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By Ken Sanders, FAIA

Timing the market

Where is the client demand for BIM? After starting slowly during the 1980s, the adoption of 2D CAD among design firms rose quickly in the early 1990s as owners began requesting digital drawings from architects, and powerful computers became cheap and ubiquitous enough to deliver them cost-effectively. More than 10 years later, however, broad client demand for 3D building models has yet to materialize.

A modest but growing number of public and private clients, however, including GSA, Disney, and Intel, are starting to explore BIM and pursue integrated delivery approaches. Their common interest is ownership of facilities that extends beyond construction completion. Many clients wonder why designers and builders aren’t offering new delivery solutions that address the unpredictability and adversarial nature of the traditional design-bid-build process. The Construction Users Roundtable (CURT), whose objective is to maintain an “owner’s voice” in the industry, has emerged as a powerful advocate for process innovations. Since its founding four years ago, CURT has grown to include over 50 of the largest corporate clients in the U.S., including Citigroup, General Electric, GlaxoSmithKline, IBM, and Procter & Gamble. [Note: record publisher McGraw-Hill is a member.]

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Without a strong client advocate, or an integrated approach to design and construction, BIM technologies remain difficult to leverage. It’s challenging to confront the risks inherent in implementing new processes that seem to reward one party for costs and risks incurred by another. Indeed, one might argue that it’s easier and cheaper for our profession to continue to practice using our traditional methods.

But clients are clearly asking for something different. As architects, we have a professional responsibility to learn how to package our services in collaboration with those who construct our designs; to resolve the imbalance between investment and reward; and to create an integrated solution with fewer elements of risk for all parties. The growing influence of organizations like CURT highlights this as-yet-unrealized opportunity for our profession and for builders.