At the recent African Construction Expo, held at Gallagher Estate, Johannesburg, Arup fielded Casey Rutland, a globally recognised Building Information Modelling (BIM) expert, to participate in debates and panel discussions on issues relating to BIM technology.
 
The introduction of BIM technology globally has, over the years, been met with a mixed response. Arup has been at the forefront in the successful application of BIM for their major global projects and has started the process of industry modernisation through embracing new technology.
 
Speaking to delegates attending the ‘BIM Infinity and Beyond’ discussions Rutland commented, “Change can be difficult to embrace and where BIM technology has been introduced, new work processes often need to be developed. To succeed, it needs the total team buy-in and offers the team the ability to work smarter - bringing its own natural rewards. Once the frontload elements have bedded down, efficiencies on future project design with BIM technology are easily identified.
 
“BIM is an exciting and positive way of working that offers many different methods of collaboration on project design. Its success and innovation can best be described as ‘hitting a target with a sniper rifle as opposed to missing with a shotgun’, thereby reducing wastage throughout every stage of a development. Many of the BIM criticisms have been at the initial implementation of the software phase in consultancies. The training can be intense and intimidating but none of these challenges are insurmountable and the benefits are immense,” concluded Rutland.
 
BIM is a virtual prototype of any development becoming a reference for better construction, and to prove their point Arup successfully designed a complete virtual human body, along the lines of a project development using BIM. In 2015 Arup introduced a ‘BIM Maturity Measure Tool’ that will measure the maturity and level of success of BIM implementation. This BIM Maturity Measure model enables assessments to be made based on how well different projects have been completed, with scope for comparing the statistics collected.