This year I had several discussions with persons working for construction companies. They shared their BIM dreams and tried to explain them the PLM benefits and basics as they are much alike. The challenge in these discussions was that each of us comes from a complete different background. The word PLM does not resonate well outside product-centric companies. In project-centric companies, people tend to focus more on the tools they are using, instead of the overall business process. Construction companies and EPC companies in Oil & Gas always had a project-centric approach, and for them every project is unique.
Ten years ago
AECbytes.com published in 2004 the chart below, demonstrating the construction industry is lagging behind in productivity compared to other industries.
You find a link to the full article here.
Now it is BIM
It is an old graph, and I haven’t seen a more recent one. However, I guess the trend has not changed significantly. What has changed is that construction companies are now talking about BIM. BIM meaning Building Information Model, a term which has a history with Autodesk. Read the wiki news about BIM. There are many interpretations of BIM. One of the formal definitions is:
Building Information Modeling (BIM) is a digital representation of physical and functional characteristics of a facility. A BIM is a shared knowledge resource for information about a facility forming a reliable basis for decisions during its life-cycle; defined as existing from earliest conception to demolition.
This is a high-level definition, and BIM is characterized as a shared knowledge resource. Is it a 3D Digital model ? Is it a kind of DMU (Digital Mock-Up) ? Is it a Building Lifecycle environment ? There is the word “life-cycle” in the definition.
Why BIM?
I noticed many vendors and consultants in this industry talk about what is BIM. It is rare to find quantified values for implementing BIM. You find exactly the same values as PLM brings to manufacturing companies. Better decisions, managing complex constructions and projects, early decisions that save costs later, etc.
Governments have been pushing BIM to the construction industry (both for the civil and building industry) as they believe this is a way to improve quality and better manage time and costs. And as they are usually the big spenders, the leading construction firms have to adapt to these standards to get these contracts.
Would any construction company begin with BIM without being pushed?
In product-centric companies, the global competition and the consumer are driving the need for PLM. Margins are under pressure, and they need to be competitive to stay in business. The construction industry is not (yet) that much driven by global influence and the choice of consumers.
The chart below illustrates the BIM ambition in the UK. At this time, companies are entering level 2, and they struggle to understand what is the impact for them to be at BIM Level 2. I am sure other countries have their own and similar roadmap.
The diagram illustrates the same path which other industries have been going through in the past twenty years.
BIM Levels and PDM / PLM
BIM level 0 is focused on managing CAD, in the other industries this was the time that single disciplines managed their own CAD data. There was no sharing at that time.
Level 1 is focusing on managing 2D and 3D CAD together much similar to what in other industries is done with a PDM system. The PDM system manages in one environment the 2D and 3D data. This is still as a departmental solution but could provide in one environment information from different disciplines. Here, you find all suppliers from 3D CAD systems having their PDM solution, not focusing on a core 3D Model
Level 2 is about sharing 3D BIM models for different disciplines to support 4D (construction planning based on 3D) and 5D (construction planning based on 3D planning and costing integrated). This is what in other industries, primarily automotive and aerospace, was considered as the early days of DMU (Digital Mock Up) and PLM. Dassault Systemes and Siemens are leading here and historically CATIA has been the base for the 3D Model.
BIM Level 3 is what can be found currently in the asset centric industries (Energy, Nuclear, Oil & Gas) where working from a virtual plant model all disciplines are connected through the whole lifecycle. This is the domain that I have been advocating in previous posts, promoting PLM concepts and capabilities.
For example read: PLM for Asset Lifecycle Management.
Apparently the construction industry is still in the early phases of BIM Level 3. I would compare it to teenage sex; they all talk about it, but nobody does it. Or Hollywood BIM as Antonio Ruivo Meireles calls it in his AECbytes article: “Say “NO!” to Hollywood BIM”.
Antonio talks about the BIM implementation at Mota-Engill. Briefly touching a common topic for PLM implementations: “People and Cultural Change”. However, most of the implementation report was focused on tools, where even Excel and Visual Basic play a role.
