At the Build Smart conference in Abu Dhabi last November (featured in issue 12), the capacity audience confirmed market interest in BIM. It also illustrated the huge disparity in understanding of what BIM actually means and highlighted the lack of consistent and reliable information on the subject.
One of the major conclusions reached by buildingSMART ME was summarised by Communications Director David Jellings, who informed BIM Journal:
‘When the market realises the power of BIM, collaboration and interoperability, there will be a massive demand for resources. The biggest worry we have at buildingSMART ME is that there will not be enough skilled operatives to meet demand in the medium term, if we do not address this now.'
He continued:
‘Unless we are able to ‘up-skill’ our professionals, Middle East construction faces the real prospect of being unable to capitalise on construction opportunities, because the skills needed to action the solution are not available.’
Why is there a problem?
BIM Journal has consistently reported a lack of understanding of BIM – both of the process and the technology. There is an inherent belief in construction that new technology tools can simply be integrated into existing processes. Of course, with many applications this is true – a better or faster version of existing software can easily be adopted with minimum training.
In fact, BIM is a process supported by suitable technology – a process first. This does not sit well in business as process change can mean upheaval.
The idea that new tools can simply be integrated into existing processes, has led to possibly the biggest problem of BIM implementation. The industry is used to the premise that technology can be enhanced simply by using the best tools available. This in turn leads to the assumption that, in the case of BIM, simply adopting the latest ‘tool’ will facilitate the best outcome.
Given that market demand leads supply, vendors, consultants, service providers and academics have largely ‘fallen in line’ with this notion. This is totally understandable as the purpose of business is to provide a solution that the market wants. Put simply, there has been no commercial reason to change.
Who is responsible for providing these BIM related skills?
1. The industry as a whole
Trade associations perform an excellent role in both representing and advancing standards and skills. However, generally, quite rightly, this is confined to the discipline they represent.
Given that BIM is a cross discipline process, identifying ‘ownership’ of the process tends to be a problem. Consequently, trade associations can only have limited input.
2. Technology vendors
BIM is a collaborative process and communication between stakeholders and their individual technology solution is core to its success.
Some vendors have their own solution to the requirements of BIM implementation, usually involving nominated partners or complementary products within their own portfolio. This can cause some conflict of interest with the ‘Open BIM’ approach (that is, the process of enabling seamless data transfer to other systems).
It is totally understandable from a commercial point of view, why vendors promote their own integration process. It is also workable if everyone involved in the project adopts the same solution. However, in large projects this is rarely the case, so the process of how to integrate different technologies (rather than how to use them), becomes the main issue.
Vendor specific solutions to BIM implementation can have great value. The major drawback is when individual organisations within a project use different vendor tools to deliver their own solution.
Whilst there is no such conflict of interest with vendors who supply only discipline specific products (Open BIM having obvious benefits to their process), different approaches of the two ‘camps’ can cause confusion in the market.
3. Academia
Academic programmes are invariably driven by industry demand. Their focus therefore is how to employ the common tools to produce the discipline specific solution. Again, this is totally understandable.
This is the critical area in many respects since it is easier to mould new minds than to change established thinking. The future of construction is in the hands of today’s students and a way must be found of addressing the problem at its bedrock.
In conclusion – the real question
Given that there is a growing demand for integrated BIM expertise, combined with little incentive to promote the need for BIM specific skills, who will take responsibility for making sure that these skills are available? Article 2 of this issue ‘Future Proofing the Skills Requirement’ proposes solutions to this most urgent of problems.
