Trouble with BIM

Trouble with BIM

The optimist would say that support for BIM is consolidating; the pessimist that it's dwindling. There is still a substantial push for BIM but at the same time there are more critical voices - and they're not all Luddites. In my own view, there is a growing number of organizations that is increasingly reluctant to invest in BIM. If there's a hard core of organizations pushing BIM, there's also a periphery that if not turning against BIM, is certainly refusing to adopt and adapt to it. In between there are organizations that reluctantly follow and partially implement BIM.

Critics (e.g. https://doi.org/10.1080/09613218.2017.1293940) stress that the problems are not only practical, such as the cost and complexity of the implementation, but also operational, due to the imposition of a design representation onto activities and processes. They are concerned with the possibility of a digital divide that may disenfranchise smaller firms and create a two-tier marker with benefits only for the most privileged and powerful, who can afford the luxury of being BIM compliant. This, they argue, may reduce the potential of change through BIM.
While I largely agree with the criticism, I fear it suffers from a couple of fallacies. Firstly, it expects technology to bring on change in society rather than technology to meet emerging or latent demand in society. BIM does not bring change; at best it enables change and helps channel it in specific ways. One shouldn't put the cart before the horse and expect the horse to understand how it should push.
Secondly, it equates the technology with its current implementation. The way BIM is deployed today is depressingly limited. The software is underwhelmingly powerful and laden with analogue remnants, while users tend to do as little as possible rather than focusing on returns from a serious investment. We even talk of levels in BIM deployment and maturity but some of these levels do not make sense because they go against the fundamental requirements of the technology (and methodology, I hasten to add to pacify the believers).
If we place this criticism on the above scheme, it becomes obvious that the periphery simply doesn't recognize the necessity of a change to which BIM could contribute, so they don't adopt it. They can also be critical of the way it is implemented and hence unwilling to join in. In any case, they don't care enough, in the same way that not everyone cares about social media and hence doesn't spend endless hours setting up multiple profiles and maintaining their status and history.
This suggests that BIM is being pushed in a direction that doesn't relate to the change required in AECO and the built environment. That such a change is urgently needed is unquestionable but one cannot talk of culture change for implementing BIM; it's the other way around: ongoing culture change should promote BIM.
As for the practical and operational side, if the change was evident and BIM fitted the bill, people would have invested heavily in it. Just compare to the huge investment we have made as societies, organizations and individuals in mobile information processing. What started as mobile telephony was soon recognized for what it could offer and adopted widely and fervently. The adaptation it brought on is simply spectacular. Look around you wherever you may happen to be: people grab every opportunity to do something with their smartphones. Would they do the same for BIM?