What Happens If I Don't Do BIM?

For all the noise and mandates, no one is going to force you to adopt building information modelling (BIM). If you want to, you can just carry on as you are and tune out from all the jargon. But what will happen if you don’t do BIM? Here The B1M’s Co-Founder Fred Mills explores the impacts for individuals and the organisations they work for…

What Will Happen to Me?

“For the first few days, you’ll barely notice it” says Fred. “You might even feel like a huge weight has been lifted from your shoulders. You’ll be able to get on with things without worrying about BIM all the time. But then it will start to get you”.

"For the first few days you’ll barely notice it. You might even feel like a huge weight has been lifted ...but then it will start to get you"

As others around you start to adopt BIM, you might feel that you’re just not as efficient as you used to be. Your peers will notably start designing better buildings, doing faster take-offs, more accurate programmes and finding information more quickly in a common data environment (CDE).

Whilst the repercussions for individuals are tough, people tend to be shielded by the organisations that they work for. “Unfortunately the fate awaiting those organisations themselves is far more brutal” explains Fred.

What Will Happen to My Organisation?

Things will start to bite as your competitors adopt BIM and a digital approach to construction across their projects and almost every part of their business. They will become more efficient by being able to find accurate data, faster, in a single shared online area and from being able to make decisions on that data that are right first time.

"The fate awaiting organisations themselves is far more brutal"

Some studies (such as Avanti) have estimated that adopting BIM could generate efficiency savings of 20-25%. In a five day working week, 20% represents an entire day. Those that realise these efficiency savings are effectively gaining an extra day in every week of their financial years. That time will allow them to take on more work whilst keeping their cost base the same, increasing their turnover and their profit.

With that foundation, they will be able to increase their market share, whilst investing in development and in building and retaining excellent teams of people. They will steadily become the first choice for clients because they’re able to offer a better value project on a more efficient timescale at a more attractive price. For those not adopting BIM or going digital, this is will all prove very hard to compete with.

Fred paints a powerful picture by setting out the implications for businesses across a typical working day, but is quick to stress the purpose of doing so: “Scaring people is patronising and not helpful and that isn’t what we’ve tried to do with this video. We just want to help you visualise what will happen if let you the environment around you change without seriously considering what you need to do to keep up”.

To get started with BIM check out the clear, straight-forward and impartial videos on our free BIM for Beginners playlist. If you’re already on board but know others struggling to understand the relevance of BIM or where to start… send them our way!

This video was kindly powered by Viewpoint. Find out more about them here.

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