Alberto Sikaffy
CMGT 263
Professor Paul
11/17/14

Building Information Modeling

Building Information Modeling (BIM) is an intelligent model-based process that provides insight to help you plan, design, construct, and manage buildings and infrastructure. BIMs are files that can be exchanged or networked to support decision-making about a place. Businesses and Individuals use BIM software to construct and maintain physical infrastructures from water, wastewater, electricity, bridges, ports, apartment buildings, schools, warehouses and much more. The term “Building Information Model” was first documented in a paper written by Van Nederveen and Tolman (1992), from TU Delft in the Netherlands, although the concept of BIM has existed since the 1970s.

The US National Information Model Standard Project Committee has the following definition for BIM: “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”

Before BIM, traditional building designs were largely reliant upon two-dimensional drawing. BIM has facilitated this process augmenting the three primary spatial dimensions width, height, and depth. With BIM we now have time as a fourth dimension and cost as a fifth dimension. BIM design tools allow extraction of different views from a building model for drawing production and other uses. BIM facilitates the communication between the design team, the contractor and the owner. BIM allows the design team to hand virtual information model to the contractor and subcontractors permitting them to add/change discipline-specific data to the single shared model. This helps reduce the loss of information when