Friday, December 2, 2011

BIM’s Seven deadly sins (IJAC)

Blog entry by: Dominik Holzer

After nearly a decade since BIM started on its path to transform the building industry, I some thoughts to expose seven prevailing problems that emerged as part of its industry wide uptake. My paper about these sins was published in the ‘International Journal of architectural Computing (IJAC)’, where I provide the reader with a reality check between an idealistic view on BIM and the way it is currently applied in daily use.
In order to reflect on the issues at hand, I drew from three years of doctoral research in multidisciplinary design collaboration, followed by more than two years experience as Design Technology director in a large scale architecture practice. In addition to the above, my current role as the chair of the BIM and IPD Steering Group of the Australian Institute of Architects and Consult Australia exposed me to a broad range of cultural implications of BIM. The findings presented in the IJAC paper illustrate that, despite major advances in the development of BIM, there are predominantly cultural roadblocks to its implementation in practice.

My personal take on the seven sins as presented in the paper is a follows:

  1. Technocentricity – focus on technology while neglecting culture
  2. Ambiguity – Ill defined BIM deliverables and associated fees
  3. Elision - Omitting critical thought in discourse
  4. Hypocrisy – The IPD excuse
  5. Delusion – Asking for 2D while demanding 3D++ BIM
  6. Diffidence – Denying the need for process change
  7. Monodisciplinarity – Advancing design in professional silos
 A link to the full paper can be found via the publishers’ website

A free online version can be found here:

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