BIM’s Role in Risk Mitigation: Strategies for Success

Building information modeling (BIM), has been touted as a way to deliver a broad range of wins on any construction project. It supports stronger planning and smoother collaboration. It provides a valuable tool teams can handover to owners to support the building through its lifecycle. It also serves as a way to proactively manage risk. 

The way BIM gets used in risk mitigation varies from company to company and project to project. Because the 3D model and its attached processes can be applied in so many different ways, a near-endless number of use cases exist. If a design or construction firm is trying to manage a certain risk, BIM can likely be applied to help. 

That said, using BIM for effective risk mitigation requires a strong model that’s strategically deployed. Just throwing BIM at a problem usually won’t solve it. As a result, stakeholders need to look for reliable, repeatable BIM processes to most effectively offset risk. 

Risk Mitigation Use Cases for BIM

Teams who want to use BIM for risk mitigation can see meaningful improvement by applying the model and its processes in the following ways.

Clash Detection and Resolution

Clash detection is a spatial coordination effort. When teams undertake this in the 3D virtual environment of BIM, it gets easy to see where solids collide or where clearances fall short. In fact, many BIM platforms automate the work of clash detection.

That makes clash detection an effective BIM risk mitigation process at multiple points in any project. When used during design, clash detection builds in constructability checks.

It again proves valuable once specialty contractors are on board. BIM provides a way to compare shop models and coordinate them to a very fine level of detail. 

Throughout the design and construction, built-in or adjacent BIM technology can also give teams a way to track and resolve clashes. 

Scope Creep Prevention

Scope creep is pervasive in the construction industry, and is a leading contributor to cost overruns. 

On design-build projects, latency creates creep. Design might issue a set of drawings, tasking the contractor with pricing them. Even as that pricing effort happens, though, design continues. The next set of issued drawings might require very different quantities. Since it’s not uncommon to go months between design packages, the creep might be significant.

With a model, though, all of this changes. As the design team updates the model, the contractor can regularly review the quantities. Tracking how they change over time helps to keep everyone informed — and ready to move forward. 

Even with a traditional project delivery method, BIM helps teams track quantities and defend against cost overruns due to scope creep. Making a set of drawings readable (e.g., adding annotations and denotations of size) takes time. With a model, all of that data is already built in. That makes it easier for teams to evaluate quantities frequently — and, thanks to BIM software, potentially automatically. Any big changes in key quantities become obvious, and teams can spring into action to manage any adverse effects. 

Improved Communication and Collaboration

Miscommunications on a project can introduce a number of risks, from insufficient alerts about safety hazards to cost overruns due to ordering the wrong material quantities. With BIM, though, all teams can collaborate on a single model — whether that’s a federated model or one created by a single team into which all other stakeholders buy in. 

Either way, because there’s a centralized source of information, it helps to smooth communication and collaboration. Plus, because the model is 3D, it brings people into the conversation who might struggle to read 2D drawings. This is particularly helpful when it comes to owners. 

Safety Hazard Prevention

BIM can prove useful in a number of ways when it comes to preventing injuries on the jobsite. Modeling a dangerous setting, for example, allows people to look at and better understand the hazards in advance. This way, when they experience that setting, they’re well-positioned to avoid risks. 

Teams can also flag hazards in the model, alerting all parties to them. Using the model to plan safe work and virtually conduct safety audits protects workers. 

BIM keeps teams safe in another way, too: by helping teams put quality work in place the first time around. Rework is directly connected to increased injuries. Data suggests that the risks of an accident during rework are one in four. 

In the future, BIM could be even more useful here. If teams get a way to attach incident data to the model, they can identify trends as that data accrues. Much like safety glasses were implemented once enough data was collected about eye injuries, BIM data could help teams identify and implement better hazard prevention measures. 

Reduction of Change Orders — and Resulting Delays and Cost Overruns

BIM gives teams a two-pronged approach to reduce the number of change orders on a project and the cost and schedule creep that often come with them.

First, BIM helps teams proactively plan the project. When used during preconstruction, it validates constructability in the design. It can make it easier to spot problems throughout design, from issues with the initial survey data to infeasibility in design elements.  Resolving roadblocks in the digital space is faster, cheaper and easier than the alternative — and helps to lessen the need for change orders. 

