Partnering, BIM and all that stuff

In his blog, Partnering, is it working?, Derek Mynott suggests that in a commercial world it will always be the lowest price that wins and that partnering and collaboration isn’t working in construction. He goes on to say everyone is looking after their own business interests and some big barriers are going to have to be broken down to make true partnering a reality. His conclusion is that there will be that cultural change once Building Information Models (BIM) comes into its own.

It is not that BIM is the catalyst to this cultural change. There is more going on.

There is a need to drive down the cost of managing and processing the vast amounts of information that the construction and ongoing maintenance of a building requires. The catalyst for change has been the financial cut backs and lack of funding for construction projects. We are going to have to do the same with a lot fewer resources so, after a fairly lengthy period when commercial pressures have not been so great, the industry has to find a better way to work. In recent years partnering/collaboration was a ‘nice-to-have’ but now it is going to be essential for survival and growth. Companies and organisations that embrace true collaboration, and find ways to remove some of the barriers, will be the ones that come out of the current financial situation, stronger and better.

The technologies that support BIM, and the ability to share structured information other than PDFs, documents and spreadsheets, have been around for some time. As the construction industry came out of the last recession in the early 90s it was the same need to drive down the cost of managing information that led to the formation of CITE (Construction Industry Trading Electronically) which is now part of BuildingSMART UK, the ‘custodians’ of BIM. In the case of CITE the standard that allowed the exchange of Bills of Quantities, for example, was a  ‘closed standard’, only CITE members could easily get a copy and think about implementing it. All that has changed. We now work in a world of ‘open standards’ and the CITE standards, like the standards that support BIM, are also open. UN/CEFACT has published an ‘open’ eTendering standard that supports the exchange of Bills of Quantities.

We also now have the ability to connect and engage through the use of Social Media and a whole raft of tools for collaboration are available to us. The technology is here, now.

If you want to stay in business and grow, then collaboration has to be on the agenda and you are going to have to accept that ‘giving away’ or sharing information is not that much of a problem. You will gain a lot more than you lose if you share. Construction companies and professionals have to ask themselves are they in the business of managing information or should they be focusing on adding value to, and interpreting information used in the construction process?

Cultural change may happen when BIM comes into its own but it is when the construction industry recognises the true value of collaboration and sharing that cultural change will happen.