Independent Content Creators

Sensing that the emergence of BIM was creating a demand for content skills, a number of service companies began providing outsourcing for:

• Total project BIM modeling for architects and contractors from 2D design files
• BIM content libraries for architects and contractors that can be reused on multiple projects
• BIM objects of building products for BPMs

Many of these service companies were existing CAD and BIM resellers, or were established outsourcers of CAD services to architects and contractors. Many leverage lower cost offshore labor and some are actually headquartered overseas. As this process has matured, the requirement to coordinate closely for successful outsourcing has given rise to a hybrid model known as blend-shoring, where project management and client liaison is handled locally with U.S. staff, but actual production takes place overseas.

Entrepreneurial architects are also leveraging their BIM experience to develop a new source of revenue by providing BIM content creation as a direct service to BPMs. Several are citing this as a core capability on their firm websites, offering to help make sure the manufacturer's product lines are compatible with BIM technology from the end-user's perspective, thereby generating a competitive advantage for those products.

This view of a BIM model shows a generic window system where one pane of glass has been updated as a specific manufacturer's product. Image courtesy of DeMichele Group

 

Integrated BIM Content for Multiple Products

BIM is creating a demand for product and material information to be accessible across full building systems and entire buildings. According to Roger Grant, "The goal of having a model is to represent the building and how it performs so we can better simulate performance in advance of physical implementation." The National Institute of Building Sciences has devoted a comprehensive website to this subject, called The Whole Building Design Guide (http://www.wbdg.org/), the goal of which is to "create successful high-performance buildings by applying an integrated design and team approach."

This trend is driving demand for BIM content that represents ever-larger subsets of whole building information, which in turn requires integrated information about many products. Several sources are emerging to serve this need.

Building Product Distributors

Some building product distributors are becoming involved in creation and distribution of BIM content by making multi-component systems of BIM objects that represent multiple products that they carry, like a complete ceiling system with grid, tiles, lights, etc., from manufacturers they represent.

The objects are a hybrid of generic and proprietary, allowing them to be generic for an architect or contractor to put in the model initially, but easily updated to represent one of the proprietary products carried by that distributor based on pricing and approvals. The users benefit because the graphical and non-graphical data for the whole system is in the model so they don't have to deal with individual products. The distributors benefit because final selections are intended to be made from within their line of proprietary products.