Tools or Platform ?
And this is the point where construction companies could learn from other industries. They have discovered (or are still discovering) that Excel and Visual Basic are like soft drugs. They take away the pain, but they do not provide the solution in the long term. Instead of that, legacy Excels start piling up in directories, and the Visual Basic code becomes the domain of an enthusiastic expert (till this expert moves to another company or retires). The risk is ending up with a legacy environment so hard to change that a costly revolution is needed at a certain moment.
Construction companies are still investing in selecting a set of tools/applications, each with their own proprietary data and format. And they use customizations or standardized information carriers, like the COBie spreadsheets, to exchange information between partners and disciplines. This is already a giant step forward, as COBie forces companies to focus on mandatory and standard content, required at specific stages of the lifecycle instead of searching for it when it is actually needed.
Somehow the COBie approach is similar to the early days of PLM, where companies forced their disciplines to save information in the PLM system (as it became imperative). In these departments and disciplines the work and interaction did not change so much as before they had the PLM system. The cultural change here was that designers and engineers had to enter more data upfront for higher quality downstream.
An intermediate conclusion might be that construction companies follow the same direction as early PLM. Standardizing the data (model) to have a common understanding between stakeholders. Construction companies might not want to implement a PLM system as ownership of data is unclear as compared to manufacturing companies every discipline or department in PLM might be another company in the construction industry.
Now let’s look into the future
The movie below from Airbus describes the current way of working in a multidisciplinary, multi-partner, multi-location online system. Airbus calls it their DMU. Please before continuing reading look at this movie as the concept is crucial
I want to highlight two statements in this movie.
Russ Brigham @ 5:39 talking about suppliers not participating to the DMU:
“They will be making decisions on out of date data or even incorrect data”
And @ 7:11
“DMU is a mind-set …….”
I am aware that the aerospace industry is not directly comparable to the construction industry, there are commonalities from which the construction industry can learn:
- Working on a single, shared repository of on-line data (the DMU)
A common data model – not only 3D - It is a mind-set.
People need to share instead of own data - Early validation and verification based on a virtual model
Working in the full context - Planning and anticipation for service and maintenance during the design phase
Design with the whole lifecycle in mind (and being able to verify the design)
Data ownership ?
For the construction industry, the current difficulty might be that none of the parties involved wants to invest in owning the data. For Airbus, it is clear. As the manufacturer of the airplane, they remain responsible for the information throughout the whole lifecycle.
For a construction, this might be different. The owner might be totally disconnected from the construction and the operations, therefore, not willing to promote or invest in the DMU approach.
However, the owner should realize that it is not about ownership but about facilitating on-line collaboration around a construction from the initial concept phase till maintenance and even decommissioning, connecting all the stakeholders. The benefits better decisions at each stage of the lifecycle leading to lower failure costs and waste in materials, resources and time. The construction industry still accepts too high failure rates compared to the manufacturing industry. And as at the end the owner/operator spends most of these costs, they should be interested in this approach.
Major construction companies responsible for the project execution and control might want to invest in a PLM platform, allowing them to execute projects better, learn from other connected projects and create a solid base for maintenance contracts
My dream and wish for 2014 for the construction industry: Focus on the next step of integrating data on a PLM backbone instead of standardizing interfaces between applications. It is the future mind-set proven in other industries.
Jos Voskuil's Weblog 
15 comments
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December 28, 2013 at 7:14 am
Denis Morais (@DenisMoraisX)
I found this article very informative and I thank you for that.
From reading this I was getting the feeling you believe PLM is ahead of BIM. For the record I do not disagree nor do I agree. I am still trying to understand the difference or at least the origins of the two as they seem to be on a collision path.
I know PLM has been around longer than BIM (at least this is my understanding) but it does not necessarily mean BIM should/will follow the same path as PLM. They can endup at the same destination with taking a different road.
I am definitely more involved with organizations which are implementing, or at least trying to implement PLM efficiently and it always seems there are more disasters (a slight exaggeration) than there are successes. From the little that I do hear about BIM, I hear much more successes than failures.
