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Turk, Žiga (2016). Ten Questions Concerning Building Information Modelling, Building and
Environment, Elsevier, doi:10.1016/j.buildenv.2016.08.001
Ten Questions Concerning Building Information Modelling
Žiga Turk,
University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Civil and Geodetic Engineering, Jamova 2, 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia
ziga.turk@fgg.uni-lj.si
Abstract: Building information modelling (BIM) has been a dominant topic in information technology
in construction research since this memorable acronym replaced the boring “product modelling in
construction” and the academic “conceptual modelling of buildings”. The ideal of having a complete,
coherent, true digital representation of buildings has become a goal of scientific research, software
development and industrial application. In this paper, the author asks and answers ten key questions
about BIM, including what it is, how it will develop, how real are the promises and fears of BIM and
what is its impact. The arguments in the answers are based on an understanding of BIM that
considers BIM in the frame of structure-function-behavior paradigm. As a structure, BIM is a database
with many remaining database challenges. The function of BIM is building information management.
Building information was managed before the invention of digital computers and is managed today
with computers. The goal is efficient support of business processes, such as with database-
management systems. BIM behaves as a socio-technical system; it changes institutions, businesses,
business models, education, workplaces and careers and is also changed by the environment in which
it operates. Game theory and institutional theory provide a good framework to study its adoption.
The most important contribution of BIM is not that it is a tool of automation or integration but a tool
of further specialization. Specialization is a key to the division of labor, which results in using more
knowledge, in higher productivity and in greater creativity.
Keywords: building information modelling, BIM, building information management, automation in
construction, computer integrated construction.
1 Introduction
Humans do many things without planning or
thinking, such as when someone throws us a pen
we asked for, we catch it without consciously
calculating the curve-of-flight and planning the
catch. However, when humans do something
rationally, we first imagine doing it. We act it out
in our heads before actually taking action. When
hanging a painting on a wall, for example, we
imagine where it should hang, how it should be
aligned with existing paintings, where we need
to drive the nail into the wall, considering the
location of the hanger and the offset to the edge
of the frame.
As Aristotle put it [
1
] “First, have a definite, clear
practical ideal; a goal, an objective. Second, have
the necessary means to achieve your ends;
wisdom, money, materials, and methods. Third,
adjust all your means to that end.” In a similar
fashion, Shakespeare [
2
] described the process
of construction: “When we mean to build, We
first survey the plot, then draw the model; And
when we see the figure of the house, Then must
we rate the cost of the erection; Which if we find
2
outweighs ability, What do we then but draw
anew the model, In fewer offices, or at last
desist To build at all?”
Information models of buildings have been
represented as drawings since paper became
inexpensive and available for tasks such as
building design. As the Shakespeare citation
demonstrates, drawing was called modelling
well before modelling is replacing drawing.
Paper enabled fairly reliable communication
among the designers of buildings and bridged
distances in time, space and profession [
3
].
The latter is particularly important because it
enabled specialization of professions. Earlier,
master builders—with all the relevant general
knowledge and all the specific plans – were, due
to the lack of communication, mostly confined
to themselves. Later they could be replaced by
teams of specialists. Teams could collaborate
because paper-based communication offered a
reliable way to communicate [
4
]. They were able
to share an information model of a building. On
one hand, this enabled the specialization in the
professions designing, constructing and
managing buildings. It enabled the specialization
of businesses involved with these processes.
However, it also resulted in fragmentation and
disintegration of professions, knowledge,
processes and businesses. The process
accelerated with the introduction of digital
technology. A research topic called computer-
integrated construction [
5
,
6
,
7
] set out to
develop solutions that would counter the
fragmentational effect of digital technology.
The main topic in computer-integrated
construction research was the development of
methods to describe buildings using a common
language and methods to collaborate in that
language. In the late 1980s, the solution was
called “Conceptual Modelling of Buildings” [
8
].
Later, the community borrowed the term
“Product Modelling” [
9
], which was used in
mechanical engineering to describe design and
manufacturing information about future
products [
10
,
11
,
12
]. The ISO-STEP standard first
appeared in mechanical engineering [
13
]. There
were several attempts to use it in construction
[
14
,
15
] but without much direct practical impact
on the industry.
In the meantime, the construction software
industry was creating various tools to support
engineering activities during designing and
planning. Most of that software was concerned
with the analysis and simulation required by
various specialists. They operated on
mechanical, physical or mathematical models of
phenomena, such as finite element models of
beams, energy models of walls, and process
models of work. These models became
increasingly accurate, and the simulations, due
to the increasing speed of computers, became
more reliable.
Other software was concerned with replacing
paper-and-ink drawing boards, and drawing
software evolved. The key evolution was in the
elements that the drafter could place (draw) on
the canvas (drawing). The simplest drawing
elements are pixels, followed by lines and other
2D geometric shapes, followed by 3D geometric
objects. In some fields—for example for
organizational diagrams, software engineering
and industrial process maps—2D geometry was
replaced by symbols that stand for something in
the problem domain – such as sectors and their
bosses, machines on the assembly lines, their
inputs and outputs, or steps in a computer
algorithm.
Finally, 3D CAD software evolved from allowing
the modelers to place 3D geometric objects into
3D model space, to placing engineering or
architectural elements into the digital
representation of the landscape. In a geometric
CAD system, it was the human who had to
interpret, for example, a cylinder as a structural
column. In BIM software, this is explicitly stated
in the resulting database. The software industry
began to transition from CAD to BIM.
While the acronym BIM is attributed to Jerry
Lassarin [
16
], the concept was a result of a long
series of research under the topic of conceptual
modelling of buildings and product modelling of
buildings since the 1970s [
17
,
18
].
3
Conceptual modelling, product modelling and
BIM have traditionally been subject more to
research push than industry pull [
19
]. The first
attempts to standardize data structures needed
to describe the built environment came from the
top-down within ISO-STEP, followed by a more
bottom-up approach in the International Alliance
of Interoperability (IAI) with Industry Foundation
Classes (IFC) [
20
,
21
].
