Why one shouldn't believe in BIM maturity levels

Why one shouldn't believe in BIM maturity levels

One of the holy cows of BIM theory is the notion of maturity levels. Inspired by them, I suggest that there are also car driving maturity levels:

1.  Sitting in the driver's seat in a stationary car with the engine turned off, not touching anything 
2.  Sitting in the driver's seat in a stationary car and operating the windshield wipers
3.  Driving a car in a straight line only 
4.  Driving a car safely under any circumstances 
5.  Driving a car in a way beneficial to society and the economy 

Ludicrous? Well, no less than some of the BIM maturity levels that are currently been taken for granted. 

On a more serious note, I'm not sure what to make of these levels. The appeal of levels and categorization in general is understandable. The problem with categories is that they should be meaningful, that they should make the world easier to describe in a truthful and reliable manner - not develop arbitrary, possibly distorting filters for reality. 

Do BIM maturity levels represent stages in the development of BIM skills and knowledge, similarly to the capability maturity model, where maturity refers to the degree of formalization and optimization in the processes of an organization, from ad hoc or even chaotic to repeatable and efficient? 

I don't think that the adoption of BIM is a similar progression. One doesn't have to start from 2D CAD before moving on to nD BIM. The setup of the BIM maturity levels actually reveals the limitations of the mainstream approach to BIM deployment, including fixations on analogue practices like the production of 2D drawings and the gathering of information around these drawings, which are actually harmful to understanding BIM, as they sidetrack learners to outdated means and workflows. 

BIM maturity levels make too much of the difference between 2D and 3D representations, as if 2D building drawings do not convey 3D information or as if one could make 2D models in BIM. That some of the views of a model are 2D projections should not matter, in the same way that it does not matter that other views are tables. I won't go any further into dimensions in BIM; that chapter has been closed for me with a recent paper in Automation in Construction (Dimensionality in BIM: Why BIM cannot have more than four dimensions? doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.autcon.2020.103153).

What I miss is other indications of maturity and progress, such as the correct use of symbols, properties, parameters etc, the completeness and consistency of models and other syntactic, semantic and pragmatic measures. Surely these are the most significant for the successful use of BIM. The only positive aspect of BIM maturity levels is that they emphasize the significance of a shared, central model - and then spoil it by suggesting that one can do BIM without one.