BIM supporters urge barriers to acceptance be addressed

TORONTO — Canada’s latest Building Information Modeling (BIM) survey revealed that almost all survey participants believe BIM is an essential future tool but many still have interoperability problems.

The survey was conducted by the Building Innovation Research Centre at the University of Toronto in collaboration with Residential Construction Council of Ontario (RESCON), Toronto BIM Community and AECO Innovation Lab.

Results of the survey were published Nov. 16. Key findings include:

94 per cent of participants acknowledged that BIM is the future of project information and design practices.
90 per cent of participant organizations have adopted some level of BIM in their current operational workflow, and 80 per cent of the remainder indicated they have plans to implement BIM in the next few years.
88 per cent of the participants shared their BIM files with at least one external organization, with one-third of participants engaging five or more parties.
Nearly half of survey participants encountered interoperability obstacles in their projects, a release stated. Despite the potential of OpenBIM to address this, 43 per cent of participants were not aware of OpenBIM.

Claudia Cozzitorto, chair of the Toronto BIM Community, stated, “The use of innovative BIM-based processes and analyses can bring significant productivity improvements to the architecture, engineering and construction industry. However, steps need to be taken to remove barriers that hinder a broader implementation. This report sheds light on those barriers, which include the need for an industry standard.”

Arash Shahi, CEO of AECO Innovation Lab and research chair of the Toronto BIM Community, added, “While governments and regulators are beginning to recognize the potential of BIM to reduce time and red tape and improve process transparency, Canada remains the only G7 country without a national BIM mandate. Momentum is being driven by the design community and industry organizations such as RESCON, who have been avid supporters of the annual BIM survey.”