In summary, designers of buildings have always
used information models of buildings. In fact,
the design process was all about information
modelling of buildings. With information
technology, the information models first became
digital and have since become increasingly well
structured. CAD evolved naturally from 2D
geometry via 3D geometry towards 3D
professional objects with the 4th dimension
added for time. The amount of data that we
have on buildings is growing exponentially, much
like Moore’s law and IT capacity allow.
Specialized engineering software (such as finite
elements software) was based on engineering
objects—not lines or pixels—from the very
beginning.
2 Ten questions
BIM is an exhaustive research topic in the field of
construction informatics [
22
] or computing in
building engineering. Selecting ten questions is
not easy. The author chose questions that may
generally be overlooked in the ongoing quest for
“better” models and more “efficient”
collaboration. The questions can be grouped into
three categories:
1. What BIM is and what are its future
directions?
2. What are the fears and promises related
to it?
3. How it is affecting selected areas related
to construction?
The author is aware that each of these questions
deserves a separate in-depth study and hopes
they would follow and complement the problem
solving type of research that dominates the BIM
research community.
2.1 What is BIM?
The acronym stands both for building
information modelling (the process) and building
information model (the artefact), and the
attention of the research community and
software developers alternates between the
two. Initially, the challenge was the
representation of buildings. As the
representation matured, the attention shifted
towards the processes in which these
representations can be created, developed and
used.
BIM can also stand for building information
management—the control of the processes in
which models are built and used [
23
]—and for
building information marketing [
24
]. The latter is
a cynical observation of the exploitation of the
acronym, both in the industry and in the
academia..
BIM initially represented the new, structured
ways to represent buildings that went beyond
lines and “implicit meaning” towards objects and
“explicit meaning”. The issue of meaning will be
revisited in Section 2.6.
One could argue that building information
modelling—the process of creating information
about (future) buildings—has existed for
centuries. This is even acknowledged in the BIM
maturity levels [
25
,
26
], where BIM level 0
corresponds to information modelling of
buildings using paper drawings, BIM level 1 to 2D
and 3D CAD and only BIM level 2 and above to
object-oriented (see Section 2.2.1)
representations of buildings and corresponding
processes.
The US National Building Information Modeling
Standard defines BIM as “A digital
representation of physical and functional
characteristics of a facility… and a shared
knowledge resource for information about a
facility forming a reliable basis for decisions
during its life-cycle; defined as existing from
earliest conception to demolition”[
27
]. In this
definition, the M clearly stands for model. The
definition is broad, and many legacy
4
technologies and techniques could fit into the
definition.
Some define BIM in broader terms—as an
approach to engineering collaboration rather
than specific technical solutions [
28
]: “Building
information modeling (BIM) refers to a
combination or a set of technologies and
organizational solutions that are expected to
increase inter-organizational and disciplinary
collaboration in the construction industry and to
improve the productivity and quality of the
design, construction, and maintenance of
buildings.”
The two ways of defining BIM can be reconciled
using an approach engineers and architects have
been using for a long time. When describing
things, they often resort to a paradigm known as
structure-function-behavior [
29
,
30
]. Using this
paradigm, the definition of BIM has three facets:
structural, functional and behavioral.
1. Structural defines how it is organized,
what parts it has, and how they work
together.
2. Functional describes how it can be
made useful.
3. Behavior describes how it responds to
its environment.
2.1.1 Structure of BIM
Structurally, BIM is a structured representation
of a building, for example, an object-oriented
representation of a building. The phrase “object-
oriented” should be understood as in object-
oriented analysis, design and programming. In
the object-oriented paradigm, the problem
domain is seen as a number of objects. The
objects are representations of real world items
(1) that have an identity, (2) that we know
something about and (3) that we can do
something to. They may belong to classes and
include or relate to other objects.
In BIM, we know more about real world objects
than their geometry. The more we know the
better. We should be able to do more to the
objects then move them around. For example,
we should be able to put a load on them and see
what happens or let the sun shine on a building
and see how it heats up. This is because objects
include behavior.
Ideally, the structure of BIM would be that of an
object-oriented database. The requirements of a
database in general include [
31
] sharing data in
multiuser system, support for multiple views of
data, controlled data redundancy, enforced
integrity, restricted unauthorized access, data
independence, transaction processing, backup
and recovery. Interestingly, this is in fact a
superset of early requirements for product
models of buildings [
32
].
2.1.2 Function of BIM
Functionally, BIM is a communication backbone
and shared source and destination of
information required by and created by the
individuals and processes that participate in
building processes that enables “gains in saving
in cost and time, much greater accuracy in
estimation, and the avoidance of error,
alterations and rework due to information loss
[
33
]. Ideally, all information about a building
during its entire life cycle would be created in a
BIM process and stored in a BIM database. The
function of BIM in engineering and architectural
processes is the same as the function of
management information systems (MIS) for
management processes. Management
information systems have been traditionally
implemented with database management
systems (DBMS). In this sense, the function of
BIM is building information management.
2.1.3 Behavior of BIM
The behavior of BIM is that of a socio-technical
system—a group of interacting, interrelated, or
interdependent elements or parts that function
together as a whole to accomplish a goal, that
has a boundary and, through inputs and outputs,
interacts with the environment [
34
,
35
]. The
parts were addressed in the structural definition,
the goal in the functional. The interaction with
the environment is addressed in this subsection.
There are two contexts in which BIM exhibits
behavior: the context of a specific project and
the broader general industrial and societal
5
context. In a project context, BIM pushes
technological opportunities and changes
business models, organizational patterns and
information processes in which the project is
developed. It encourages centralized
information management, reduces
improvisation, and calls for better organization
of processes. It should respond to varying levels
of IT literacy of project partners and their
achieved technological levels; it should be a
means to an end rather than a goal in itself.
