BIM&CO interviews Eric Lamendour, BIM & Digital Solutions Director for ENGIE, on BIMWorld Munich
BIM&CO : What is BIM for ENGIE ?
Eric Lamendour : BIM totally fits ENGIE strategy. For us, BIM is a way to support ENGIE global and integrated offerings from design to facility management and renovation. And the key for us is to manage the data throughout the lifecycle of the projects.
BIM&CO : What are the main difficulties or challenges to overcome to broadly use BIM within a company like ENGIE ?
Eric Lamendour : First, on a market level, we need to bring BIM at a global level such as in Public Private Partnership or energy performance contract. The other BIM challenge with BIM is make collaboration for real. It’s a challenge for everyone. BIM is collaborative by definition but it’s not always a reality. ENGIE wants to roll out BIM processes throughout the company. BIM will affect all of our skills and practices such as maintenance or installation. We will transform our business by adding a strong data component to each part of our business.
To do so, our main challenge is to train our people. We will work on training with our ENGIE University. Of course we deliver technical training for Revit and other BIM software. But we also need training for our middle management, to make BIM processes a reality. And to make digital transformation a reality thanks to BIM.
BIM&CO : How much does it cost for you to go BIM?
Eric Lamendour : Of course, everyone think of the costs of software licenses, interoperability, libraries… but actually for us, these costs are already there so it’s mainly managerial choices. To question everything we do in our everyday life of business and choose the BIM way. So we need to train people, manage our data, put processes in place, agree on BIM compliant architectures… To drive this change, we created two years ago a Key Program, dedicated to drive change, train people, set common platforms, create an ecosystem of technology partners and share best practices.
BIM&CO : an example of a project using BIM ?
Eric Lamendour : For ENGIE, BIM is key all along the lifecycle of projects. Indeed, the life after the commissioning represents 75% of the costs of a building. We have worked with the British Library in London on a renovation project. ENGIE used scan2BIM to model the existing building in order to do asset verification, energy simulations and operational management.
Eric Lamendour, BIM & Digital Solutions Director for ENGIE