Building Information Modelling (BIM). A quite young concept that got its name in 2002. After a quick overview, BIM seems to be the ideal way of designing and constructing. It’s basic concepts deal with information and data storage and management as well as the automationof processes. There were though, some questions that still need to be answered.
Does this whole automation eliminate the architectural creativity and innovation? Can doing BIM from the first day of the design process be risky? BIM has already started to be implemented in USA and some European countries, but it’s not widely known in Greece yet. Could it be implemented and beneficial for the Greek architects and the Greek construction industry?
These are some of the questions we wanted to examine in our research. So, we started with studying about BIM, learning its basic concepts, being aware of what occurs nowadays related to it, in order to create a quite complete overview that would help us answer our questions. We also had the chance to interview two American architects from the leadership of BIM world widely and three construction professionals from Greece who practice architecture using digital design tools and software.
Combining the feedback we got from them with all the information we gathered from books, articles, white papers, etc., we managed to form a more spherical and complete opinion over BIM, the possible ways it could be implemented and its possible future in Greece.
The research we present below consists of two parts. The first part is a detailed analysis of BIM, its aspects and all the concepts related to it, using the information we gathered from our bibliography and interviews. The second part is an examination regarding BIM’s implementation in Greece. Unfortunately, as BIM is not yet well known in Greece, we didn’t find any Greek bibliography, so that part is written using feedback from the three architects we interviewed and our critical thinking.
Concluding, our intention was never to embrace BIM unconditioned. We strongly believe that every new idea has its positive and negative aspects. A critical way of thinking combined with the ability to stay realistic, can lead to evolutionary and functional solutions. This is what we tried to do in this research. Our goal was to find alternative ways of implementing BIM both generally and in Greece.