On a general level, BIM encourages changes in
legal processes (BIM as a representation of
designs when interacting with authorities) and
changes in procurement processes (BIM
mandated by the investors) and is causing
restructuring of the industry (vertical design-
build integration so that the benefits of BIM in
the construction phase are reaped by the same
company that made a greater effort due to BIM
in the design stage). The development of BIM
systems responds to business needs, value
proposition [
36
,
37
] and the demand for return
on investment [
38
].
2.2 What are the future directions of
BIM?
The future of BIM is determined by the ongoing
research and software development that has
been summarized in several studies [
39
,
40
,
41
].
The contribution of this section is to look at
these developments through the lens of the
structure-function-behavior of BIM.
2.2.1 Structure – how to make the
database better
The evolution of structure is in the development
of the database, which includes four directions:
1. Better database schema.
2. Better database features.
3. Progress in database coverage - lesser
use of information storage outside of a
database.
4. Development beyond the object-
oriented data model.
Progress in objects and schema. Structurally,
the progress is in objects that are richer (more
attributes and functions) and more complex
(more relations to other objects). This process
will never be complete. It is impossible to
predefine a data structure (define a schema)
that can include, in a structured format, all
information about buildings that at someone
would like to have. There are volumes of
philosophy that argue that this is not possible
[
42
]; therefore, this process will never be
complete. On the other hand, it is likely that in
the near future, the schema will be sufficient for
a particular type of building, such as temporary
buildings made of containers, pneumatic
buildings, prefabricated homes of a certain
manufacturer, family houses of a certain type,
motels of a motel chain that look the same, and
shopping malls.
Improving the database features of BIM, as
standard in databases proper.
Progress is being made in the sharing of
data in a multiuser system as in a true
multiuse database with several users
simultaneously changing the database,
such as in management information
systems. This is approached through BIM
servers [
43
]. The underlying database
has to give up proprietary file containers
and rely on capable, industry-standard
object-oriented, relational or RDF
databases.
Support for multiple views of data is
approached through model views
[
44
,
45
], which are a well-established
concept of BIM used to extract data for
certain disciplines or use cases. In the
traditional database parlance, a view is
usually a concept associated with the
retrieval and presentation of
information; in BIM, views are also used
as the context in which information is
modified.
Controlling data redundancy is related
to the desired feature of BIM that each
piece of information is stored only once.
The problem has various levels of
complexity, from a simple desire that
the width of a door is only stored in one
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location in the database, to making sure
that all doors, if they are the same, are
stored only once, to parametric links
among attributes (a door is as wide as a
window) as well as to links to functional
requirements.
Restricted unauthorized access means
providing access control on various
levels of granularity for who can do
what. Again, we take this for granted in
proper databases. Scenarios in
engineering and architectural design are
more complicated, but the principle is
the same.
Data independence is a concept that
shields applications through which users
change the contents of a database (e.g.,
Revit, ArchiCAD) from changes in the
schema of a database (on a BIM server),
the ways it is organized, and where and
how is it stored. In model-view-
controller terms [
46
], the BIM
community needs to investigate the
decoupling of the “controller” (Revit,
ArchiCAD) from a “model” (BIM server).
It will also need to address the problem
of opening a model created with an old
version of a modelling tool with a new
version of the modelling tool. If data
independence is achieved, this should
not matter.
Transaction processing is a database
concept that organizes interactions
within a database into unbreakable,
complete groups. In BIM, this approach
is needed when several actors are
working on the same parts of a building
at the same time. Current approaches to
locking parts of the model or checking
worksets in and out perform this task on
a rudimentary scale. Proper transaction
processing simplifies backup, recovery,
and going back in time, which is a
feature that should replace the creation
of daily copies of the model.
Progress in database coverage. The third
direction is in the reduction of stores that are
not in a database, e.g., information about a
building that is not in the model file. To what
extent this is desirable will be discussed later. In
database parlance, this too would be about
reducing redundancy.
Progress beyond object-oriented models.
Object-oriented structuring of information is not
the only way to represent building information.
Large swaths of information can be represented
using relational models (e.g., COBIE). In the
future, computers will continue to become
faster. This will allow for representations that
are less efficient than object-oriented models
and that can represent more complex
relationships, such as RDF, OWL, predicate logic
and other approaches from artificial intelligence.
Research on this topic exists but is not practical
for large realistic projects at the current stage of
technology [
47
,
48
].
2.2.2 Function – how to use the database
better
Functionally, BIM has the ambition to expand
the coverage of the building process both in
depth and in breadth. BIM started as a detailed
design-stage technology. Both research and
commercial tools now use information models
from inception to the maintenance of buildings.
The depth will increase in a way in which an
increasing number of vertical applications—
specialized analysis and simulation tools—will
establish two-way communication with the
information model. Standards will continue to
play a role here but are not vital. We will revisit
the issue of standards in Section 2.4.
From a structural and functional perspective BIM
will approach the impossible—a centralized
shared database to represent a building. It will
not be possible to achieve all the attributes of a
good database as described in Section 2.1.
Functionally, it is impossible and impractical for
all building processes to have their information
needs satisfied through such a database.
A likely scenario, like with the structure, is that
BIM will be sufficient to cover practically all tasks
related to a finite, limited type of building and
7
that software vendors will offer an integrated
suite of applications that will perform the
necessary simulations and analysis for that one,
well-defined type of building.
2.2.3 Behavior – how to change the
environment and be changed by it
The industrial environment will shift the
behavior of BIM towards what is considered
practical. Some of those practicalities are
addressed in the following sections.
2.3 Will it ever be possible to describe
all that has to be known about
buildings in BIM?
Based on the answers to previous the questions,
particularly on the topic of the structural
evolution of BIM, the answer is yes!