From the “BIM” projects I have heard they do not only focus on the 3D model but also the data to give the 3D model life (time, cost, etc.). They definitely seem to focus more on data than process but could this simpler model compared to PLM be why they can be successful? The Airbus DMU sounds much more like BIM(more Data-centric) vs. PLM(more process-centric).
Thanks for the great post again it really got me more confused (which is a good thing).
Denis – first of all thanks for sharing your confusion.
For me, it demonstrates I did not make my point clear enough. To answer your points: Yes I think PLM is ahead of BIM when it comes to historical experience. As you have noticed implementing PLM seems to lead to difficulties, which I think must appear when you implement PLM. The reason: PLM forces a company to work in a different manner. It is not a tool that you install and connect to the users.
I have written several posts about the relation between PLM and business change, so I won’t repeat it here. BIM is currently in the stage of discovery of collaboration. Meaning no high expectations yet, however, not touching the real complexity of data sharing yet either. From reports about BIM trials, I learned that there are many issues still about classification and standardization of data. All goes well if you stay within one vendor´s suite of products.
In a multi-vendor / multi-discipline environment, it is not mature yet. We know from other industries you cannot force partners and suppliers to work with a single vendor suite, although the vendor might dream about that – see automotive and aerospace experiences.
People always get confused when they see a PLM demo, most of the time because the metadata is boring to demo. If you look at the Airbus video, it looks like it is all 3D. However just imagine how the 3D becomes visible in their environment. Is everyone using the same CAD system ? Probably No. Is everyone working with the right version ? Probably Yes, because the PLM in the background makes sure the latest and validated data is connected to the DMU. All the other related information is also there, but you would switch of the movie if you see all that boring stuff (versions, status, relations, …)
To conclude, as I do not want to write a blog post in this comment. BIM should learn from lessons learned from PLM. Old PLM has the same symptoms as BIM – people connecting applications with a lot of enthusiasm, I think they should focus on sharing data on an information backbone (a PLM infrastructure) and connect and use the applications that work on that infrastructure. Currently BIM has no infrastructure only interfaces defined.
I hope this clarified a little, and I will keep the topic on the agenda for a future update.
Best regards, Jos
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December 28, 2013 at 9:46 pm
Denis Morais (@DenisMoraisX)
I appreciate the clarification.
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December 28, 2013 at 10:27 am
amicus98
Hey Jos, great post hope it stimulates good conversation in 2014
Thanks Tom – agree there is much to talk as the topic is not so easy as it looks like. Happy New Year !
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December 29, 2013 at 2:46 pm
Henk Jan Pels
Hello Jos, nice surprise to see your blog on BIM-PLM.
I have been active in this area since, some 10 years ago, I got involved in the post-master Architectural Design Management Systems (ADMS) program at Eindhoven University of Technology. In parallel to my academic PLM activities, I teach BIM principles and coach BIM related graduation projects in AEC companies in the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany and Austria. From this background I like to give some comments on you blog.
The first publication on BIM seems to be from 1992, while the first EDM applications came to the market around 1987. Although being roughly the same age, my experience is that PLM is far more developed than BIM. A video like the Airbus one as you show in your blog (which I immediately forwarded to some BIM-colleagues, because it shows so splendidly the PLM idea), could not be made from any past or current BIM based construction project. I have seen some reports on successful BIM cases in prestigious buildings like museums and theaters where complex shapes could only be realized using 3D modeling.
When looking at BIM software offerings, Autodesk Revit is currently dominating the market. However, comparing its functionality to a high-end PLM system, it offers mainly shared 3D-modelling, but I have not yet found significant support for version and status management, work flow, BOM management etc. that are essential in PLM. Also their PLM360 cloud offering is merely a document management system. In our projects on BIM introduction I have found more reluctance and resistance than enthusiasm. Where BIM software has been applied, it was not integrated in the process, but used as a kind of parallel activity to maintain a model on basis of traditional documentation delivered by the participating parties. It appears to be very difficult to force all parties to work directly in the shared model.
