Building Information Modelling

The building industry "is made up of many relatively small businesses that come together on a contract basis for a single project," [Kristine] Fallon [of Kristine Fallon Associates, Inc.] said. "It's all based on ad-hoc partnerships. BIM really changes those relationships, and you need a structure to accommodate that.

Building Information Modelling (BIM) has the potential to offer the Architecture/Engineering/Consulting industry significant benefit. While architectural and engineering artefacts have traditionally been developed through repetitive design and re-design regimes (forcing businesses to often re-create existing artefacts), BIM has the potential to allow partners to evolve shared design artefacts through blueprint stages to fabrication and construction.BIM is a process where digital 3D models created by architects are able to be re-used and extended across all engineering contexts (by each business partner) within a given construction project.
(David Becker, ZDNet)

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