To introduce our latest infographic, we have asked Martin Brown, an improvement advocate and consultant for the built environment at Fairsnape, to give us a bit of an overview on BIM and how he sees it working within the built environment. Many of our readers might already know of Martin, but for those who don’t, he is a co-founder of be2camp, tweets as @fairsnape and blogs at fairsnape.wordpress.com. Martin is also a Constructing Excellence Collaborative Working Champion and regular contributor to the Guardian Sustainability Business, Built Environment Hub.
What is BIM?
There are many definitions of BIM, but unfortunately many are wrapped in technical, project management or design terminology. We can understand and describe BIM as “the total and virtual modelling of all aspects of a project prior to construction, during construction and in use.” A BIM would typically model all data relating to, for eg, design scenarios, costings, build ability and clash detection, scheduling and procurement, sustainability impact, life cycle and facilities management factors as well as in use predictions. Championed by the Government, milestones are set for achieving increasingly mature levels of BIM. The first being level 2 by 2016.
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