One obvious reason for slower acceptation is there are no global players the size of automotive and aerospace industry that can afford large investments in software and that can enforce the use of standards on partners in the chain. However, an even stronger factor is the lack of a real drive for productivity improvement. One cause is the lack of global competition in AEC, but more important is that a building is not regarded as a cost, but as a real estate investment. This means that the cost of building does not matter, as long as it meets the expected market value. Thus even the customer, the future owner of the building, has no real interest in lower prices. Even stronger: a large part of the building stock is owned by a rather small group of real estate investors. Lowering construction cost would cause a decrease of value of their current stock, so they have a strong interest in obstructing any real BIM initiative. Of course they will not say so openly, so what you see is many BIM demonstration projects with public funding, which result in symposia that report great success, but do not result in real adoption of BIM practices. An evident effect is that it is very difficult to explain the value of BIM to the construction partners. Each partner traditionally is paid a percentage of the total building sum. If you propose to reduce cost with 5% they regard this as a 5% reduction of their income. This means that BIM will only work in new contracting models.
BIM could develop successfully in areas where real estate value is not relevant for the owner, like in hospitals, schools, government buildings and infrastructure projects like roads and bridges. A new hospital (Meander, Amersfoort, the Netherlands) recently has been developed with integral use of BIM to an extent where even the final delivery inspections where performed on basis of the digital 3D-BIM model. The architect reported substantial savings on failure cost.
Another interesting development is that today government requires the application of Systems Engineering (SE) in bids for large construction projects. The motive is to realize traceability of requirements, but there is also the effect that SE requires explicit engineering process definitions which in a next step can be used to integrate BIM in the process in order to realize further cost and lead time reduction.
Concluding I believe in BIM as an important development, which is very similar, but lagging behind to PLM. BIM can learn from PLM, but also PLM can learn from BIM, because of the strongly dispersed structure of the AEC industry. I am looking forward to continuation of this discussion.
Henk Jan Pels
Henk hello, thank you for your additional blog post extending the picture – enough to reflect on and you bring many points into the discussion that I was planning to address in one of my upcoming posts (if time permits). I am looking forward to discuss the topic futhermore. Berlin perhaps ? Best regards Jos
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December 31, 2013 at 6:59 pm
Harmen van der Tempel
Hi Henk,
thank you very much for these remarkable remarks. I think your analysis of the market is spot on. May I suggest to rename BIM to PLM-AEC just to avoid an unnecessary and none winner strife between PLM and BIM which doesn’t make any sense at all?
The AEC-market has a lot to gain if they would use lessons learned within the Aerospace and Automotive Industry over the last 40 years. They seem to cruise on ‘learning by doing’ their own AEC way but are not sufficient aware of developments like Odette of VDA (Vereinigte Deutsche Automobilindustrie) in Germany where the complete German Automotive Industry exchange their data on that one platform correctly for probably 30 years or longer already.
Of course AEC is different to Aerospace and Automotive but there are many corresponding aspects to learn from like DMU (Digital Mock Up). Which AEC-company is willing to reduce failure costs in order to perform World Class? The AEC market is usually complaining their margins but a value adding focus on their Design, Engineering, Procurement and Construction processes has not yet taken off due to reasons you mentioned.
Hopefully this will change soon. Which company will globally be the first? Arabtec? Because of the huge development programmes within UAE like Abu Dhabi 2030 or somewhere else?
Best regards,
Harmen van der Tempel
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December 31, 2013 at 8:19 pm
Denis Morais (@DenisMoraisX)
Great information. This is becoming the best post on BIM and PLM I have read.
I was especially interested in the comment:
”
Even stronger: a large part of the building stock is owned by a rather small group of real estate investors. Lowering construction cost would cause a decrease of value of their current stock, so they have a strong interest in obstructing any real BIM initiative.
”
This political and financial obstacles are very interesting and very real. As with any technology, solution or strategy there always seems to have these obstacles. To be aware of them is very important.
