Under Construction: A Week in Tech & Innovation
Is BIM Bloated? Robots, Big Money, Quantum Computing, and AI BIM.
On My Mind: Is BIM Bloated?
This week, for various reasons, I’ve been thinking about demand and capacity in the world of BIM and digital.
The key questions I’ve pondered are:
Where is the value add in our role?
Where is the waste?
How many BIM people are in our industry and organisations. And more to the point, roughly how many should we have?
What can we do to add more value and make better use of our BIM pros?
Cost cutting and efficiency are the watchword of a lot of construction businesses at the moment. Whilst civil engineering businesses have generally increasing demand - resulting in resource capacity pressures. So my question is, what’s the right number?
Let’s start by saying that cost is not my preferred measure. The value of a project is a terrible indication of the complexity and volume of information requirements. Unfortunately though, it’s the best I have as I look to review things at an industry level.
Value adding
BIM is often seen by many in the industry as an added task (we’ll come back to ‘bolt on’ later). It’s seen as something that creates work rather than creating value. It’s still often viewed as the 3D model.
To improve the perception of BIM professionals we must improve the perception of the value BIM generates for projects and processes.
Ultimately BIM is collaboration and communication. I’ve written a few times about the fragmented nature of our industry and its projects. BIM is one mitigation for fragmentation. It brings parties together in a digital and physical setting to coordinate and understand risk, opportunity, and impact. This is critical to project success. Done well, it generates significant value.
Therefore, competent BIM professionals carry out a number of value adding activies in their roles. These include:
Enhanced collaboration through facilitating a centrally connected foundation for information sharing and coordination between all stakeholders. Leading to better decision making and error reduction.
Improved communication by modelling or facilitating the production visualisations of the projects and its parts. This enables a better, more widespread, understanding of the design. It also facilitates clash detection and resolution throughout the design and build process. This leads to right-first-time delivery as clash and constructability issues are solved ahead of physical construction.
Increased team productivity as tasks such as QTO and production of schedules can be made easier or automated altogether. Designers can also reuse model objects in their design - making it more efficient. This leads to increased capacity within the project team to focus on more critical activities.
Better outcomes are made possible by BIM in:
Safety: Enhanced collaboration and improved communication should result in improved safety in the building and operation phases.
Sustainability: BIM helps to analyse and optimise built asset performance, enabling the selection of sustainable materials and systems, and measures environmental impact for impactful decision making.
Prefab and Modular Construction: Providing accurate models and information enables off-site manufacturing. Which in term can provide safety, sustainability, quality, and efficiency benefits in the right scenarios.
Sources of waste
Of course it’s not all good. We are often frustrated by the effort required to bring BIM and information management successfully to projects. Here are some examples:
Delivering too much information or detail as requirements and standards are bloated. Waste is often baked in when the requirements themselves are not representative of the actual recipients needs.
Rework due to inaccurate and incomplete information or models is also a problem. Models and information need to reflect the actual approach and then need to be fully coordinated. If not the potential time and cost savings in design and build processes are negated. Errors may not make it on to site but someone has to spot and fix them, all increasing non-value adding tasks.
Excessive processing and management of information and models is a source of waste. Either through poor training or clunky workflows, projects can often find themselves hampered rather than helped.
Lack of interoperability between software means that there is a manual element (with the risk of error) to moving information between systems. This hinders the collaboration benefit and creates inefficiencies.
Managing behavioural change is a hidden waste. It is often up to the BIM person(s) on a project to drive the other team members to engage with and make use of the processes and tools. This can take time, and if unsuccessful reverses a significant amount of the benefits and value of BIM itself.
Revenue Contribution
Revenue contribution is effectively the revenue per head of a team or profession. It’s a crude measure as it doesn’t take into account a number of factors including industry variations, external factors (fluctuations, economy), focusses on revenue not value, and ignores the fact that different roles have different impacts on revenue.
But as I said earlier, this is the best I have available when reviewing external data.
To understand revenue contribution we must know how many BIM professionals are working in the projects/business unit/organisation/industry. This in itself is difficult when looking at external businesses and a whole industry.
Regardless I pushed on and reviewed the data I have available.
Method Employed
I used LinkedIn advanced search to find the number of individuals. Search terms used (in the title field) were “BIM”, “Information Manager”, “Digital Construction”, “Digital Engineer”. I looked at this in the UK, at UK based Tier 1 Contractors, a UK based Specialist Contractor, and Tier 1 Consultants operating in the UK. I’ve decided to keep these companies anonymous.
I applied a correction given that I’ll have missed some individuals on LinkedIn, and not everyone is on there. This is a difficult correction to judge, if I go too high or too low then the metric could be heavily skewed. I decided on a range of 1.25 to 1.75. If anyone is aware of an actual survey for the number of BIM professionals then please do let me know.
I found the reported revenue for the UK construction industry and for the companies examined from 2023 year end reporting.
I then divided revenue by number of people. This give me the revenue contribution per person. Again I’ve used a range for this.
Results
Review
What we see is interesting. In general, the Tier 1 Contractors BIM staff have a significantly higher revenue contribution than consultants. One explanation for this is that the consultants have many more ‘BIM’ staff. Revenues between all Tier 1’s are within a reasonable range of revenue, therefore it is also likely that consultants have to turnover many more concurrent contracts/projects to make their revenue, necessitating a larger BIM workforce. Finally, we know that design modelling demand is high in consulting businesses, with much less demand in Contractors. Much more research required here…
Whilst the data seems to make sense, it doesn’t tell me much about what a ‘good’ revenue contribution range is. I’m not surprised.
