Taking a Breath
In this first installment of ‘A BIM Point of View’ Brad Hardin takes a practical look at the true costs associated with building information modeling and weighs them against realizations in both savings and efficiency.
What a ride. This past year has presented a unique set of challenges, with many companies adapting to new market strategies such as lean construction techniques, reducing costs, and further integrating BIM (building information modeling) as a virtual coordination tool. Keeping in mind these parallel initiatives, I have had the opportunity to dig deeper into my own BIM experience and investigate the value of BIM. What I found is that the business case for BIM presents unique opportunities.
The money for BIM
Often the first question asked when beginning a BIM department is “Where does the money come from?” The large array of software and hardware tools required for the BIM process to work efficiently all comes at a cost, and these costs are usually the first hurdle. Working for a large construction company myself, our current perspective is that BIM is a value-added service and a best practice for us to coordinate our projects. However, it took experience to reach this understanding.
When first starting out, a BIM department usually begins as a general overhead expense and isn’t necessarily billed to a particular project similar to an accounting or marketing department. Once the department is up and running, however, I have found tremendous value in billing directly towards jobs for project-specific BIM coordination for three main reasons. First, it adds perspective and depth to the BIM manager’s role within a company in relation to costs, value, and staffing. Secondly, it layers a degree of accountability when the BIM manager compiles monthly projections when working with project managers. Lastly, it creates a detailed cost history of project costs that can be analyzed in a frame of reference with the project’s issues for future reference.
Ultimately, a BIM department bills towards projects. And when you get right down to it, all the departments bill towards projects even though the money is separated into different piles, essentially coming from the same place … project profitability.
Digging in further
My investigation into value added vs. real cost for BIM has been an eye opener, particularly since BIM services can have huge impacts on project savings. This enlightenment began after a meeting with our accounting department to review the amount of hours the BIM department billed towards different projects affecting project profitability.
The overall project costs on large-scale projects were minimal, but the smaller-to-medium-sized projects recorded more of a “dent” on profitability especially on challenging projects that required additional resources to coordinate models and resolve issues. These project managers knew about BIM’s impact on project profitability, however, the project managers also experienced the value of BIM and could visibly see conflicts being resolved virtually and noticed a decrease in field prep and installation times among other efficiencies. Overall I found project managers preferred BIM on their projects as long as it provided some degree of savings (time and cost) that did not grossly affect profitability.
What I had anticipated as a difficult task in justifying the value and cost of BIM to project management personnel had already been shown. In one project manager’s words, “The results validated its use.” This then had a domino effect to senior management who saw an increase in technology costs in the form of equipment and software, but began to see fewer change orders, improved installation times, and positive feedback from the field. Ultimately, the cost of BIM services were equating to real results, however tangible.
The BIM “dent”
After reviewing the total BIM department’s costs, I wanted to know at what point along a project these costs were being billed. I found that regardless of project size, there was an amount of time and cost to coordinate a project via BIM. While some smaller-to-medium-sized projects were often less in total effort, many jobs required the same amount of coordination time for all projects regardless of size at the beginning. This “constant” amount of time for BIM coordination became known as the “dent.”
I then explored the dent of BIM internally, and evaluated the value of BIM on smaller projects with smaller profitability margins. I found that even though BIM costs were being incurred on these projects, and reducing profits, management personnel were eager to integrate BIM into the project from the start and felt it contributed value by limiting their liabilities, even with smaller margins.
Overall what I found was that even though BIM comes at a cost, managers were realizing savings regardless of project size that made the case for its use. What we are working on now is to define and refine the process that enables BIM to further reduce costs for its use.
Moving forward
Fine tune the tools in the tool belt, examine their current value, and investigate new technologies to validate their potential value from a business case. Look past the “bells and whistles” and investigate a product’s ability to create real value.
Brad Hardin is the author of BIM and Construction Management: Proven Tools, Methods, and Workflows. Hardin is corporate BIM manager at Barnhart Inc., www.barnhart-heery.com, San Diego, Calif. He can be reached at bhardin@barnhart-heery.com.