Resolving to Embrace Change

As a New Year begins, many of us make resolutions, setting ourselves goals that we aim to achieve. Sadly, many of us fail, for any number of reasons. Thinking about this has led me to consider how and why some BIM projects fail.
Surprisingly, the reasons for failure are not generally related to not following the required policy, establishing a proper process or due to a lack of ability with the technology.
In our experience, based on over 15 years working as BIM Consultants for Owners and their Facilities teams, overseeing BIM projects, the issues and hurdles relate typically to ‘Change Management’.
We all think that change is a great idea, so long as it doesn’t impact the way we do things! The older we are and, thus, the longer we have spent doing things a certain way, the harder it is to switch to something different. In addition, often our position within an organization is based on our deep knowledge of the old process.
A digital process requires that all parties involved in the capital planning, design, construction and facility management of a project undergo a degree of change in their processes. When this is not appreciated, challenges begin to arise.
The biggest risks that we have seen relate to the following:
- A belief by a client’s capital planning team that BIM is a technology used exclusively for design and construction and that they, capital planning, merely need to request ‘BIM’ in the RFP and continue to do business as usual!
- Related to this first issue is that the client team does not always participate actively in the entire process, failing to establish clear BIM Requirements and to identify the goals, uses and final deliverables for the data and the process that the design and construction teams are to follow.
- If BIM requirements are established, for myriad reasons such as misunderstanding the requirements or not appreciating the value of the process from their perspective, some aspects are not followed by the design and construction teams. Sometimes it is simply a case of “We don’t do that” or “We’ll do it later!”
Some reluctance to embrace the new process relates to the fact that contracts currently still focus on the drawing output, encouraging a tendency, often citing business constraints, to follow the easiest route to generating the drawings.
The biggest issue we see is a lack of understanding that BIM is a digital data-driven process, not just a piece of technology. A degree of change by all parties is required, to move on from the traditional paper process, shifting our collective focus to working to ensure that the underlying data is robust, capable not only of generating drawings, but also of enabling downstream processes related to the management of facilities throughout their life cycle.
Let’s make 2025 the year for following through on a resolution to effect this change!
If you are interested in learning more about our process, please reach out. We would love to help you.
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