When America’s construction sector comes roaring back—as it inevitably will—it will be markedly different on several fronts than it was when the tailspin started in 2008. For one, there will be fewer players, with companies consolidating or throwing in the towel altogether. Fewer seasoned construction employees will be available, given the tens of thousands of jobs lost in that sector; many of those have moved on to new careers. And, of course, the revival will take place on a whole new financial plane as the construction credit markets have changed.

But a force potentially more powerful than any of those has been undeterred by the slowdown. And it’s reshaping the construction industry as it’s been known for generations: Technological advances in building information modeling have brought the entire sector out of a relative slumber when compared to other industries.

Where is that technology taking us? “To the future,” says James L. Salmon, president of Collaborative Construction in Cincinnati. “What this is doing to physical buildings and facilities is what the Internet did for information.”

BIM is an umbrella term for software programs that produce three-dimensional drawings rich in detail, accessible to everyone from initial design phase to the building’s end-user, and capable of being updated in real time for everyone involved as changes occur throughout the design-build process.

“It really gives us the technological ability to bring the entire team together at the beginning of a project, and do what manufacturing has been doing for years—plan things on the screen,” said Salmon, a self-described “recovering construction lawyer.” “Boeing doesn’t build jet planes and crash them in tests anymore; they found that it was very expensive.” Instead, they invested billions to develop software so they could “fly” a digital plane first. “More and more in the construction industry, those tools being brought to bear on the process,” Salmon said. “Now we’re building the building on the screen before we stick a shovel in the ground.”

The implications of that, say construction professionals, are profound. Consider:

• Collaboration is increasing as architects and designers, contractors and subcontractors, suppliers, fabricators and building owners begin working together on a project in its entirety, rather than through their respective silos at different points in the process.

• Costs are coming down as the 3-D capabilities eliminate virtually all the design and placement problems that don’t readily reveal themselves in blueprints and other two-dimensional plans, and aren’t uncovered until after construction has begun.

• Contractors embracing the technology are realizing a competitive advantage in the bidding process, since BIM wrings more of the financial risk out of a project.

• Long-term costs of building operation and maintenance will be lower, in part because their mechanical systems will have been put through their paces in a virtual world before being set into steel and concrete.

• And the construction-design work force itself is being reshaped. With huge inefficiencies in the process eliminated, fewer people will be needed to update documents, conduct on-the-spot redesign around conflicts that arise, or tear out and rework structural assemblies at the job site. But more people will be needed to operate the powerful computer programs used to build each model.

And the impact doesn’t stop there. The collaborative and accountability aspects of BIM and integrated project delivery approaches will, for example, reduce the workload of lawyers pursuing claims and counterclaims among those involved in a project. And if your retirement fund is heavy on the stock of companies that make blueprint paper, you might want to rethink that investment strategy. BIM truly is, in the vernacular of economists and social scientists, a disruptive technology.

Complex Challenges

In most cases, people outside the design-construction loop have little understanding of the incredible complexities involved in even relatively small-scale construction. From conceptual design through architect, general contractor, subcontractor, materials suppliers and more, dozens of stakeholders can be involved in a project—and not always sharing the same interests.

Eric Hall, a key driver of BIM implementation for J.E. Dunn Construction, said that longstanding tension may finally yield to these new methods and processes.

“This technology facilitates collaboration,” Hall said. “Architects and contractors sometimes can have different goals for a project.” Using BIM as a tool to visually demonstrate the challenge of an architectural concept, the general contractor and the architect have a new framework for teamwork on solutions, he said, a nd “this breaks down barriers.”

Barriers, of course, being another way to describe hidden costs. When a contractor has to stop work to make a change because of unforeseen conditions or design-change issues, Hall noted, there’s an element of risk involved, and it has been factored into the original project bids by contractors.

Risk, he said, “correlates to the level of detail in your drawings. This cuts the risk costs, because the best way to affect the cost of a project is in its design.”

Just as important, the extraordinary detail in these 3-D models produces new efficiencies in work planning and job-site assignments, he said. “This will tell you, yeah, you can do that particular part of the job, but it’s going to require 15 guys in an 8-foot-by-8-foot space, and that just won’t work,” Hall said.

Jason Bishop of Universal Construction, said one of BIM’s real strengths was the accountability it brings to the process.

“When people aren’t coming to the table with information, it’s easy to document that’s what’s happening,” Bishop said. “So if you get to a point where you have to say, ‘Look, this issue is a result of your failure to come on board and you’re going to have to make the necessary adjustments,’ it helps us document that.”

For specialty and subcontractors as well, BIM is making an impact. Tim Moormeier, president of mechanical contractor U.S. Engineering, said the company had realized sharp gains in productivity and efficiency by embracing that technology. But he noted, the model generated by those programs is only as good as the data input.

“If your model doesn’t have up-to-date information from a fabricator, there’s the potential for thousands of collisions” at the job site, Moormeier said. “Our work has to be coordinated very, very accurately, and if it’s not exactly right, we have big problems.

“I have seen circumstances where models can get significantly off, for example, on a high-rise,” Moormeier said. “It may be a surprise to most people to learn that as you go from the first floor of a building to the 10th, that 10th-floor column isn’t exactly over where the one was on the first floor, it’s an inch or two left or right. But that’s a big difference to us when placing a 4-inch pipe in a 6-inch wall. In the field, things don’t get installed exactly how you’d like, and if you’re off by an inch or two, it matters a lot.”

Detailed drawings allow more work to be fabricated in-house, under controlled conditions, he noted, improving efficiencies on the job site and holding down costs. While that may contribute to a smaller job-site work force, Moormeier noted that the work wasn’t going away; it’s being shifted to more people in digital construction, meaning some new skills will have to be brought to contracting companies.

The Onus of Owners

The next big advance in BIM development will involve educating investors and building owners about the technology. Because of the vast amount of detail that must go into a model, right down to maintenance schedules for individual pieces of HVAC or windows, the technology promises to significantly lower operating and maintenance costs for buildings. But some investors, especially in this economy, recoil at the price tag. BIM is not cheap because it requires so much front-loading to do it right.

“They don’t see it as an advantage—yet,” said Dunn’s Eric Hall. “But knowing how much your operating costs will be for energy is a huge long-term consideration for owners,” he said.

That’s just one benefit derived from technology not created for that purpose.

“This was created as a design tool, but its real value is just being realized by the industry,” Hall said, “It’s a terrific project management tool because of the level of detail required by the software to justify the inputs of the designer and the contractor.” In the end, Hall said, BIM is all about building performance over the lifetime of a structure, not just initial construction costs. With it, he said, “we’ve seen great improvements in productivity and fewer field conflicts, which translate to improved schedules, savings and a better end product for the owner.”

Return to Ingram's November 2010