Then, on the jobsite, BIM again serves as a useful change order reduction tool. Because it communicates the overall intent of the design and shows how elements need to fit together, it supports proper installation. By preventing the need for rework, it helps to prevent resulting change orders. 

Regulation and Code Compliance

Every project comes with a set of construction standards, including local building codes. Some BIM platforms can automatically check the model against codes and regulations, flagging any potential problems so teams can correct them. Other solutions won’t allow model elements to be placed out of alignment with code (e.g., a user will be unable to put a sink too close to a toilet). 

As a result, BIM lowers the risk of the project being planned or constructed in a non-compliant way. Because permitting generally adds a hefty chunk to the schedule, avoiding problems here helps mitigate the risk of delays. 

Best Practices in BIM for Risk Mitigation

Like any tool, BIM is only useful when wielded well. To see the best risk mitigation results here, teams should take strides to do the following.

• Evaluate and protect model health.

  Inaccurate data in the model doesn’t just make BIM less useful. It can lead to incorrect work and resulting delays, cost overruns or both. Teams should take the time to validate the data in the model. They should also evaluate if all of the data in the model is truly necessary. A bloated model takes longer to open, burning valuable time — and diminishing buy-in from users. Teams need a clean, trustworthy model to see the best risk mitigation outcomes with BIM.

• Work toward model consistency across projects.

  When model data is healthy and formatted the same way from project to project, teams gain additional ways to offset risk by analyzing data across projects. Identifying areas for improvement — from recurring safety incidents to supply chain problems — helps them see even more risk mitigation gains from their healthy models. When those lessons-learned are incorporated into standard operating procedures (SOP), they become a particularly powerful way to offset risk. 

• Make the right data accessible.

  Construction professionals know the importance of providing the right tool for the job. The model is no different. If a rebar installer comes in and can’t see from the model how far apart to space components of the cage, the model is of very little use to them. BIM needs to deliver the information people need to do their jobs — and that’s particularly true when bringing the model to the field. 

• Standardize contract language.

  If different teams provide different types of BIM data, formatted differently, it’s going to do very little to align the project and mitigate risk. Resources like the National BIM Standard-United States® (NBIMS-US™) from the National Institute of Building Sciences (NIBS) can help teams create standardized language to include in their contracts. As an added benefit, standardized BIM contract language helps offset risk at closeout, too. If the contract clarifies who owns the model and which parties can use it in specific ways, it all but eliminates the risk of disputes here. 

• Manage technology fatigue.

  BIM technologies have been exploding. While more resources might be welcome, the pace at which teams are expected to adopt new tools can be exhausting. Beyond that, the rapidly expanding tech environment lures companies into the common pitfall of assuming a new solution can solve their problems. Actually, though, issues with BIM often lie with the company’s process, not with any specific technology it has chosen to use. To support individual team members in successful, sustainable BIM usage, companies should create BIM SOPs, troubleshooting issues that commonly arise as they create that documentation. 

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Expanding Potential for Risk Management With BIM

BIM has a lot of fairly obvious value-adds, including easier project visualization and clash detection. Using it for risk management, though, requires teams to proactively and strategically engage with the model.

The more they do that, the more risk management will likely unlock. For example, some teams now deploy the model in the field using augmented reality (AR) in an effort to offset risk and support quality work. As BIM-AR use cases expand, it can help to manage some of the most challenging parts of any construction project. Take locating and avoiding strikes of underground utilities as an example. Modeling those utilities and showing teams where they are through AR could make strikes a thing of the past. 

That’s not to say that companies need to use new technology like AR to get risk management benefits from BIM, either. At any stage of BIM maturity, the model offers a place where a wide range of project data lives. Information about estimates, quantities, the schedule, productivity and more can be attached to the model. Because that model serves as a digital representation of the work that was put in place, it’s a valuable postmortem tool. 

When teams take all of the data that exists in models, then aggregate and normalize it, they get a way to understand what they’ve done in the past and predict what they’ll do in the future. For risk identification and mitigation, this is invaluable. 

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