How can BIM benefit facilities management?
BIM is certainly changing the way buildings are designed and constructed, but is it changing how they’re operated and maintained? There is a lot of interest in the industry around using building information for FM (facilities management), but how does this really work? Do the benefits of BIM extend to FM? Yes they do. This month’s article focuses on methods for facility managers and FM applications to take advantage of the consistent, coordinated building information that comes from a BIM. Interoperability, FM and BIM In 2004, NIST (the National Institute of Standards and Technology) undertook a study to estimate the efficiency losses in the U.S. capital facilities industry (commercial, institutional buildings and industrial facilities). The study reported that the annual cost (in 2002) associated with inadequate interoperability among computer-aided design, engineering and software systems was $15.8 billion. The study reported that owners and operators shoulder almost two-thirds of th
