Have you ever had to deal with the chaos of outdated 2D drawings, miscommunication on-site, or costly rework that could’ve been avoided? That experience alone gives you a clear understanding of how frustrating traditional project delivery can be. For engineers and design teams under pressure to deliver with precision, accuracy, and speed, relying solely on 2D plans often leads to confusion, coordination gaps, and missed opportunities. That’s why BIM isn’t just another trend, it’s a practical solution to the real-world problems we face every day in construction.
This article breaks down the clear advantages of using BIM over 2D, especially in solving common field challenges. From improving accuracy and collaboration to helping you stay on schedule and within budget, BIM is changing the way we work, and it’s time we talked about how it can change yours too.
This will be a full series of articles on the ROI of BIM for construction, which I encourage you to read and follow closely. After finishing this first article, be sure to scroll down and continue with the rest of the five-part series. Let’s get started with Series Two!
Now, here’s something really interesting.
There’s this researcher who keeps putting out some incredibly powerful stuff. If you just take a moment to focus your eyes on the purple bar, you’ll notice it starts to drop as we move closer to the construction phase. That dip you’re seeing? That’s schedule variation. So here’s the question: if I move to BIM, do I take more time or less? From what the purple shows, BIM actually helps reduce the time, you can clearly see it going down. And when you look at the red bars too, you’ll notice that’s actually 0 to 50% less. I’m taking less time.When we switch to BIM, you can clearly see the trend, there’s more effort required upfront to get your model up and running. But then, the project durations actually start to get shorter, especially during the construction phase, where the reduction can be quite dramatic. A great example is the Endeavour House project, where they saved 10% of the overall schedule, reduced drawing production effort by 18%, and achieved a 99.8% accuracy rate in cost control.
so here’s another one, there’s a lot and barber Architects study and overall when you look at CAD versus Bim overall Savings of 680 hours on this project a 37% reduction now this is one of those categories if you will Design is the category that probably is moves around the most
and Andy you come from a design background that is true luckily we got you enticed over to construction where you so you spread your wings what would you say is your projection looking at this research and going by your experience if you look at the two-dimensional design hours and time is there any difference between CAD 2D and B
yeah absolutely I mean the these numbers I look right to me I I’ve I I’ve drawn by hand I’ve done the cad thing and we’re doing Bim now and there’s definitely I know right and there’s there’s define there’s definitely a big difference and part of that is the technology and part of is the process so is it will there be a difference in in your calculations shall we put some Financial benefit directly during the design phase
Reducing Design Phase Time and Cost with BIM
or does it come later no there’s definitely there’s definitely less time spent in the in the design phase certainly for production what we did find is that some of there SE some of the time that gets spent up front on the Bim out of things is spent by senior people who might not have been engaged as early or as as thoroughly as before but what we find is that the they they spend those hour earlier but they those hours get get
there are savings overall right so with more Senior People earlier making better decisions creating better information in the models but then they they go away and and there is an overall Savings of time okay so let’s talk about requests for information so there are a bunch of studies and and they’re actually
if we look at request for information as starting with a problem or something needing clarifying it could be an error and omission there’s a study that has a category called illogical design and there’s also inconsistency from sheet to sheet but our RFI is a category I’m going to skip that one I just want to mention that RFI is not only an expensive process but it’s very sensitive that that economic impact of having hundreds or thousands of rfis comes in two forms just the process of of resolving those but the impact in terms of when you find them so
what I’m asking Andy now is can you reduce the cost of rfis and looking at the number but also can you move those so that you identify them earlier and you resolve them quickly and easily with a with a modelbased process so Andy Berg is is from this is Andy desan this is another Andy he’s a Advanced Construction thinker and Messa construction is in Cincinnati they did four years of research on a billion dollars worth of their portfolio analyzing what happens when you implement B versus no Bim and the results were pretty dramatic
we’re going to come back to these and change orders but the results in terms of RFI is a 72% reduction in rfis now it was even higher when when the designer created the model but but the 72% refers to when the the contractor develops a construction model from the design
Impact of BIM on RFI Reduction and Performance
