BIM Today: From design focus to whole-life information management

Too often misconceived as being just about project delivery, BIM – better information management – is a catalyst for achieving better whole-life outcomes, says Paul Wilkinson, vice-chair of nima in the March 2024 issue of BIM Today.

BIM stimulated a significant digital transformation for many players in the industry – particularly those engaged in designing and constructing new projects – as they looked to deliver new buildings and other infrastructure assets using BIM processes and tools. Perhaps inevitably, this led many people to associate BIM only with clients’ new build projects (the capital phase) and to think of it as something that was mainly the preserve of architects, engineers, contractors and their supply chains. It also created a common misconception that BIM was mainly about design or 3D modelling.

Partly to counter those misconceptions about BIM, the UK BIM Alliance changed its name to nima in October 2022. By downplaying BIM and focusing on wider information management (IM) challenges, we felt we could better engage with those that previously felt excluded by what they saw as a design and construction process.

Whole-life thinking

Nima has adopted and is encouraging a whole-life view. It seeks to enable information to flow from the very earliest stages of a product manufacturer creating information about components right through to a maintenance team being able to access, capture and reuse information as part of their FM programme.

Thinking whole-life also means taking a holistic approach (“starting with the end in mind”): considering how effective information management can, for example, support the dismantling of a building or other asset so that its constituent parts can be reused or recycled (circular economy thinking).

Accordingly, the focus of the next free-to-attend nima Virtual Conference, to be held online on 18 April 2024, is on how data-driven approaches can help create and manage better whole-life outcomes across the built and natural environment.

New BIM: Better information management

The conference will be taking place as industry discussions and consultations continue about how to encourage better implementation of data and information management in the UK built environment. nima has been working with industry partners to review how information management can help the sector become safer, greener and more efficient and productive.

Vitally, this continuing industry engagement includes inputs from owner-operator clients and from facility and asset management communities wanting to deploy better information management to maximise return on investment across the whole life of their built and managed assets.

Read the full BIM Today article here.