Week 3 - Chapter 4 BIM for Owners and Facility Managers - Yoon

Constructing a building requires many design calculations and intensive labors to make it stay up safely. Unfortunately, many calculations and intensive data collections still continues after the building is finished with constructions: it still requires efforts of project team and dedicated technical expertise to create an integrated model.[1] However, with BIM model, this could be done with a program in certain level. As an owner, who would be paying all the unnecessary maintenance cost, investing in BIM would be beneficial by increasing the building performance, reducing the financial risk, and shortening project schedule.

Many older generations refuse to adapt new technology. Many things have changed from manual to automatics; however, to understand or being comfortable with new programs take efforts to get used to it. That’s why many professions chose early retirements over learning something new because it’s not so simple to learn. Traditionally, building gets to be designed separately based on the critical aspects including structural, mechanical, and architectural. They don’t really get to put together until the construction. BIM, on the other hand, could put them together virtually to prevent potential problems. Without going through each expert, this could save much more time with higher accuracy. Unexpected computer errors might be the one that’s holding older generations to BIM adventures; however, computer programs develop very rapidly and there are enough cases done by BIM that computer errors are extremely low especially for typical models.

Ability of BIM still affects the building after being constructed. Interest of owners is always about how to save money. Well, at least that’s big portion of their interests. BIM’s one of the advantage is linking design information with cost estimating and sales forecasts. It could provide very accurate cost estimation for owner’s expanses. The estimation could avoid unnecessary overhead cost by changing the model easily. From customized individual human behavior to legality based on standard codes, ability of BIM is almost infinite. Revit is one of the good examples to use. Changing the dimension or usage purpose of a room could change the energy cost of the entire building and Revit can analyze it automatically. Nameita experienced that actual measures beyond the dimensional measure came out to be very similar through this program.[2] This simple program could do a very accurate and fast calculation without getting through all the engineers in different field.

[1]: Eastman, 2011, BIM Handbook: A Guide to Building Information Modeling for Owners, Mangers, Designers, Engineers, and Contractors.
[2]: Nameita Toure, 2014, BIM for Owners and Facility Managers