input mortensson an award-winning project their performance measurement indicates an 80% reduction in RFIs and construction actually Archer Western part of Walsh came up with 75% reduction in RFIs on a water and wastewater treatment plant we’re going to come back to this one on schedule as well but so 75-80 what’s your thought Andy on you’ve got a 500,000 square foot office it’s a Hightech biotech office you’ve got $250 million worth of work you got to push through design and construction what would you expect ordinarily in terms of RFIs I mean I’d think you’re looking at a couple of thousand easy 2,000 RFIs so it’s almost 1,000 RFIs per 100 million and if we you may have a number that you use in your own calculations in your own company when you calculate the average cost of these but around the world what I encourage people to do is just think about the people that are engaged you find a clash you find an error you find something that needs clarification it surfaces in the subcontractor level and in the field it goes to the subcontractor it goes to the general contractor then to the design team the design may involve a few members of the team answer gets developed documented then it goes all the way back to the field the whole process may cost how much even for a no cost RFI right somebody asked a question and you had to go around a loop and come back it I mean if you look at people’s time
that’s $1,000 as a conservative number $1,000 per RFI so you would have expected 2,000 RFI and a conservative number is 1,000 bucks a piece so that’s $2 million what’s your number in terms of how much BIM may be saving you then what’s been your experiences have RFIs in number gone down when you go through the all-in BIM process yeah absolutely I mean some of the numbers up here 75% or 80 I can believe that my direct experience was somewhere 50% or maybe a little above that so maybe we’re a little bit more pessimistic about those bigger numbers but it’s 50% still a solid that’s a real number okay so the savings that will put in the calculator then is 2,000 originally expected a 50% reduction so 1,000 reduced RFIs and $1,000 a pop
How BIM Helps Reduce Rework and Improve Project Efficiency
on average okay so we got improved design not really money coming to us from design but money to us as the team doesn’t have to focus on a bunch of errors and omissions that stem from design so this does bring up a question what are those people going to do now that they don’t have problems to solve in fact one superintendent has already announced that the one thing he doesn’t like about BIM is he doesn’t have so many problems to solve that’s where he found his value it’s what he enjoys doing it’s problem solving so if we don’t have so many problems if we don’t have these people running around quite often in
my workshops I have somebody saying well we’re not going to reduce staff what are you going to do with that savings if they’re not running around so what I encourage people to do is to think about calculate the time savings and put value on it so in this case it’s spread out across all the folks that are working on RFIs and there’s a million dollars worth of them running around they don’t have to do anymore either reduce maybe you can get somebody to pay for it but either transform their purpose so it
now focuses on quality or schedule or safety if they can’t be utilized to do something better they can be doing more prefabrication if they can’t be utilized to do something better then go ahead and reduce the staff but if you repurpose that money make sure that your initiative your BIM initiative gets credit for having them do something more valuable and chase down a bunch of unnecessary RFIs so let’s go to change orders now we’ve got better design we have fewer RFIs and now the question is what is happening out there in terms of change orders are there
preventable change orders in the old world that are just not surfacing now what is the experience what does the research tell us research tells us back in 2007 this listed is John Kunza the author he was a co-author I have to get proper citing on this Judy I get the right one but 40% elimination of unbudgeted change now a lot of projects around the world are having at least 5% contingency for construction and a lot of projects have another 5 to 10 for the owner’s contingency in case something goes wrong or in case they change their mind on something
so there will be in that contingency money spent on value added and preventable non-value added change orders but 40% up to 40% from San Diego again this professional engineer somebody who’s very interested in performance measurement and lean construction David Umst San Diego’s experience with BIM the errors and omissions go from 3 with no BIM to 1.1 so one-third of the errors and omissions and more than a 50% reduction in change orders a 52% reduction in change
Estimating Cost Reduction Through BIM-Based Change Order Management
yes correct we’d like to eliminate all 4% that would be 4% $250 million would be $10 million but what is your estimate of what would you like to use in your calculations pre reducing preventable change orders I think again I think 50% I think cutting those in half is a pretty good Mark to be able to hit I would definitely expect that we could reduce that in half so when I get done workshops around the world quite often I say if you want to boil this down to something simple for the team a project objective for B reduce change orders with them in every possible way that you can think of reduce change orders for Bim and Bim will pay for itself the RFIs are a predictive indicator of change orders the design quality is a predictive indicator of change orders the change orders are going to have the Andy Andy’s project would likely have a larger contingency for all the change orders including value added opportunities for the project team but
4% would be set aside for preventable non-value added change orders and the 50% would be that percentage that can be reduced from the two-dimensional mov to Bim so I believe that’s $5 million because 4% of 250 is 10 million and you’re expecting your Bim initiative to actually reduce that from the two-dimensional world in the Bim implementation by 50% just a note on that going as we go forward I can see that the contingency we’re going to hold at the very beginning of the project that number is going to go