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January 7, 2014 at 4:50 pm
Paul
I believe BIM has been mandated for a couple of new, large infrastructure projects in the UK – Crossrail being one of them. What depth of BIM that will drive out remains to be seen – I can see the architects using it as they have been CAD literate for many years (Laing O’Rourke, Arup etc) but how far down into the ‘feet on the ground’ sub-contractors it goes is a different question.
I persued PLM for construction several years ago and one objection raised was the single-project nature of these organisations – a project team comes together for maybe 1-3 years and then separates. There aren’t the long-term projects/organisations that the defence/auto companies have so the ROI is much more difficult. Obviously big infrastructure programmes do have the longevity and the ongoing operation is borne by the same people (government) so perhaps they’ll ‘see the light’ and drag the AEC industry into the 21st Century as regards data management.
Thanks for your feedback and you bring in an interesting point that I have experienced too. Where the value of a BIM infrastructure should be benificial for all projects, most of the big construction companies focus their data management activities per project, and build their teams per project. Usually because data management is budgetted per project based on the customer requirements – this blocks a general change and improvement process in these companies.
Best regards Jos
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January 14, 2014 at 10:20 pm
Dilip Purohit
Jos, this is a great article and you have really done a great job by talking about both domains in a great amount of details. I have been exposed to BIM during some of my engagements, and I think there are some fundamental differences between BIM and PLM. One such difference is BOM management. It is a continuous and evolving process in PLM when it comes to keeping all the three BOMs ( EBOM, MBOM, and SBOM) in sync whereas I am not sure if BIM cares for managing such synchronization as a continuous process. In PLM, it is always about product development and innovation whereas in BIM, it is more about project management and execution.
Thanks Dilip for your feedback. I think it is crucial in the information transfer to add another structure which connects all the BOM. In plant and process engineering this is often called the functional structure or logical structure, defining the system view of the plant (could be building). As the functional structure usally does not change during the lifecycle, this is the placeholder to connect all.
As I noticed there is a vivid discussion around BIM and PLM, I plan to publish a new post to explain the differences between PLM and BIM – as it is clear for me – they look similar but have different business needs
Best regards
Jos
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January 15, 2014 at 4:43 pm
Youhey
Great post and great comparison. I also enjoyed the comments. Thanks a lot.
The similarities of PLM and BIM are so fundamental that if we can develop a system with flexible data-model/ back-end and also a front-end divided in several layers (and modules), we have even the possibility to use the solution in both environments.
It needs however news way of seeing data-models and new approaches by integrating modern technologies like semantic web technologies. With the same back-end logic, we can offer various front-ends for different groups with different needs!
P.S.: These are not just some fancy ideas. I ‘m writing a dissertation in this topic!
Best
Yousef hello, Thanks for your feedback – i fully agree we have to look at it from a different way to manage data models (different from classical PLM). It is for sure an area to write a dissertation. Keep us informed.
Best regards,
Jos
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January 15, 2014 at 9:33 pm
Youhey
Thank you Jos,
It is a while since I started my research in this area and hopefully soon a paper will be out about the proposed concept and the achievements (this summer).
You will for sure get a copy of it and I would highly appreciate your precious feedback. If you find it appropriate, you may also write in your blog about it.
Kind regards,
Yousef
Looking forward – Jos
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January 15, 2014 at 10:22 pm
Henk Jan Pels
Hello Youhey,
If you are writing a thesis on BIM/PLM, I am very much interested, so if you would like me to comment on your work, I would be happy to do so.
Henk Jan Pels
Guys – you are connected now – success
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January 16, 2014 at 7:21 pm
Youhey
Hi,
Thank you for your interest in my dissertation and research area. I would be for sure more than happy to have your comment on my dissertation and work.
My research is divided in some topics. Some main topics are
-first “new approach of Knowledge Management via PLM”,
-second “developing a concept to increase the flexibility of data models and back-end framework”
-and third “considering multi-layer front-end framework”.
