National 2016 BIM survey results

The results will not be a surprise to many in the industry, but the positive news is that, five years on from the inception of the strategy, awareness of BIM now stands at 96%. The current adoption of BIM is at 54%, up from 48% last year, with 86% of those respondents who are aware of BIM expecting to be using it by this time next year and 97% within five years. Encouragingly, 73% agree that BIM is the future of project information and 75% understood they needed to use BIM for public sector work. The problem seems to stem around being ‘BIM ready’. 41% admitted to not understanding what they had to do to comply with the BIM mandate, with 28% feeling they lack skills and knowledge, and confidence. Just 37% of construction professionals said they had used BIM models from the start of a project to its very end and only 16% had passed on a model to those responsible for the management of a building. There was also widespread agreement (65%) that BIM is not yet standardised enough, with fewer people overall using the standards that have been created than have adopted BIM. Commenting on this year’s survey Adrian Malleson, Head of Research, Analysis & Forecasting at NBS, said: “We believe this survey provides the most comprehensive analysis of the state of BIM within UK construction at a pivotal moment in its development. Overall, the findings suggest that the Government’s strategy seems to be working and that its BIM mandate for publicly-funded work will go on to influence work in the private sector. “The extent to which it does and the pace at which this happens will be predicated on companies and individuals acquiring the necessary skills and knowledge to open up new ways of working. Reliable and readily available sources of information are out there so for those construction professionals looking to become more confident about BIM, help is at hand.” The free-to-download report is available from www.thenbs.com/knowledge/national-bim-report-2016-summary