However, this will be achieved not because of a
belief in technology but because of a belief in
engineers, architects and builders. It was
possible to describe all that anyone had to know
about a building using paper drawings. The proof
that it was all they needed to know is in the
existence of buildings, almost all of which have
successfully been built without the benefit of
BIM. It is an essential feature of engineers (as
opposed to some other professions) that we can
address incomplete information. BIM will remain
incomplete, and this will not be a problem.
The answer is also no. No, it is not possible to
think in advance of every possible question a
person involved with the built environment
might have and expect to find the answer inside
a BIM database. Impossible goals require infinite
effort, both in research and in practice. While
researchers may find impossible effort desirable
because it sustains research opportunities,
practice will be looking for practical solutions
requiring limited effort.
The lesson of this is that there is a limit to how
useful the increasingly complex BIM models are.
The quest for an “ever more complete” model
may be the wrong quest. A likely and still useful
scenario is that building information will
continue to be scattered over a few databases
and several files. For simple, routine buildings, a
single database scenario is easier than for
unusual, complex buildings.
2.4 How important are BIM
standards?
The idealistic holy grail of BIM has been to
create a common language for builders. Not
quite unlike the common language that was lost
in biblical times when God mixed up the
languages of those that were building the Tower
of Babel. Historically, many development
concepts related to BIM occurred in the context
of standardization. The idea in the 1990s and
early 2000s was that the standard for the
description of buildings should be defined, and
the industry should write software that
conforms to it – both in the information
exchange and as a basis for the internal
representation of buildings in software. Some
essential theoretical and developmental work
has been performed in this context [
49
,
50
]. This
is known as top-down standardization: first
something is defined and then it is commercially
implemented.
Much of the IT software industry, however, has
been using bottom-up standardization. There
were several candidates for the language for the
Web, but sometime in the early 1990s, HTML
emerged as the de-facto standard. In a similar
manner, PDF and XDOC emerged as standards
for documents and MPEG for music and video.
Software vendors have created their own ways
of representing buildings. Some allowed for
better or worse import and export into the IFC
standard. However, in principle, they were
aware that they were not competing just on how
fast their modelling engine works, how realistic
the renders are, how useful the schedules are,
and how good their IFC export is. Software
developers are in a competition for which tool
can produce better, richer, and smarter
information models. Their own schema is a key
element in this competition, and they invested
significant effort to create one. They are also in a
competition, who can provide a friendlier
environment for other software developers to
8
write software that would be interoperable with
theirs.
2.4.1 Not very important
This effort of the software industry is not a bad
thing. Proprietary schema are, as a rule, richer.
They are not a compromise. They are not
theoretical; they are practically implemented in
the next version of the software. And not much
harm is being done. The future direction of
interoperability will not go in the direction of
every possible engineering software working
with every other software exchanging data in IFC
or some other standard. It is theoretically
impossible for these exchanges to work
seamlessly both ways [
51
] if the schema are
different. Schema will be different. BIM models
are not as simple as JPEG files where thousands
of programs can open and modify them.
A more likely scenario, which is unfolding, will be
that of illustration and office software. Decades
ago, there was different software for databases,
spreadsheets, documents, and slides. This
software had different vendors. It was not a
committee that resolved the problem of
inserting a spreadsheet into a document but the
fact that Microsoft, Apple and Open Office
created their own suites of software that worked
well within each other’s ecosystem. We are
observing a similar process with engineering
software that is now grouped around the models
of major vendors and accessing the vendor-
specific model through vendor-specific
application interfaces (APIs).
Another breakthrough that is making BIM
standards less important are technologies
around XML. Earlier it was indeed very hard to
write (n-1)2 translators among n different
programs. A neutral, standard schema and
format looked like an elegant solution. However,
in a realistic scenario there is no need for each
software to talk to all others. There is little need,
for example, for a structural engineering
simulation software to exchange information
with building physics simulation software. Both
just need to talk to the model server.
Secondly, XML technology with related open
source libraries makes the task of writing
translators significantly easier. XML technology
trivializes the interoperability on the syntactic
level and, with the ability to encode and process
database structure and semantics, it significantly
eases the mapping of the data structures from
on to another application without a detour via a
standard schema.
2.4.2 Quite important
There are three types of standards that are
important: (1) standards for the definition of
concepts (not standard definitions of building
specific concepts), (2) standards for the
definition of syntax and (3) standards for the
definitions of APIs. These are generic standards
used in service-oriented architectures across
industries. Because writing interfaces, parsers
and translators became much easier over the
last decade, standards for AEC concepts
themselves, i.e., the building elements, are not
as important as thought in the beginning. For
interoperability, proprietary but open is not
much worse that standardized and open. The
proof is in the existence of many interoperable
programs around popular modelers that
exchange information using native file formats
or (more likely) native APIs. For example, over
500 such programs and apps are listed in the
Autodesk APP Store and work with Revit [
52
].
Based on the experiences with service oriented
architectures that ensure the interoperability of
various internet services, the schema of a
building model, or at least the application
interface to a building model, should have the
following features (listed in the order of
importance):
Open. Others should be able to learn the
details of the API and schema. It should
not be a secret.
Machine readable. A machine-readable
schema definition allows software
generators to create interfaces to
databases implementing the schema.
Use standard data and schema
representation language (like XML, XML
9
schema, RDF, OWL) so that generic tools
can be used.
Be compatible with a standard schema
(like IFC).
However, even in the scenario presented, there
is an important role for standards such as IFC
and OpenBIM:
Standards provide a reference or
starting point for the software
developers, i.e., a schema to be
improved upon.
Standards can provide the lowest
common denominator for information
exchange among software that did not
choose to interface with the proprietary
schema or proprietary API. In BIM, they
can play the role of DXF that has been
the lowest common denominator for
exchange of CAD information in
architecture and engineering.
Standards provide a neutral
representation that authorities can
demand for procurement and permit
processes. It is not possible for
authorities to ask for information in a
format that is proprietary.
Standard formats are safer for long-term
preservation of information. It is much
more likely that information in a
standard format will be readable after
decades or even centuries than
information in the format of a software
vendor that happened to be market
leader at the time when the building was
designed.
