Indian building construction industry has gradually begun utilizing digital solutions and digitalization process for construction workflows. BIM application has been embraced by different sections of the construction value-chain and has seen a significant uptake in the industry.
Market & technological factors enabling BIM implementation
The construction industry’s revival post the COVID-19 lockdown has demanded revised operating standards and procedures across project lifecycle in order to facilitate effective project management focusing on construction site health, productivity & safety. Covid has inadvertently supported the acceleration of technology adoption in building construction industry of India. This is witnessed in the form of increased application of drone technology, AR/VR and Building Information Modelling (BIM) etc., to support remote working capabilities, digital collaboration, data exchange & sharing for insight-driven decision making.
Indian real estate construction companies have been quick to learn best practices based on measures adopted by more developed markets across the world, including sustainable BIM practices and benefits. Recent studies have identified timely project completion within assigned budget as the leading priority cited by these construction companies to embark on digital transformation, other predominant factors included workforce safety and effective risk management during the pandemic. Around 66% of the construction firms in India are presently focusing on such digital transformation techniques to overcome pandemic induced challenges including low productivity & affected margins.
BIM implementation challenges in SMEs & MSMEs
BIM implementation in building construction is largely focused on the plan & design phase of the project lifecycle in Indian real estate market, especially in small & medium-sized projects. Due to underutilization of BIM solutions in design to construction phase, many projects fall prey to mismanagement of workforce, site coordination, resource & material management resulting in increased costs or project delays. In this regard, BIM implementation across the lifecycle becomes imperative for successful project coordination & completion. However, core stakeholders of the building construction industry are faced with formidable challenges in application of BIM solutions.
Geospatial Media had the pleasure of interacting with Parveen Sharma who heads The BIM Engineers (www.thebimengineers.com), a renowned firm which has had the opportunity to work on international BIM implementation projects in countries including the Netherlands, Australia, UK, USA, UAE, Europe, KSA, Singapore etc., as well as in domestic projects within India. During the interview Parveen articulated the three-fold challenge plaguing the adoption of BIM solutions in Indian construction space. These include: identification of experienced & skilled manpower to handle BIM services, expensive software (incl. prerequisite for multi-software platforms), and hardware investment.
“BIM is just not about one or two software, we have to have a balance of all the major BIM platforms from modelling, collaboration, clash detection to clouds..” – Parveen Sharma, CEO. The BIM Engineers.
Speaking on the major hurdle posed by the purchasing power of SMEs & MSMEs when it came to investment in software licenses, he said “BIM is just not about one or two software, we have to have a balance of all the major BIM platforms from modelling, collaboration, clash detection to clouds or the CDE where all the data is stored, collaboration between different design consultants”. Parveen went on to describe the difficulties in identification of experienced & skilled manpower to handle BIM services, in terms of retaining architects & engineers who form the bulk of this manpower due to stiff competition from talent acquisition teams of big corporate companies.
Organizations providing BIM services require sound in-house hardware capabilities to perform complex visualization, rendering and other design computation related to project objectives. Parveen recalled the gradual evolution of hardware requirements for running BIM software, “In old times we used to have 256-512 MB RAM in good quality Pentium i5 computers” he said and went on to add “Now you won’t believe me, just at the back of my office room there are engineers working on systems which have 256 GB of RAM. Most of my engineers are using 128 GB RAM in their computers and those are not desktop computers. Those are more of what we call workstations”.
BIM value proposition for building construction
Parveen provided a brief understanding of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) and American Institute of Architects (AIA) definitions related to stage wise project completion. Under RIBA, Parveen says BIM applications are reliable from the initial A stage which is appointment, then B stage which is design brief, C stage that is the consultancy stage or concept design stage, D stage which is design development, E stage stands for execution of construction document all the way till the L stage which is the as-built or the design completion stage.
In AIA, schematic design (SD), detailed design (DD) & construction documents (CD) denote the relevant building information required for project undertakings. Parveen adds, “In the initial stage of the schematic or concept design, BIM is helping us in defining the exact shape of the building. Because BIM can give you if-n-but scenarios, If my building is 35-storeyed and the shape is octagonal or pyramid how much will be the total area of the building on each floor. Traditionally we have to do lots of calculations and it takes hours and days and sometimes weeks to calculate all the area on a 35 floor tower. With BIM it is available in just one click.”
“..2-2.5% of construction work that we do on site in India get demolished even before the completion of the project..”
Quantity surveying is often faced with challenges in estimating costs during the course of the project, and BIM has become a convenient tool to negate misrepresentation of costs for contractors and other stakeholders. Parveen says “BIM helps in effective planning and better coordination and in turn helps in reducing wastage during construction phase. It also helps in reducing the demolition cost”. He added “I did some research regarding this topic and the outcome of this research is that 2-2.5% of construction work that we do on site in India get demolished even before the completion of the project. So when the project is bigger even the demolition cost turns out to be pretty big.”
Indian Building Construction – BIM Series
Indian Building Construction – BIM is a series of interviews Geospatial Media undertook with leading BIM service providers, end-users and practitioners from leading designers, consultants, contractors & engineers in building construction industry across India. This is the first post of the series in which Geospatial Media had the opportunity to interact with renowned BIM expert, Mr. Parveen Sharma from The BIM Engineers. The series will showcase insights shared by these core stakeholders of the industry with regards to BIM transition factors, BIM workflows, & BIM value propositions to overcome the challenges faced by Indian construction industry.
