Building information modeling (BIM) has gained more and more attention in the construction business. Various benefits of the technology are expected to drive its future growth. As a result, security manufacturers, including those making access control solutions, should embrace the opportunities brought by BIM.
Building information modeling (BIM) has gained more and more attention in the construction business. Various benefits of the technology are expected to drive its future growth. As a result, security manufacturers, including those making access control solutions, should embrace the opportunities brought by BIM.
That was the point raised by
ASSA ABLOY in a recent blog
posting.
BIM’s potential is not to be ignored. According to a new report by MarketsandMarkets, the BIM market is expected to grow from US$3.56 billion in 2017 to $7.64 billion in 2022, at a compound annual growth rate of 16.51 percent during the forecast period.
According to the ASSA ABLOY blog, BIM could revolutionize how buildings and other structures from roads and bridges to public utilities are designed, built and operated. “BIM is a process,” the blog cites Paul Candy, Global Director of BIM Technologies for ASSA ABLOY, as saying. “It is not a piece of software. Although there is plenty of software involved in BIM, it is the process of getting all the pieces assembled digitally and combining them to give you a real-life version of a building. This allows you to visualize a completed building before it is built.”
One of the great things about BIM, according to Candy, is that it’s about taking new technologies from many other areas and trying to incorporate them. These include the entertainment business, specifically visual arts from filmmaking to gaming. “What I’ve seen in the past few months is how they are going to take virtual reality and use it in expanding our understanding of the construction process. So now you can use VR goggles and take a virtual tour through a building that has not yet been built, Candy said. “Then you can use Google Earth to actually place the building in its future location. It is the embracing of new technologies that will really move this thing forward.”
Benefits of BIM
Among the benefits of BIM are increased productivity and reduced cost during the construction process and throughout the building’s lifecycle. “It is a flexible tool that allows contractors to determine what is going to work in the construction process,” Candy said. “All of that can be seen through a software tool before it occurs on a building site. Obviously, the idea here is that we are saving on construction costs.”
Candy cites his home country, New Zealand, as example. “New Zealand is very progressive when it comes to BIM and a lot of that has been driven by the Christchurch earthquakes and the need to reinvent the way that they construct buildings and services. Christchurch lost more than 1600 buildings to a series of devastating earthquakes from 2010 into 2014. BIM has really helped them do a lot of really cool stuff, especially in the scheduling of different phases and to minimize the digging up of roads to put in essential services,” he said.
On the micro level of individual building projects, BIM can do wonders for the building’s operations. “The real value of BIM is the information that it provides you during the lifetime of that building. If I were to look at what is the future of BIM, it is really in how we will utilize all this information that we have gathered during design and construction and turn it into something that the end user, and the managers of that facility, can actually utilize to solve problems on an on-going basis,” Candy said.
Candy concluded that BIM implementation means that all manufacturers – including his company – have to get involved earlier in the design-construction process and provide highly detailed information about their products. “ASSA ABLOY is accelerating its involvement with building owners because we see that’s where it is going and we want to be ahead of the curve,” he said.