Standards provide an environment for
the publicly funded academia to
contribute to the progress of BIM
technology in a vendor neutral way.
The above justifies the continuing development
of the standards but the focus is less on
interoperability.
2.5 Will the result of BIM be
computer integrated
construction?
One of the often-cited problems of the
construction industry is its fragmentation. It is
apparent both in information-related tasks and
during the construction phase. Several
companies, large and small, are involved,
including many specialized consultants. The
construction industry is lacking well-designed,
managed and stable supply and delivery chains
known in the manufacturing industries.
It has been a long-standing hope that through
information technology, the construction
industry will become more integrated. This hope
could be wrong. Way back in history, when
almost no information technology was used,
almost no documentation existed and all
decisions were made at the construction site,
construction was quite integrated. The material
world and material processes were driving the
integration—people had to come together to
work on the same physical object.
The fragmentation of the industry started with
the introduction of information technology, such
as paper drawings because information
technology allowed for specialization and
specialization allowed for more and different
knowledge to be incorporated in the processes.
Specialization accelerated with digital
information technology and so did the
fragmentation by any objective criteria, such as
the number of specialists or number of
businesses involved. It was the physical building
that was holding it all together.
Increased fragmentation brought in more
specialized knowledge, and the greater
knowledge resulted in better quality and higher
efficiency. Adam Smith, in Wealth of Nations
[
53
], noted that specialization through division
of labor is “the cause and source of prosperity”.
In this context, the goal of BIM is not computer-
integrated construction. The goal of BIM is to
continue the centuries’ long trend of
information technology that allows for
10
increasing specialization and division of labor.
Information technology makes collaboration of
more people from more specialized professions
possible. Because the real (material) structure
being built forces the integration of material
processes, with BIM, the industry obtained a
core element that holds the information
processes together. The stronger the pull
towards a digital model, the more professionals,
software and tools can be deployed to make the
designs and plans better and faster.
Information technology, therefore works both
ways. It enables greater fragmentation while
holding the processes together to contribute
efficiently to a single goal.
2.6 Is there such a thing as semantic
BIM?
There are four qualitative levels of
interoperability: technical, syntactic, structural
and semantic [
54
,
55
].
Technical means that there is a data
transportation service that can carry information
from A to B.
Syntactic interoperability means that the syntax
of information to be exchanged or shared is
defined and programmers can write code that
will extract the necessary pieces of data. To put
it simply, one application is able to read another
application’s data, which makes them
interoperable. Being able to read DXF files is an
example of this type of interoperability.
Structural interoperability means that the data
structures of two applications are compatible—
the schema used is shared or at least
understood. An example is the IFC standard.
Semantic interoperability implies a shared
understanding of information so that the
“meaning” of information in two interoperable
applications is the same. Semantic
interoperability is considered the next step in
the evolution of interoperable building software
[
56
]. The goal is to “make building information
models understandable and model data sharable
across multiple design disciplines and
heterogeneous computer systems” [
57
].
2.6.1 Meaningful to machines
Semantics is a heavily used term in computer
science. Its popularity received a boost with the
concept of the semantic web in the beginning of
the century. In philosophy, semantics is the
study of meaning. Using the term as an
adjective, such as semantic web, semantic
interoperability, and semantic BIM, implies that
the bits and bytes of web pages, exchanged files
or building information models would have
meaning. The key issue here is to whom this
information will be meaningful—to software or
to humans.
The promise of semantic X is to make X
meaningful to computers. Semantic BIM would
be BIM that would have meaning for computers
or computer software. This will be possible only
after computer software gets a much broader
sense of the world than they have today and
would be capable of finding out that an object
actually represents a column without being
called so.
To humans, lines on paper have meaning, as do
objects in an information model. The lines
representing a wall or an object with the name
ifcWall have meaning because the symbols
become associated (the first in its graphical
representation, the second because of the word
“wall” used in the name) with a real world object
with which we have real world experiences: such
as living within walls, painting walls, crashing
into walls, and building walls.
Humans learn the meaning of things because
they can relate the three apexes of the meaning
(semiotic) triangle [
58
]: the symbol (ifcWall), the
real world object and the ideas about walls in
our minds. Software only knows about symbols
and is confined to one apex of the triangle.
Closer to connecting at least to apexes of the
meaning triangle are technologies that include
remote sensing or laser scanned point clouds
where software is able to recognize objects from
sensor data [
59
,
60
].
11
The goal of semantic interoperability is to agree
on the “meaning” of symbols. Claiming that
software learns the “meaning” of objects or that
the meaning is encoded in language structures
such as RDF and OWL is a misuse of the term
“meaning”. The graphs of OWL or RDF look
meaningful to humans because the arches and
nodes have natural language labels, such as
“has-part”, “has-property”, and “rdf:type”.
We could talk about semantic representations of
buildings if software was able to determine that
an object that has three real numbers as
attributes is a point in space without directly
providing the information that the object is from
a class called “ifcPoint”. This is difficult for points
and is levels of magnitude more difficult for
complex engineering objects.
2.6.2 Meaningful to humans
A lesser goal of semantic interoperability is the
shared meaning of symbols among humans.
However, this too may be next to impossible. As
Haushofer and Neuhold note, [
61
] “As long as
people are the designers of models there will
always exist different conceptions and
interpretations, even for superficially
homogenous domains and application contexts.
We therefore believe that computer science
research should take this situation into account
and find solutions that deal with a multitude of
models and allow for their reconciliation. The
establishment of mappings between existing
models is such an approach”.
Therefore it is not entirely substantiated to call a
BIM semantic BIM. The meaning emerges in
humans because they can establish relations
between symbols that computers display, the
real world objects and the concepts in their
minds [
62
]. Interoperability among software can
be achieved on the level of technical
connectivity, syntax and structure. This is not to
say that software relying on building information
models cannot become increasingly smarter and
incorporate increasing amounts of engineering
and architecture information. This will be
particularly important in vertical applications
related to structural systems, building
envelopes, and sustainability.