However, for leaders in the industry I do recommend baselining your own company and that of your peers in a similar sector to understand how you can improve this figure. We should always be looking to provide more value and become more efficiency with our resources.
But how can you do that?
Growing Revenue Contribution
Firstly, BIM and information management need to form part of the organisation and projects processes inherently. Project management, design management, quality management, etc… all have elements of BIM and information management. Unfortunately, they are usually treated as separate things - bolted on - which generates increased work and often duplication.
When we bolt things on there is a general expectation that we need specific resources to implement the process. When we build things in this generally isn’t the case. Therefore, you need to ensure that the whole workforce is enabled by BIM and they have the skills needed in their role to make use of digital technology. If this is achieved the headcount for BIM people goes down, with a focussed team of professionals supporting, enabling, and undertaking more complex challenges and opportunities.
In summary:
- Build BIM in, don’t bolt it on
- Digitise the whole workforce
By moving your BIM/digital team to this model revenue contribution can be managed upwards.
What I’m consuming
I’m constantly scanning the news, social media, and industry for case studies, innovations, and generally interesting construction related content. In these very brief articles my goal is to share these with you.
Big Tech Giants Spend Big on AI
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The Story: Amazon, Meta (Facebook), and Alphabet (Google) are investing billions into AI in 2025. They see the future as AI driven and are putting big bucks behind it. Alphabet has said it will invest $75B in capital investment including data centres to power AI, whilst Meta has committed $65B on “generative AI efforts and our core business”. Not to be outdone, Amazon has stated $100B spend in 2025 on building GenAI services.
What Stood Out: The scale. If the juggernauts are committing this much then things are bound to progress. In total that’s $240B of spend in infrastructure and development, much of it focussed on AI. There will be trickle down effects which are bound to have an impact on the construction industry.
Humanoid Robots in the Home
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The Story: 1X Technologies, based in Norway, have introduced NEO Gamma - a humanoid robot designed specifically for the home. It’s mission is to take care of household chores carefully and reliably. It moves in a human-like way, has advanced AI capability, and has a safety first build.
What Stood Out: Robotics are a big interest of mine. I can’t help but see a future where robots feature heavily on our construction sites. As our built environment both grows and deteriorates we will inevitably need to make use of more robotic technology to feed demand for labour, as well as safety and cost savings. If this capability is soon available in your home, my guess is it will also be in your sites and offices sooner than you think.
AI Powered UK BIM Framework
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The Story: Morta, who host the UK BIM Framework Guidance material have introduced an AI search tool. The guidance, maintained by nima and BSI, is an excellent resource for understanding information management in accordance with ISO19650.
What Stood Out: Now that AI is being introduced as an overarching layer the information becomes so much more accessible. AI has that effect, complex items can be simplified and collated to meet the users where they’re at. With developments like this I hope to see information management being recognised for what it really is - good project management. Anyone can now ask questions of the information and get the answers they need.
[https://www.bimplus.co.uk/uk-bim-framework-gains-traction-with-ai-search-tool/?utm_medium=email](https://www.bimplus.co.uk/uk-bim-framework-gains-traction-with-ai-search-tool/?utm_medium=email)
Rediscovering A Systems Approach to Infrastructure Delivery (SAID)
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The Story: The ICE report "Embracing a Systems Approach to Infrastructure Delivery" introduces the Systems Approach to Infrastructure Delivery (SAID) to improve infrastructure projects. Key points include:
Taking the holistic view and integrating all project phases;
Focus on outcomes;
Address capability gaps;
Ensure active project ownership;
Design adaptable infrastructure;
Prioritise long-term value:
Integrate systems thinking;
Embrace agile leadership, and;
Use data effectively.
Music to my eyeballs.
What Stood Out: As I write my next full length article on managing impact over a fragmented industry and team I’m looking over a lot of old ground. Our projects are a system of systems, a network of networks. Complex in all sorts of ways. And we haven’t yet found a intuitive solution to this. Rediscovering SAID was a joy. The industry trying to solve it’s problems. What impact on outcomes have we seen since it was published?
Quantum Computing Breakthrough and Microsoft Invent New State of Matter
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The Story: Imagine holding the power of quantum computing in your palm! Microsoft’s new Majorana 1 chip packs ground-breaking technology into a tiny design. Traditional computers tackle problems sequentially, but quantum computers like Majorana 1 can explore multiple solutions simultaneously, dramatically speeding up complex calculations. This means that tasks deemed practically unsolvable by classical systems, such as advanced cryptography, drug discovery, and materials science simulations, could become routine. In essence, it paves the way for a new era of computing power that can tackle challenges once thought impossible.
The amazing thing is that to make this happen Microsoft had to engineer a material which behaves unlike anything we normally see. By combining indium arsenide and aluminium atom by atom, they created a special topological superconductor. This material hosts exotic particles called Majoranas (hence the name), which naturally protect quantum information by being more resistant to disturbances. The innovative Majorana design stabilises the normally fragile and error-prone qubits. In short, this overcomes one of the major challenges in building practical, scalable quantum computers.
What Stood Out: I mean - what doesn’t stand out. The future keeps changing under our feet. This technology merged with AI and robotics will change the world. We live on shifting sands.