Who gets the highest benefit from BIM?

Who gets the highest benefits from BIM in a project?

Owner ?
Consultant / Designer ?
Contractor ?
Facilities Manager ?

Well, I do not want to go into the details of BIM Benefits and try to calculate who gets the most of it. Instead I will just look at the Middle East Market and compare the BIM usage by company type.  The statistics are taken from Middle East BIM Report 2011 by Building Smart Middle East - North Africa - India.

As you see the highest BIM Usage rates belongs to  Governments, Developers (they are basically acting as owners) and Facilities Managers.

 Who is the winner? Owners or Facilities Managers?

According to the statistics, it should be Facilities Managers with 44% but I do not feel comfortable saying it.

I have been in BIM business for the last 8 years but the number of Facility Managers that I met using BIM is less then the fingers you have in one hand. I believe the number of Facility Managers attending the survey was very limited so it did not reflect a correct result.

However in the Middle East the main driver of BIM is Owners by mandating it in their projects. Mandating BIM usage in a projects might seem like increasing the project cost but when you compare it to the benefits you will receive you notice that BIM cost is almost nothing.

Chuck Eastman's BIM Handbook summarizes the usage of BIM by Owners as following:
"

• Increase building performance through BIM-based energy and lighting design and analysis to improve overall building performance
• Reduce the final risk associated with the project using the BIM model to obtain earlier and more reliable cost estimates and improved collaboration of the project team
• Shorten project schedule from the approval to completion by using building models to cooordinate and prefabricate design with reduced field labor
• Obtain reliable and accurate cost estimates through automatic quantity takeoff from th building model, providing feedback earlier in a project when decisions will have the greatest impact
• Assure program compliance through ongoing analysis of the building model against owner and local code requirements
•  Optimize facility management and maintenance by exporting relevant as-built building and equipment information to start the systems that will be used over the lifecycle of the facility

"

PS: Apologies for neglecting the blog lately. I have been quite busy and since I ran out of funny topics it's taking me longer to prepare the posts:(

Diyane Koseoglu
www.bimes.com