This three issues help to convert a PLM to an XLM (x can be anything!). It means, my research is not exactly related to BIM, but as a case study it can be used to test the hypotheses and show its strengths and weakness.
Therefor I would appreciate, if we can discuss the topic as my research progress. As soon as my concept tests and analysis is done, I will contact you. First you will receive the papers and then we can have some conversations via Skype or better I will drive to your office in the beautiful city Eindhoven. We are just 97 km away from each other ;).
P.S.: I will write you an email, so that you have also my email address. My Google+ profile is also available.
Greetings from Duisburg,
Yousef
Yousef / Henk-Jan – as per mail you are now connected / Jos
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June 16, 2014 at 6:51 pm
colin
Joe, great article. The biggest issue i believe is the fact that you highlighted in the article. Who owns the data backbone. The actual project is only around for 3 years or so, maybe longer for a major infrastructure project like cross rail. But the actual asset is around for many years. So why would the construction company fork out on a large infrastructure to populate the data. This would be a great opportunity for a Saas application, as the cost of ownership can be passed to different entities during the buildings lifecycle.
Another issue with PLM is that they have the wrong terminologies and the stakeholders don’t get it as they don’t use the PLM nomenclature.
Thanks Colin – fully agree with your comments. Question remains who wants to own the data in the future? A service company ?
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June 19, 2014 at 11:04 pm
bmahe
Hi BIMers,
Indeed a very interesting conversation.
I’m surprised IFC has not been mentioned at any stage of this exchange ! To my understanding IFC is likely to play a significant role in the potential success of BIM as it allows construction partners to build a building DMU without using the same BIM tool. What BIM & IFC do not currently permit is the management of all the exchanges taking place during a construction project (access rights, versions, modifications, validation workflow, …); this is where PLM or simplified PLM can bring real value.
Agree. In order to exchange data between applications and a lifecycle platform an open standard is required. For the building industry there is no discussion this should be based on IFC. Perhaps that´s why nobody mentioned it ? Best regards Jos
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January 5, 2015 at 2:50 pm
David Thomson
Hi all,
wow there is so much to say on this topic but , like many others here this is a great collection of the current thinking.
I have worked in PLM and more recently BIM for the last 15 years in the Shipbuilding industry Aerospace and Automotive and most recently construction/AEC and agree that conceptually PLM and BIM are trying to achieve the same things, but as one of the readers commented they have come at the problem from different angles due to the way the industries work.
As the airbus video nicely points out the manufacturing industries usually get the most benefit from PLM when a single tool set is used. ( I was involved in the 380 and that was messy with two PLM systems and many CAD systems 🙂 )
However this is harder to achieve in the AEC/Plant industries due to the vary major contractual boundaries, not just in the project phase but into the operational phase. For this reason BIM has focused on processes and end goals, regardless of the software and tools that support the individual players processes. In my experience with PLM (mostly Dassault and Siemens) it was more of a fight to simply get everything into one massive database.
The current thinking from Jos and Oleg seems to support a more federated approach where information standards, class libraries and workflows need to be centrally managed but the actual data itself can be mastered in any appropriate authoring application. Which seems to support the imminent use of a SaaS approach to the problem.
One other major consideration that has not been mentioned here, but is a favourite of my shipbuilding peers (Denis) is the way that the end product/project is put together. In the manufacturing industries the production line is created to build a product . i.e.. an assembly line. In shipbuilding there is a fixed manufacturing facility but it needs to manufacture a variety of essentially unique products, and in the AEC world there is a different site each time, and maybe a variety of unique manufacturing facilities for each project./site. Therefore things get really interesting in BIM/PLM not at the engineering /design stage but in the construction and manufacturing phase.
A similar parallel can be drawn when looking at the operational phase of products as compared to assets. Although we all know these is a lot of cross industry rubbernecking going on.
Thanks David for your insights, pointing to some more differences between the PLM and BIM practices due to different business. You might have read my recent post which was a follow up on this one: 2014 The Year the construction industry did not discover PLM. Some more experiences in that post added.
Best regards
Jos
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