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What do you think of when you hear the word building? You may think of a physical building like an office, school, stadium, hospital, or house. In that case, BIM refers to information modeling for a single building, including all of the geometry and data for architectural and structural design, mechanical and electrical engineering, and so on.

Actually, building can mean a lot more than just that. The following sections explain that building is a misunderstood word and that BIM can actually be used in many varied industries and projects. If you think of building as a verb, not a noun, you can see that Building Information Modeling is a process, not just a final product.

Building isn’t a helpful term

What makes understanding the building part of BIM difficult is that the word building isn’t clear: it can mean different things to different people.

Try to describe what a building is. Doing so isn’t easy. You can say that buildings are manmade structures, but what separates a building from a statue or monument? You can say they’re permanent constructions with walls and roofs, but you’ll be able to think of temporary buildings you’ve seen and also tunnels that have walls and roofs. In fact, one of the best ways to describe a building involves describing things that aren’t buildings, and even that’s confusing. Is a bridge a building? Is the Eiffel Tower a building?

The term building originally comes from ancient words for house. That’s why people can think of buildings just as spaces they use for living or working or leisure.

Building as a verb, not a noun

If you think of building as a verb, meaning the same as construction or the process of putting things together, then that begins to expand what BIM can apply to. Then BIM isn’t just suitable for buildings, it’s the act of building things, such as the following:

✔ Bridges

✔ Railways

✔ Highways

✔ Utilities

You can also imagine how it’s suitable for other built environment sectors like

✔ Land surveying

✔ Landscape architecture

✔ Tunneling

✔ Mining

Some people say that the B in BIM proves that it works only for buildings and just doesn’t work for their discipline like tunneling or highways, but this simply isn’t true. Every sector is at different stages of exploring BIM, and great examples already exist of those industries using BIM on live projects, so you shouldn’t get hung up on the word building. For example, the Virtual Construction for Roads (V-Con) project is a European initiative to improve data exchange across civil infrastructure teams by using BIM processes and it’s changing road procurement in the Netherlands, Sweden, and France.

BIM also isn’t just about architecture. Although the building design and construction industries have been the first to adopt the BIM processes and protocols as a group, BIM works for offshore projects, civil engineering, and infrastructure too. The documentation and support is increasing quickly for every sector.

Think of the B in BIM as meaning building as in the verb to build, the action of constructing things. Doing so helps you to understand BIM’s reach in two ways.

✔ It increases the sectors that information modeling applies to, sectors that build other things than just buildings. BIM has been successfully demonstrated in

● Architecture and building design

● Civil and structural engineering

● Energy and utilities

● Highway and road engineering

● Landscape and land surveying

● Offshore and marine architecture

● Rail and metro transport engineering

● Services and engineering

● Tunneling and subway architecture

● Urban master-planning and smart city design

✔ It demonstrates that building is a process. It’s not a one-time exchange of data; it’s many exchanges over the life of a project. The majority of model inputs are going to be in the design and construction phases, and the majority of information outputs will be extracted during handover, use, and asset maintenance. The information modeling for the building process could start on day one and still be going strong years later.

In the same way that describing one building that sums up all the buildings in the world is really difficult, summing up BIM using just one example of how it’s been applied is impossible. You can use BIM for every kind of construction project, from giant bridges to manmade islands and even rollercoasters! BIM is a term that has become popular gradually, but it could have just as easily been Construction Information Modeling or Project Information Modeling.

Thinking about the built environment

The built environment is very varied and broad in its scope and includes lots of structures that aren’t buildings. When you’re talking about BIM, make sure that you’re not just talking about architecture and the architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) industry. A lot of the diagrams and visualizations you see in BIM presentations are of shiny skyscrapers or complex building forms, but people are using BIM workflows elsewhere in the built environment in other ways:

✔ Infrastructure: Infrastructure is the network of systems that keep things moving, whether that’s water, gas, electricity, traffic, or Internet data. The design, construction, and maintenance of these structures need to use the whole lifecycle approach of BIM. For instance, Crossrail (www.crossrail.co.uk) is the largest construction project in Europe and, among many projects, involves the tunneling of 26 miles of brand new underground subway lines. Every aspect of the project, from tunnel engineering to new underground station designs, has used innovative BIM processes for data management and lifecycle operation.

✔ Geographic information systems: Most built environment projects begin with site and land survey information. You can use geographic information systems (GIS) to visualize mapping and geolocational data so that the site information becomes part of the BIM. This is vital for city-scale projects. You can then add existing recorded data to the model, so that you can predict the impact of projects on traffic management, population density, or economic factors. It’s really exciting when you start to think about doing it on a national or international scale.

✔ Landscape architecture: Landscape has been one of the most neglected sectors in terms of products and platforms that support the detail of landscape projects. Don’t think that landscape is just tree and plant selection either; most landscape designers are involved in site modeling, level sculpting, and the overall aesthetics and performance of a scheme. For large infrastructure projects, the scale of forestry, wildlife, or water management can be epic. The platforms still leave a lot to be desired, but more landscape architects are able to coordinate their information with the rest of the construction team.

We should point out that our focus is primarily on Western design and construction practice, especially looking at BIM in the UK, Europe, and North America. However, a huge amount of BIM uptake occurs in Asia-Pacific regions, South America, and Africa. Increasingly, more information is becoming available about BIM implementation in those territories. We hope that the publisher of BIM For Dummies will let us do another edition to keep you updated!