The German government is promoting digital transformation as a way to reduce expensive planning errors and delays in the construction process. The Building Information Modeling planning method (short form: BIM) aims to ensure maximum transparency and planning certainty. For the last two years, BIM has already been mandatory for public infrastructure projects and, from the end of the year, this obligation will also apply to buildings commissioned by the national government. However, in spite of this requirement, a large proportion of architectural bureaus, engineering offices, contractors and installation companies still do not use the digital planning method. The reasons for this are investigated in the BIM Monitor 2022 published by the Düsseldorf-based market data specialist BauInfoConsult. For this report, over 300 companies were contacted by phone and asked about their experience and their opinions on the subject of BIM. The Monitor provides valid results which André Friedel, BIM expert at the construction and real estate specialist Drees & Sommer SE, comments on, based on the corporate experience gained in over 400 BIM construction projects.
Alexander Faust, market analyst at BauInfoConsult, summarizes the results of this year’s data collection as follows: ‘The results clearly show that BIM has a good reputation in the industry, but that all too often its full potential is still not exploited,‘: Of the 300 respondents, only one in five users from planning companies with five or more employees and from construction and trade contractors with ten or more employees have experience of BIM – so only 20 percent currently work actively with BIM. ‘But the advantages are obvious. BIM is a method of networked collaboration which brings together all relevant data in a digital model, which acts as the building's digital twin. All major parties to the construction process work with models, so the information captured in BIM is then available to everyone. If a planner changes the building's floor plan, for example, the other project participants can then directly adapt their specialist planning. And if the designs no longer fit together, these collisions are not left hidden until they surprise everyone during the construction process, leading to expensive delays,‘ explains Alexander Faust.
BIM is currently mandatory in infrastructure projects carried out for the national government and, from the end of 2022, it will also be compulsory in buildings constructed for the national government. Since January 1, 2021, Germany has also had a BIM obligation for the procurement of public contracts. Building with the support of BIM is much more advanced in Scandinavia, the USA, Canada, the Netherlands and Austria.
But why are participants in the German market still so hesitant, and what could help to promote the adoption of BIM? The figures in the BIM Monitor 2022/23 clearly show that the present users of BIM use it because clients demand it (36 percent), and to ensure that they can remain competitive (30 percent) or optimize their internal processes (30 percent).
Drees & Sommer’s BIM specialist, André Friedel, explains that the results show a clear interaction between push and pull factors: ‘Market demand and the need to remain competitive are driving the change. The optimization of internal processes and building procedures are then the natural consequence, but they almost seem to be an incidental benefit.‘
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