while U.K. construction projects typically see 5
to 12 percent of the budget spent on waste and
design or procurement inaccuracies, the Crossrail
team has lowered that figure to about 2 percent,
Mr. Taylor says. The project is slated to be completed by 2018—on time and on budget.
Uncle Sam Benefits
U.S. government projects also have found that BIM
leads to time and cost savings—a major concern
for public projects that require U.S. congressional
approval, says Charles Matta, deputy associate CIO,
public buildings IT services, U.S. General Services
Administration (GSA), Washington, D.C., USA.
The GSA’s Public Buildings Service (PBS) constructs and renovates federal workspaces, such
as courthouses, office buildings and land ports of
entry, for the U.S. civilian federal government. The
service was an early BIM adopter to help prevent
budget overruns. “BIM helped us have better control and implement greater energy efficiency with
our projects,” Mr. Matta says.
Each year, the PBS oversees up to 20 construc-
tion, repair or modernization projects. The average
federal project cycle from initial planning through
occupancy is about seven years long. “The biggest
savings for us is in reducing time on a project,” Mr.
Matta says. PBS found that BIM typically can shave
off about 10 percent from a project’s overall schedule,
stemming from the increased coordination as well as
the reduced inefficiencies, errors, change orders and
delays. “The GSA experience with BIM has paved the
way for greater adoption among public sector owners, domestically and internationally,” Mr. Matta says.
Still, project teams must devote resources to
training their stakeholders in using BIM. The
Crossrail team created an information academy
where all of its contractors and designers—about
3,000 in all—went through a training session to
learn how to work in the shared data environment.
The PBS holds regular in-house seminars to train
both internal and external stakeholders in BIM.
But when it comes to securing stakeholder buy-in, BIM’s benefits make their own case. “Project
managers see that the 4-D models enable everyone
to get a better and quicker understanding of the
project,” Mr. Taylor says. “They see that we’re
creating an environment where they can consume
and use information very quickly. That saves time.”
—Novid Parsi
Projected value of
the global project
and portfolio
management
(PPM) vendor
market* by
2020—up from
US$3.8 billion
in 2015
*Companies selling
PPM-related tools
and services
US$5.
2billion
Source: Worldwide Project
and Portfolio Management
Forecast, IDC, 2016