2.7 How is BIM affecting building
processes?
In the past, construction was defined through
two sets of documents: the design documents
that described how things should be and the
planning documents that defined who should do
what and when. The two sets of documents
were a result of information processes—
designing and planning. This section focuses on
how the information processes are changing
because of BIM.
2.7.1 It makes them more rigid
Building laws defined, on a page or two, what
documents were needed in what phase and
what they should contain. The building process
was described quite briefly by laws or by
professional associations, such as the Royal
Institute of British Architects (RIBA). RIBA has
published the Plan of Works since 1963 [
63
]. The
first plan was on one sheet of paper and
described roles of participants in design in
construction and the information exchange
among them. At the time, the exchanges were
documents. The unit of coordination and
planning was a document. Such an “exchange”
was a document that would be submitted to the
building office for approval. The processes were
defined rather broadly [
64
,
65
]. Within each
process, much just-in-time improvisation
occurred [
66
]. Rigid schema applied only to
major stages in the process, such as appraisal,
design brief, concept, design development,
technical design, product information, and
tendering.
In a BIM environment, thousands and thousands
of digital objects are created and refined. Access
to these objects is shared, and they are created
in a collaborative manner. The processing
paradigm—one in which work is modelled as a
process with inputs, outputs, controls and
methods—is used to organize activities which
are much finer grained.
12
Inflation of documents, such as BIM protocols,
BIM execution plans, master information
delivery plans, BIM coordination programs,
project information plans, and asset information
plans, that define data exchanges, data drops,
access rights, levels of detail, levels of
development, grades of development and depth
of detail, illustrates the increasing organizational
and managerial complexity, which is a direct
consequence of BIM. Counting purely how much
detail of the processes is defined supports the
thesis that processes are more rigid than before.
It would be interesting to objectively compare
the complexity metrics [
67
] of the processes
before BIM and after BIM.
The phenomenon that information systems
reduce the flexibility of the processes that they
support was identified already in the 1980s,
when a broad adoption of management
information systems was occurring. Similar levels
of automation and IT support are now being
achieved in the building processes. They reduce
the flexibility, need and opportunity for
improvisation which could be efficient given the
fact that buildings are unique.
2.7.2 It should change our understanding
of activities
Perhaps the problem is in the reliance on the
understanding of human activities as processing.
A processing paradigm with arrows connecting
the processes is well-suited for exchange
collaboration architectures where information is
exchanged, such as by sending a drawing or a file
from A to B. Sharing is different. A process is not
initiated with the receipt of information. An
alternative paradigm looks at building (verb) as a
socio-technical activity and captures social
interactions.
The term “information” in the phrase “building
information models” should be reconsidered in
its pre-technological definition, which states
“information is informing the reader”. In the
past, with less computerized documentation,
information was exchanged to inform co-
workers and to make them do something. The
difficulty of exchange limited the amount of
information exchanged to what was essential.
The internet eased the transfer of information,
information modelling increased the structural
complexity of the information, and cloud
infrastructure eased the sharing of information.
Everything is available to anyone at any time,
not just what is needed “to inform the reader”.
If an architect sends a structural engineer a
conceptual architectural design, it is not just to
inform her, it is also a speech-act saying “here’s
my design, does it work for you?” Updating the
architectural objects in a BIM database carries
no such pragmatics. The “need to know” has
been replaced by the “need to share”. And this is
not always a good thing.
2.8 How is BIM affecting education in
the field?
The question goes well beyond teaching BIM
[
68
,
69
], which is a must both in regular as well as
in life-long education in AEC (architecture,
engineering, construction). The interpretation of
BIM that sees it as an approach to building and
as the behavior of those involved in the building
processes (Section 2.1.3) provides an argument
for a substantial overhaul of education in AEC.
However, not all topics are affected equally.
Therefore, the short answer to the question is “a
lot”. The more detailed answer addresses which
areas and topics are affected and how.
2.8.1 Computing
This includes the courses in which engineers and
architects learn about information and
communication technology, computer science,
and design communication. In these courses,
students learn about the principles of computer-
integrated construction and the related tools
and work methods. Many fundamentals and
theories remain the same. More emphasis on
theory should be given to information modelling,
conceptualization, databases and object
orientation. However, the shift from tools for
generic objects (CAD drawings, databases) to
tools that address industry-specific objects
requires a project-based approach. This includes
linking IT courses with professional courses
about buildings, building envelopes, structural
13
elements, and materials. Virtual studios and
project-based learning [
70
] are required and are
enabled by BIM.
Computer programming should be gaining
importance because BIM uses objects and
objects are not just about data, but about
methods. i.e., programs. Essentially, there is no
difference between specifying where an object
should be placed or writing a method that will
compute, in real time, where it needs to be.
Being able to program that, as some software
allows, is important.
The third body of knowledge in this area is
education for BIM-related professions: BIM
modelers, BIM operators, BIM coordinators and
BIM managers.
2.8.2 Project management, organization
BIM is fundamentally changing the organization
of building processes (Sections 2.7 and 2.9),
workflow, contractual arrangements and legal
relations [
71
]. Courses on construction
collaboration, construction management,
construction law, and cost estimating should
prepare students for this new reality in the
industry.
2.8.3 Designing
Designing buildings is a core activity of engineers
and architects. A potential victim of BIM could
be design thinking [
72
], which is [ibid.] “a
methodology … where innovation is powered by
a thorough understanding, through direct
observation, of what people want and need in
their lives and what they like or dislike …”. It is a
way in which designers think when designing
things—from bottles to skyscrapers. Designing
can involve various methods and approaches to
reasoning and logic, but in nearly all cases, there
is a separation between form, function and
behavior. As an early reference model for
building information models put it, there is a
distinction between functional units and
technical solutions [
73
].
