BSRIA BIM 2010 - Paul Morrell

I attended the BSRIA BIM 2010 conference earlier today. Delegates and well known industry speakers debated key questions throughout the day.
The final speaker of the day was the government’s chief construction adviser Paul Morrell. He gave the same inspirational presentation that he'd delivered at the Autodesk conference a few weeks earlier, he then concluded by presenting his thoughts on the four key questions that had been debated.
Mr Morrell answered the questions from the point of view of BIM being used on government funded projects, my scribbled notes are below...

1. Who owns the BIM?
   If the government is the client. And you want to work for the government. Then the government will own the BIM.
2. How do we make money from BIM?
   By doing clash detection analysis on every job, by stopping information getting lost through the timeline, knowing what you are going to do before you begin - a zero change order contract.
   More money can be made for the designers and contractor through slightly better margins, more money made for the client through better value.
   If you don't do BIM and your competition do it, they will get better. They will attract better people. They will get even better. You cannot afford to let this happen.
3. How do we persuade clients of the benefits of BIM?
   Asset management is the greatest benefit. How can you manage what you have got if you have no electronic record?
4. What do we need to do to make BIM happen?
   There will be a five year plan published. Each year there will be a greater step towards BIM usage on government jobs.

I didn't catch all of the items that were to be in the five year plan, but the BIM that the government require will be non-proprietary and interoperable (i.e. not a [Insert name] CAD software model). There was a mention of Construction Operations Building Information Exchange (COBIE) format being one of the initial requirements. This is of particular interest to a master specification company like NBS as this format is an asset record without full geometry.
http://www.buildingsmartalliance.org/index.php/projects/cobie

I'll do a separate blog post summarising the day and my thoughts on these key questions. It was a really super day and I think everyone attending left feeling positive that BIM was really now taking off.

Download all of the presentations from the BSRIA website:

http://www.bsria.co.uk/services/design/bim/bim2010/