tions. If you know at the beginning of the job that I’m handing this over to the contractor and I’m handing it over to the owner, you know that there are certain aspects that have to be in alignment with their expectations of how they’re going to use it.” Liability concerns also continue to stand in the way. “One of the challenges is the transparency issue between designers and builders,” said a roundtable participant from a major general contractor firm. “Whenever we go into the modeling component, it’s, ‘Here’s our model, and your assets, and you are liable for anything that’s wrong in the model that we might have messed up.’ Which is fine. We’ll take on that risk.” Removing the roadblocks Companies often focus on the technology before a comprehensive project information management strategy has been developed. By de- veloping the strategy first, companies identify what information needs to be accessed and shared, along with how it needs to be accessed. Not all information needs to be shared. This provides an opportunity to eliminate outdated workflows and organize information that is more accessible and useful for the organization. Technology and automation do play a key role. Although some sug- gest that having everyone use the same platform and same set of tools will resolve issues, it may not be practical. Integration of applications does not necessarily require all project stakeholders to use the same centralized system. There are industry initiatives to develop standards and Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) with the main goal of identifying workflow pain points and automating the flow of informa - tion between software applications. This strategy enables teams to use the applications that are best suited for their work while automating the sharing of common information. However, incorporating best practices for sharing BIM information starts with talking to each other.
Participation in the BIM process requires access to information. Infor- mation that is housed in software applications that require a license to access may be an issue. “As the industry moves into more user-type licensing, assigned licens- ing, or cloud-based licensing, it becomes more problematic because companies are having to purchase licenses in order to collaborate with the system that we use,” said a roundtable participant from a leading architecture and engineering firm. In addition to licensing, access related to security also remains a barrier. “We often must go through our IT group or some sort of security pro - tocols to make sure that everybody has the right access,” explained another roundtable participant. “As project teams change throughout the longer projects, we have to update that access. It is constantly changing and it’s hard to keep up with it. When we are talking about real-time collaboration with people outside of our company, it gets a lot more complicated.” Sharing model data outside the organization Many of the issues related to sharing model data are related to par- ticipation and sharing with stakeholders outside the four walls of an organization. This is where the “WHY” and “WHEN” components of sharing model data may come into play. Our roundtable panel uncov- ered obstacles related to expectation-setting around how the model data will be used. Determining what model information is needed, by who, and why, is key. “When we look back at how BIM has evolved, 3D really helped us start to visualize spaces and visualize volumes, and that helped us improve our deliverables,” said a roundtable participant from an archi- tecture firm. “And then we start to load up on more content and data to make our production quicker, easier, faster, and more accurate. But at the same time, we have a contractor and owner running alongside, looking at our model, going, ‘Hey, that's valuable information. Can we look at that? Can we have that? Can we use that?’ And now we find ourselves handing over the model, which at one time was just basically our production tool.” He also explained that setting expectations up front on how the model information will be used is key. “It is not only trust, but also expecta-
PEG LANDRY is content marketing strategist at Newforma, the leading provider of project information management (PIM) software for architects, engineers, contractors, and owners worldwide.
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May 2023
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