at Bond Bryan Digital, believes BIM should be quite a straightforward process – so long as clients and consultants remember the principles behind it

“I see BIM as just about information management,” she said. “It is what we have always done. It is part of an ecosystem, where you need inputs to make outputs – and it is the client that generates the inputs.

“Many employers’ information requirements [EIRs] are pages and pages of documents but they don’t tell you anything. People are getting really confused and wrapped up in Construction Operations Building Information Exchange [COBie] and data which they are never going to use.”

Most members of the group are exploring offering an information management service – advising clients on using data to improve their asset management – but there is limited demand at present. One issue raised was the lack of information manager candidates in the job market, and what that role may look like (see below).

Whittall pointed out a link between the information management requirement, the principal designer role in the Construction Design & Management (CDM) regulations, and Dame Judith Hackitt’s report calling for more rigorous duty holder responsibilities and a “golden thread” of information for every building.

“Information isn’t just about saving money, it is about environmental factors and safety factors,” he said.

“In the oil and gas sector, the duty holder has that role for 30-40 years so tends to value the ‘golden thread’ more,” said O’Connor.

“If we draw a comparison with energy performance certificates [EPCs], could a similar approach be taken with building data?” asked Whittall. “When a client sells a building, it must have an EPC. Why not say that a client must also provide a minimum level of information?”

Whittall would like to see govern-ment drive BIM harder than just central government mandated departments, pointing out that while departments like the Ministry of Justice have been good at implementing the government’s 2016 mandate, those organisations within the NHS and education that are part-funded by a pension or investment firm sometimes try to argue that the mandate does not apply them. “I think the mandate could be given more teeth,” he said.

Understanding value

While the consultants agreed that helping clients understand the value of BIM would drive its adoption, few could provide evidence of BIM benefits being captured and measured. Moore urged: “We need to see a tangible benefit because people need to understand the beneficial outcome for them.”

Stocks added: “We need case studies that prove where the benefits are. The data is no good if it is all kept close to someone’s chest. It is only really powerful if we can share it.”

How is BIM affected by procurement?

“We can’t really do anything without changing procurement,” argued Hooper. “We are working with a broken framework and all we are doing with BIM, DfMA, the Internet of Things (IoT), and artificial intelligence (AI) is papering over the cracks.”