Construction engineers are driven to look for ways to improve everything from construction methods, the materials used, to the systems used to develop new building designs with lower cost margins and thin financing costs. Under those circumstances, there is a lot of pressure on contractors and designers to find more effective ways to reduce construction costs.

BIM is being used by a growing number of engineers, architects, and contractors to make the design and development of structures faster, better, and more cost-efficient. BIM has been proven to help reduce costs and increase efficiency throughout the project lifecycle ranging from design and construction to facility management.

BIM helps the construction company to save money in the design and construction and development phases of the project. Here are some of the ways how BIM can help lower the lifetime cost of a building:

1. BIM helps to improve collaboration: Failing to collaborate on projects leads to time delays and increases the cost beyond the initial estimations. BIM helps to enhance collaboration on the projects. This integrated nature of BIM helps to improve productivity within the engineering team and opens up new channels of communication, which makes it easy for the team members to work effectively with others involved with the projects. With BIM, teams come together on a common platform to ensure everyone can play their part. Accessible communication and effective collaboration are some of the main reasons to implement BIM for effective outcomes.

2. BIM saves time (and cost): In the construction business, ‘time’ and ‘cost’ are essential factors in the project life cycle. One of the main reasons for organizations to adopt BIM is the potential for savings on cost and time. BIM helps to reduce both these elements of the project and improve the efficiency of the project lifecycle. With BIM, organizations can not only unleash creativity and enhance collaboration, but also save time and reduce the costs of the project. BIM helps to plan for the projects based on factors like cost and labor. It also helps discover unexpected expenses and helps the construction company deal with unplanned time constraints.

3. Helps to improve coordination and clash detection: BIM permits teams to coordinate better and detect any internal, or external clashes before the construction cycle begins. BIM helps to avoid such conflicts with automated clash detection. This helps to reduce the amount of rework required during the construction phase. BIM provides the opportunity to plan it right before the onsite construction begins. It also helps to avoid last-minute changes and any unforeseen issues. Rework is time and effort-intensive, both of which cost money.

4. BIM enables prefabrication: BIM provides easy storage and access to a wealth of information. This, in turn, helps the construction company leverage innovative means to save money. For instance, this information helps to generate detailed drawings for offsite manufacturing purposes. BIM makes it easy to design, detail, and build structures in an offsite controlled environment, thus increasing efficiency and reducing waste, labor, and material costs.

5. BIM helps to create safer construction sites: BIM helps to improve the safety of construction sites by pinpointing the hazards at the initial stages of the designing phase before they become problems. This enables the organization to mitigate physical risks by visualizing and planning onsite activities better. The safety and visual risk analysis evaluations with BIM helps to ensure safety throughout the project lifecycle. A safer workplace is a more productive workplace. Safety on the construction site is also a proven way to avoid expenses due to accidents and delays.

6. Reduces construction changes and design rework: During the design phase, BIM helps to reduce the errors and the redesign cost drastically. With BIM, the central model can be changed, which is then reflected in all associated drawings. By identifying potential issues and conflicts in the design phase itself, organizations can work productively and rework on the construction design problem to reduce errors. This helps to build structures without the need to redo things and eliminate the cost associated with changes late in the cycle. BIM frameworks also allow designers to observe the impact of any design changes instantly and factor those into the build as well as plan for their development.

7. BIM provides a model-based cost estimation: BIM allows for an effective construction cost estimation, earlier in the planning stage. BIM helps to automate the time-consuming task of applying and quantifying costs, which enables organizations to focus on other value factors, such as identifying and factoring the risks. The BIM models enable better resource and material estimates. This means that materials can be procured in just the right quantity at just the right time. This has a big impact on reducing material wastage and costs associated with onsite storage of materials including material loss and pilferage. There is also the impact on financing costs as funds have to be committed only when they are needed and not earlier. All this helps control costs.

There’s no doubt that BIM or Building Information Modeling has become an essential tool with an abundance of advantages for the construction industry. As this post shows, projects using BIM have the opportunity to control construction costs too by leveraging this powerful technology.

“To be careless in making decisions is to naively believe that a single decision impacts nothing more than that single decision, for a single decision can spawn a thousand others that were entirely unnecessary or it can bring peace to a thousand places we never knew existed.”
? Craig D. Lounsbrough, Flecks of Gold on a Path of Stone: Simple Truths for Life’s Complex Journey

Construction is an inevitably sequential process. One thing leads to another. Reversing a previous action is costly, time-consuming, and hard. On the other hand, a well-considered decision can set you on the path to successful project completion with the most optimized investment of effort and resources. So, how can we improve the chances of optimal decisions?

BIM or Building information modeling is already becoming a mainstay of the architecture, engineering, construction and operations industry. But with BIM, a carefully curated building information model can also be utilized for making better decisions about the planning, design, development, and operation of the facility.

Incorporating BIM in construction projects allows the following possibilities:

1. Optimized construction planning: The centralization of data in BIM facilitates quality control early in the project lifecycle. The data updated by all the concerned parties helps in creating a 3D visualization of the final facility. The 3D visualization helps in analysing the practicality of the design – whether the design can be implemented and what is the best way of doing so. Such decisions, when taken at the right time, show an impact over the entire lifecycle of the project.

2. Quantity estimation: One of the most wasteful tasks in a construction project is deriving accurate estimates for the quantity of the required raw material. A construction project can be marred by both over as well as under estimation of the quantity. BIM helps drive much better decisions about the accurate quantity of raw material required. It also allows much better decisions to be made about when these materials would be required. This eliminates waste and allows the project manager to adhere to the projected budget and maintain an efficient logistics schedule. That, in turn, results in avoiding time lags caused due to unavailability of raw material.

3. Better collaboration and communication: BIM technology allows easy collaboration and sharing information in real-time between teams and stakeholders. This ensures that all the team members have access to up-to-date project data at all times, anywhere. The accessibility to accurate data helps in eliminating construction errors during the design phase. The elimination of design error help saves time lags during the construction phase caused due to rework or redesign. Time is an essential resource in a construction project. Any time saved is money saved in terms of labour hours and logistics.

4. Better coordination and early clash detection: The BIM-facilitated seamless coordination between all the concerned parties allows the team managers to identify clashes as the construction proceeds. Such clashes cause rework that brings in delays and wasted effort. Even as such clashes may not be apparent very early in the design phase, even within the short term if teams become aware of impending clashes, they can plan for workarounds and plan the immediate effort much better.

5. Safety and risk mitigation: Construction safety is in focus now. This is even more true when the construction site is in harsh or hazardous locations. BIM gives site managers and others tasked with safety, the most accurate and comprehensive data about the construction facility that allows them to make better decisions about the construction keeping safety in mind. For instance, if the model shows that as the facility takes shape a particular stage could present some specific challenges then the option is available to call for some expert help, deploy technology or add more resources at that point in time.

6. Operations and facilities management: A construction project generates humungous amounts of data which can be very useful for the continuing operation and facility management of the building. The collated data in BIM makes it easier for the facilities manager to make better plans for the ongoing management of the facility. The as-built feature comes handy for driving better decisions during renovation or refurbishment works. The digitally centralized data makes it easier for the operations and facility manager to access information regarding the building, which in turn promotes data-driven decision-making about the smooth functioning of the building during its lifecycle.

The most crucial thing in any project is the ability to make/take efficient decisions at the right time. The efficiency of decision-making in a construction project is mainly dependent upon the availability of data. BIM offers an abundance of accurate and current data about the project in one central location. The accessibility of the information enables accurate decision-making across the project lifecycle, right from planning through the construction and, even, into the maintenance phase.