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By Ken Sanders, FAIA

"Are you doing it?" During last January's Technology in Construction conference in Orlando, Florida, designers posed that question to each other about building information modeling (BIM), long billed as the technological sine qua non for efficient and cost-effective design and construction. But most designers, it seems, are taking a wait-and-see attitude about BIM�\interested in its benefits, but hesitant to adopt it unless assured of a return on the significant investment it entails. Nearly 10 years after his seminal book, The Digital Architect, was published, architect Ken Sanders weighs in on the BIM discussion.

Building information modeling (BIM) is the latest rebranding of a 25-year-old idea that architects should create intelligent 3D models instead of paper drawings to communicate design ideas and guide construction. Today, it’s hard to peruse a professional journal or an AIA practice conference agenda without reading about BIM, and software vendors and consultants continue to promote it as the solution to waste and inefficiency in building design and construction. After all, why can’t we make buildings like Boeing makes airplanes?

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Yet, after decades of research, software development, and consultant evangelism, the industry has yet to reach the tipping point where a critical mass of owners, designers, and builders embrace the methodology and its use becomes commonplace. If the idea is so strong and the return on investment so attractive, why hasn't that happened? A decade ago, the technology seemed two or three years away; today, it still seems two or three years away. Like the dilemma confronting TV weatherman Phil Connors, played by Bill Murray in the film Groundhog Day, how and when will we awaken to a different reality?

Wheels and wings versus bricks and mortar

The design community must first recognize the differences between the design and construction industry and manufacturing industries that create mass-produced products. As software developers borrow ideas from the latter industries, they also need to recognize what makes ours unique: how its economics are different, and how creating complex, one-of-a-kind products requires a broadly distributed, specialized work effort and method of decision making.

The automobile and aerospace industries, for example, enjoy economies of scale that building design and construction don’t. Mass production allows amortization of costs: It’s easier to pay for detailed digital models, including initial and ongoing training costs for personnel, when you’re building hundreds or thousands of the products being modeled. Products that can be easily transported are more suitable for start-to-finish factory construction—but unlike airplanes or cars, the final assembly of most buildings must occur on-site. Even when architects and contractors offer services that involve customized mass production, such as implementing a new retail store prototype, they confront a dizzying array of conflicting local codes and regulations, as well as varying standards and methods of the local construction trades. Finally, and most importantly, cars and planes are the products of an integrated design-build process: The designer and builder are one and the same entity. This is rarely the case with building design and construction.

Do these differences mean that architects shouldn’t pursue new delivery methods, or investigate new technologies, or adapt ideas from other industries? Of course not. But recognizing the distinctions is an important first step.