The danger of BIM and of education using BIM is
ignorance of the part of design thinking that is
involved with function. BIM software makes it
too easy to place elements into the model (walls,
columns, ceilings) that are technical solutions
(not functional units) and structures (not
functions). This issue is not solved with complex
schemas for levels of development (LODs)
because even the simplest and most generic LOD
states “there is a thing”. A thing is a structure, it
is not a function. Another way of putting it is
that BIM is answer driven not question driven.
“The fear is that heavy emphasis on "how to"
guarantees a loss of the critical "why”” [
74
].
2.8.4 All other courses
BIM defines the concepts that we use to
describe buildings. BIM software defines the
vocabulary of the elements out of which
buildings are composed. Conceptual information
models underlying BIM software define objects
and attributes in a very precise, formal way.
They define what is a structural wall or column
and what information we have about it.
Software for modelling and for analysis
increasingly uses the same language. A similar
transition should occur with the language used
in professional engineering courses, which teach
about the same objects.
These concepts could be mapped to concepts
that are taught in undergraduate and graduate
courses. These concepts will appear in the
software in which that knowledge is embedded.
BIM is changing the language of construction
and therefore impacts the language of
education. The change, however, goes beyond
language. BIM objects will be increasingly smart;
they will not be information but knowledge
objects embedding professional knowledge.
BIM, when understood in an object-oriented
way, does not just define the vocabulary, objects
and their properties. It also defines the methods
that the objects can perform. Some of the
functionality of the methods is incorporated in
the models implemented in BIM modelers. Some
other functionality is “outside” of the model, in
applications such as BIM model checkers (BMC)
[
75
]. The best known is Solibri [
76
]. Software like
this is increasingly incorporating the engineering
knowledge that students of engineering and
14
architecture are learning. It can check designs
against building codes or codes of practice, in
addition to analyzing the purely geometric
correctness of the model. This too needs to have
an impact on the pedagogy, for example, to
restructure knowledge in a way that can be
incorporated into model-checking software.
A consequence of all this will be the increasing
automation of simple and routine engineering
tasks. A deeper understanding of architecture
and engineering, as well as the environmental
and societal impacts, will remain in the human
domain.
2.9 Why is the industry not adopting
BIM faster?
This is a question as old as the first working
prototypes of BIM, which emerged in the
1990s—scientists wondering why the industry
does not use this superior technology [
77
].
Among the answers, a lack of software
applications, a lack of trained BIM personnel and
a lack of a legal and insurance framework that
supports collaborative project delivery are cited
[
78
]. Others cite the conservative nature of the
industry and the entrenchment of drawings [
79
].
Several authors have proposed that BIM should
be advertised through education or mandated
by governments. However, if BIM is as good as
advertised, why should its use in private
investments be mandated by law? There was no
government action to force businesses to start
using the Web, mobile phones, and
management information systems. Some
businesses did and succeeded; others did not,
failed and lost in a competitive market. Industry
is rational; it uses what is useful. The use of BIM
is increasing [
80
,
81
,
82
] as technology matures.
Additionally governments are demanding the
use of BIM in their procurement to save
taxpayers’ money.
In addition to considering the lack of tools and
knowledge and cultural reasons, the problem
should be studied from the perspective of
economics and organizational science.
The economic response would be in the
restructuring of the value chains so that the
party investing in quality BIM models also reaps
the benefits. The added effort is in the design
studio, but the benefits are reaped at the
construction site with less unexpected work,
fewer collisions of building elements and
workers, and fewer requests for information.
One way to approach this goal is in the vertical
integration of the industry, as in the design-
build-(operate) business model [
83
]. There are
reports that in some countries, the restructuring
of the industry in this direction coincided with
the broad introduction of BIM [
84
].
2.9.1 Game theory and institutional
theory
The proper theoretical tool to study the
economic factors that encourage or discourage
the use of BIM is game theory [
85
,
86
], which
started as a study of phenomena where an
optimum is not achieved if each party pursues
just their own best interests. This is exactly the
scenario if BIM is operated in an industrial
setting where the players are neither vertically
integrated nor coordinated by a game
coordinator who could introduce agreement on
how the game should be played. In a BIM
setting, the game is a BIM process and the game
coordinator is the BIM coordinator.
The other overlooked approach to study BIM
adoption is through the eye of theories that
study the change of institutions: institutional
theory [
87
]. The term institution in this context
means any type of organization that people
organize, including construction projects,
construction companies and government
authorities for the approval of building designs
[
88
]. This theory studies how institutions change
because of technology and the hurdles and
obstacles due to the entrenched ways of doing
things that are present in the institution’s DNA.
These studies explain many of the phenomena in
BIM uptake [
89
,] but more can be done in this
area.
15
2.10 Does BIM boost or harm
creativity?
When I was urging a young student of
architecture to use a BIM modeler instead of
drawing software she refused with disgust. “It is
just like designing houses in the Sims computer
games for youngsters” [
90
]. A few years later,
she is now using BIM, mostly because it makes
her more productive. Before BIM, her designs
were influenced by how easy they were to cut
from wood or foam to make physical models.
BIM software allows her to produce designs that
are easy to make using BIM modelers. This
anecdote illustrates several concerns and hopes
related to BIM and creativity.
But what is creativity? In theory, designing can
be routine, innovative and creative [
91
]. The
meaning of these three terms can be defined in
at least three different contexts:
in the context of the design process
in the context of the design language
in the context of the design results
2.10.1 Design process
A traditional view of the design process is that it
is a search in the space of potential solutions. In
routine design, the search is constrained to a
subset of the space of potential designs.
Innovative design is less constrained but is still
limited to potential designs, with some variables
and attributes having extraordinary values.
According to this classification [
92
], creative
design shifts or extends the state space of
potential designs.
2.10.2 Design language
In terms of design language, and information
models are a design language, routine design
combines the available elements in traditional
ways. Designing produces an ever more detailed
definition of objects, their properties and the
relations among them. It assumes modelling
software is used as intended, out of the box.
