Worldwide BIM Overview

The construction sector is one of the oldest sectors of the economy that has played a defining role in the survival of the human race. While it is slow to adopt innovation, the last decade has been marked by an attempt to harness the true potential of increased computing power and information technology products, to make the ground-breaking shift from its traditional Computer Aided Design/Drafting (CADD) approach to an information rich model-based approach. More and more constituents of the industry are shifting towards Building Information Modelling (BIM) that provides such a model-centric way of working. BIM has the potential to positively shift the focus of the industry towards the much needed value-adding tasks, but its holistic implementation is still a challenging task. The BIM process requires that all the industry participants come on board and join hands for effective information management throughout the asset lifecycle and this shift requires an overhaul of the existing (fragmented) practices followed by the individual organizations in their particular sub-domain. The industry as a whole has come to realize that adoption of BIM is crucial for the built environment sector globally as it endeavors to overcome the challenges of environmental sustainability, cost overrun, time delays, and poor quality that are faced by the industry today. This realization is forcing the construction industry to undergo a transformational change in the way work is performed, processed and managed. Although BIM has been identified as an effective solution, its implementation in several parts of the world remains low. The industry requires a wellcrafted and well-documented path to increase the productivity, performance, and efficiency via the use of BIM. This chapter aims to do this by reporting the global best practices, standards, BIM implementation frameworks, manuals and policies from different countries. Through this, the authors attempt to unfold the status of BIM research, education and industry implementation in major developed and developing markets around the world. At the same time, the chapter also lays out the BIM adoption journey for these countries to allow the readers to understand how BIM implementation takes place over time at the sector level. While the benefits of BIM, are evident in the past research, these benefits alone may not be sufficient to convince stakeholders and encourage adoption. An extensive study of the successful BIM cases from across the world, the problems faced and lessons learned are reported in this chapter to allow the readers to develop a deeper understanding of the implementation process and encourage adoption

Keywords: BIM Research, BIM Implementation, BIM Education, BIM Adoption.