The BIM Chasm revisited 10 years on

The publication of Modernise or Die, the new Government Construction Strategy and the UK BIM Mandate all made 2016 feel like a seminal year for our industry.  A remarkable disruptive energy had the world watching. I was among the voices advocating for wide adoption of BIM, with a detailed focus on implementing common data environments to make sure all the great digital progress and learning going on wasn’t being lost in the dreaded silos, which we don’t hear much about in 2026.   

BIM was clearly the right thing to do, but getting the word out and making it stick was always going to be a challenge. Working with CM, I authored a series of three articles to explain the benefits of investing in BIM, the risks of ignoring it, and where to start. 

The first of the three featured a drawing that went on to be shared around the world: the BIM Chasm. Perhaps applying the brilliant innovation adoption concepts of Geoffrey Moore’s book Crossing the Chasm to our complex industry caught the attention of people looking to cut through the hype and jargon. The key themes in the graphic were that: we’d barely started our digital journey; the technology wouldn’t just adopt itself; and if we could avoid the pitfalls, the size of the prize was significant. 

Ten years on, I’m revisiting these ideas to explore how we’ve done and what’s changed. 

One of the biggest concerns at the time was that anyone who didn’t adopt BIM early and well could risk losing out on work. It was a threat that left businesses conflicted. Should they invest in proving they could meet the minimum expectation of BIM Level 2, wait and see if the threat was real, or double down on the opportunity by positioning themselves at the digital vanguard as part of their USP? 

The predicted cliff edge for those who didn’t embrace the new ways of working turned out to be exaggerated. Some contracts were certainly won and lost based on BIM capability, and some businesses regretted not getting involved earlier, but a couple of things happened to soften the impact. 

First, those without the in-house skill took advantage of the growing number of digital consultancies to plug gaps. These new businesses were often directed by digital evangelists, who gladly shared their knowledge and techniques. I was leading a BIM consultancy at the time; while this generosity wasn’t always great for repeat business, the benefits were clear. 

Second, the public sector clients that were expected to provide the pull towards innovation and adoption didn’t have robust enough information requirements to have real contractual teeth. The more cynical voices in the industry got their “I told you so” moment on this point, but only briefly. Now most big public projects do have information requirements, and some are very challenging indeed.

The majority of those who waited have now learnt enough to not get left behind, one way or another.

However, and this is a big however, those who invested in becoming digital-first businesses are enjoying the benefits of getting ahead, and their customers are achieving outcomes not possible in 2016. Their increased fluency in innovation adoption processes teed them up beautifully to adopt further advances like survey drones, AI analytics and rapid prototyping.

The mandate and everything it inspired – from new businesses, construction and property tech startups, brilliant conferences and an unrivalled digital community – has been, in my opinion, a wonderful success that has kept the UK right at the front of a changing global industry. 

Looking back at the drawing from 2016, I’d say we crossed the first chasm and avoided the pain of losing good businesses along the way. 

Mark Farmer concluded that we were faced with a choice: to modernise or die. We chose to modernise. Whether this would have happened without the passion and drive of the #UKBIMcrew movement is hard to know for certain, but I truly believe it made a difference. 

If BIM Level 2 was a success and BIM Level 3 dispersed before it formed into other new and exciting ideas like digital twins and smart cities, where does that leave our journey to being a truly digitally driven powerhouse industry with the UK at the forefront? 

The truth is that while we took a leading role in digitalising the design and construction phases by adopting new ideas (and even holding the pen on international standards), we did not conquer the whole asset lifecycle for new buildings, and we barely scratched the surface of the much larger challenge of our existing built environment.

Smart motorways and isolated digital twin projects don’t make smart cities happen, just like improved project processes to ISO 19650 and ISO 55001 with a well-considered BMS installation don’t automagically make post-handover operations a digital paradise.

With this in mind, it’s worth pausing to ask whether we are still aiming for the same goal. Does the imagined future challenge still exist or still matter? 

Bill Gates reportedly once said: “We overestimate what we can do in a year and underestimate what we can do in a decade.” Whether he really said this is up for debate, but it appears to have been true in our regard.  

Back then, digital twins were poorly understood, smart buildings were a tiny minority of innovative adventure projects, and nobody was taking AI seriously. The landscape has changed considerably: 

It could be argued that we are still aiming in the same direction of better-performing buildings in increasingly digital places, with a significantly improved asset lifecycle supported by efficient adoption of new processes and technologies. On the other hand, some of us thought it was all about BIM. As it turns out, this is just one of several digital building blocks we needed all along. One thing is for certain: nobody in 2026 believes ‘it’s quicker with a pen’ anymore.

The second chasm on the graphic was always further away and less well-defined. However, it turned out not to be a linear transition from level to level for the same design and construction teams that were most positively disrupted by the mandate.

Despite the initial lifecycle intent described in the 2011 Government Construction Strategy, the first chasm quickly became predominantly about getting technology and standards adopted by large-scale projects, like prisons and high-profile commercial buildings. The people responsible for buildings were often overlooked while we worked out details like clash detection tolerances or CDE workflows. Whether this operational phase element of the strategy was forgotten or filed under ‘too hard’ for a later date no longer matters, because it is now addressable as a new challenge for a new audience.

What makes crossing this chasm different is that its benefits, impact and much of the change are on the other side of the handover line, where the built fabric of the UK is managed and maintained. The challenge is incredibly varied because buildings old and new support life’s wonderful multitude of activities. Simply buying more technology won’t move the needle – without a new way of thinking, the chasm will claim its victims and the status quo will continue.  

A different conversation now needs to happen, and arguably a new movement needs to emerge, to repeat successes on the other side of the handover line and, importantly, for existing estates. There should be no need to wait for a major rebuild or refurbishment to improve the digital maturity of how our built assets are managed and understood.

At Glider, we have not just recognised that there is another adoption chasm to cross, but also a missing discipline to ensure we cross it. We’ve spent the last year putting a name and definition to that missing discipline and launched Asset Intelligence at Digital Construction Week 2026. To help adoption, we’ve even committed to sharing our work, very much in the spirit of how knowledge and ideas were flowing in the run-up to the mandate, because a discipline only becomes real when other people practise it.

When the work is published, please pick it up, argue with it and help improve it, because getting this right is genuinely important and exciting.

In 2016, an #UKAssetIntelligenceCrew community would have been a hugely important partner and challenger to the BIM movement, but the challenge wasn’t clear and Twitter has since abandoned organic hashtag-driven movements as it morphed into X.  Hindsight aside, this is one of the most important challenges we need to tackle: how do we ensure that the people responsible for buildings can find, trust and act on the information they need to keep them safe, compliant and performing?

Ten years on, our industry is more fascinating than ever, and the opportunities ahead are truly exciting as long as we keep innovating together.