Innovative design extends the predefined object
families to new types of objects or enriches
existing types of objects with novel properties. It
combines types of objects in novel and original
ways. Innovative design requires some
programming skills to extend the library of
objects out of which designs are created. To do
so, expected and predefined features that allow
extension and customization of the modelling
software are used.
Creative design finds the language offered by
the modelling tool, including possible
extensions, insufficient to represent the design
ideas. It calls for interpreting existing object
types in unintended ways or drops the modelling
software altogether. It looks for designs outside
of the set that can be represented with a given
modelling tool and outside the language of
predefined objects.
The latter limitation only exists in software that
addresses structured building information and
where the design language—the objects that can
be used to describe a building—is predefined.
This is not the case if designs are communicated
with drawings and lines. Lines are, by definition,
interpreted as something else. A line can stand
for anything. A wall in a building model can only
represent a wall. This can be a weakness.
2.10.3 Design product
The explanations of routine, innovative and
creative designs can also be recognized as such
when end users experience the product and find
it usefully original. A finished building can be
found routine, innovative or creative by the
general public, regardless of whether the design
process or design language fits into the same
definition or whether the design language in
which it was described before it was built fits the
definition of routine, innovative or creative.
The argument that BIM limits creativity is based
on the fact that it makes routine designs much
easier. Empirical studies could prove (or refute)
that designers with BIM tools stick to the
elements available, resulting in routine or, at
best, innovative designs. In line-based design,
there is little technical difference between
routine and creative design. In both cases, lines
stand for things which they are not. An
argument could be made that stepping out of
16
the usual requires less effort with lines than it
does with objects.
However, the above only makes sense if we are
interested in intrinsic creativity, i.e., how
creative the designer could be and how much
freedom or restrictions were imposed by the
technology used. The true motive for creativity is
not in exercising freedom (which may be more
limited in a BIM environment) but in being able
to produce better designs, to explore design
ideas faster, and to obtain more precise
simulation feedback. Looking at creativity in this
way, average designs would be much more
creative when using BIM.
A theoretical warning about BIM and creativity,
however, remains. Creative designing is
something that philosophers might call “true
thinking” [
93
]. In philosophy, true thinking is
defined as “that which is at the edge of what is
conceptualized”, i.e., at the edge of what we
have words for. Additionally, “true thinking is
the creation of concepts” [
94
]. Designing with
BIM uses instances of extremely well-defined
concepts. The more BIM is developed, the
farther the designer is from that edge. This is a
danger to be aware of, as well as an opportunity.
It is the developers of the concepts of BIM that
are pushing “the edge of what is conceptualized”
further. Therefore, engineering and architectural
creativity is increasing because of the creative
work of the developers of BIM software.
3 Discussion and Conclusion
Building information management technology
that includes building information modelling
tools in the building information modelling
process is the most significant technology
changing how we design, build, use and manage
the built environment. It is a dominant
technological trend in the software industry, and
although the theoretical groundwork was laid in
the previous century, it is a popular topic in
academic research.
In this paper, we have looked at BIM through the
lens of structure, function and behavior (Section
2.1). This is the same lens through which BIM is
looking at the built environment. We have
defined the structure, function and behavior of
BIM, as well as the current state and future
development. From a structural and functional
perspective, BIM is a database problem. It makes
sense to understand it as building information
management and the software as building
information management systems (BIMS).
Database management systems (DBMS) have
been the key tool for the automatization and
informatization of many businesses and
industries, and BIMS will play the same role in
the construction industry (Section 2.2). In fact,
the key development problems in BIM structure
and function are its (missing) features that
databases usually have. It will be harder to
address the behavioral issues of how BIMS is
affecting its environment and how the
environment is affecting BIMS. These social,
economic and legal issues will gain prominence
as the technical features catch up with other
industries.
BIM will contain all the information needed in
the building process but will never include the
complete information (Section 2.3). This is not a
problem because engineers and architects are
used to dealing with incomplete information.
The goal of BIM is not to integrate building
processes and to reduce the fragmentation of
the industry. The true goal, with practical
benefits, is to allow even more specialization
and division of labor (Section 2.4).
BIM is only starting to change engineering
education. Deeper changes will be caused by the
redefinition of engineering language and logic.
The deepest changes will be a consequence of
automating many easier engineering tasks,
restructuring processes and redefining jobs
(Section 2.8). Like what happened with
management information systems, building
information management systems are reducing
the flexibility of building processes and are
leading to more detailed process definitions.
This calls for a redefinition of how we
understand the activities of the building process
(Section 2.3). We suggest the use of game theory
17
and institutional theory to study the adoption of
BIM in the industry (Section 2.9). We have
argued that BIM standards are not as important
as they were in the early days of BIM but remain
useful for some many purposes (Section 2.4).
There are serious issues with semantic BIM and
semantic interoperability, but the syntactic and
structural interoperability around BIM are
sufficient (Section 2.6). There are some valid
arguments that the intrinsic creativity of
engineers and architects who use BIM is
reduced; however, there is no doubt that
extrinsic creativity is increased by the use of
BIM. Those who are truly creative are not only
the designers of buildings but the designers of
BIM software because they are defining a new
language (Section 2.10).
Each of the topics could benefit from a deeper
study. Some new angles for such studies were
presented, such as a structure-function-behavior
view of BIM, understanding BIM as building
information management and drawing parallels
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with management information systems,
abandoning the process view of activities, relying
on game and institutional theory when studying
BIM adoption, the distinction between intrinsic
and extrinsic creativity and the creativity of tool
makers and tool users.
Perhaps the most important change of
perspective of BIM is that it is not a tool of
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specialization. Specialization is a key to the
division of labor, which results in greater
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Acknowledgements
The research work presented in this paper was
funded in part by the Slovenian Research
Agency. Their support is gratefully
acknowledged.
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