down to begin with because we know what we’re going to get from the tool so your team is actually now voluntarily in order to be competitive yes you’re reducing the contingency because market won’t allow it anymore it won’t pay for it right when and having done it recently and now with this sort of similar or same team going forward on another very similar project we know what to expect so that out of the gate
contingency number is going to be lower than what we would have carried previously we don’t that doesn’t really factor into what we’re doing here just a little comment on where this is headed so the way that I see Andy’s culture at Cly as they’re becoming more and more scientific more and more sophisticated zoomed in on this reduce reduction in change orders reduction in contingency reduction in Risk reduction in Risk that’s what it really is right you’ve taken the risk out and this goes back to the UK they’re all excited about the money savings but
they’re really excited about the predictability now these projects okay I think I’d like to go another five minutes but schedule we may have to stop right in the middle of talking about but so the question here is going to be
BIM’s Impact on Construction Scheduling and General Conditions Cost
the what is the direct impact on direct cost not the owner’s opportunity not if this is a hotel this is an office building that is going to be if we can get done early we’re going to start generating revenue so that’s a later question the first question is how much does Bim allow you to if you reduce if you improve design reduce change order does it reduce delays does it improve productivity does prefabrication give you an opportunity to actually reduce schedule and what would be the impact of that the big number in your in your budget
that is going to change your time variable cost in your general conditions so we’ll take a look at General Conditions and the time variable cost that will be staffing equipment that you’re paying by the month all the charges for phone and equipment that are on the job your field office by the month you’ll still have a lot of your general conditions will be fixed your mobilization and so on your setup and tear down will still be the same but if we can save a month or two so let’s talk about your your comparison what’s your benchmark for a project of this size in
Boston this Urban environment in the two-dimensional environment your old duration if you will so for a similar project I can tell you that you have to go back in time go back I’m going to have to set the way back machine if I go back to our last project right so that’s a 24-month construction project and I know what we did that’s design and construction that was construction 24 months of construction right okay so that would be your your Bas you might
have 30 months of construction if you include design and the overlap a 30-month project so the question is what might you have for reduction in duration so that would be design and construct Baseline let’s take a look at what the research is showing us out there in terms of design variation and construction variation or improvement the impact of B this is a water treatment plant M McDonald in the UK actually it’s a UK
company based company but this one is in Pennsylvania their design process enjoyed a 20% savings on design time San Diego reports an improvement on delay so that’s sort of like saying I always get delayed but I don’t get delayed as much so we that’s
Accurate Design Reduces RFIs and Builds Momentum
30 months I think we’re good this is where it becomes cumulative right so you’ve got better information coming out of the design out of the design team so you see that with fewer rfis and since everybody understands the.
Early Project Clarity Minimises Rework and Adds Predictability
Project better earlier you’re going to get less rework maybe there’s some prefab that’s happening as well so I see us beating our original schedule by three months knowing what we’re going to be getting so a 10% improvement from the old world you’ve gotten a very mature Bim team together.
Monthly Project Costs and Opportunities for Reduction
And let’s talk about the savings per month what does that really save me in terms of all those costs so this would be your staffing your rentals you might have a contingency of or general conditions of four five six percent.
Out of that number how much is being spent each month just to be there including yourselves right sure for a project of that size gc’s are going to be that’s 250k a month plus or minus that we’re burning $250,000 of time variable cost that could be reduced if we could just figure.
Out a way to compress the design and construction schedule you’re burning that money and they can go onto a job and start doing the next job and trying to make a profit on the next one but we don’t have to waste time on this project if this is if we can squeeze this.
Down so let’s put $750,000 three months and that includes the direct cost the savings and design and construction does not include the saving it would come from the owner if we can now turn the owner the keys to the owner and get in revenue coming in right.
In the next article, we’ll continue exploring this topic in depth series don’t miss the next article in this series. We’ve only scratched the surface, don’t miss the next part where we dive even deeper into full How BIM Improves Design Clarity, Reduces RFIs, and Saves Up to $750K in Construction Costs While Accelerating Revenue (Series 3)
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