The further problem that most of the Austrian offices are facing is the high fluctuation of the employees and of the related know-how loss which is a common characteristic of the most of the small project-oriented firms. Therefore the standards, but also the knowledge for BIM-supported planning process is largely lacking. The traditional design and planning process is carried out by small scaled, highly segmented large number of experts working in sequential manner, using various kinds of tools and software. 2006)) as well as construction companies largely coming from the small- or medium size sector.
Austrian market is characterised by a large number of very small planning offices (average size of architectural office of 2,7 employees (Forlati et al. This paper will focus on introduction of BIM-supported planning in the CE and particularly Austrian AEC (architecture, engineering and construction) market, where the application of this technology is still novel, as well as the integrated planning approach. BIM, in our understanding is much more about how (design of design process), than about what (building model and its properties). ( 2010) argue that “integrated design” is still handled rather loosely in the practice – often is the creation of BIM model sufficient for the project to be referred to as “integrated project”, regardless of actual interdisciplinary data sharing and model use. BIM as method is supportive of collaborative planning, facilitating communication and information exchange among various planning process participants (Rizal and van Berlo 2010). Building Information Modelling (BIM) is believed to bear large potential for inducing a shift from the conventional, fragmented practice, which still largely dominates the AEC (architecture, engineering and construction) industry (Fellows and Liu 2012), towards more integrated design practice (Prins and Owen 2010). The practice calls for more integrated design and planning process, which would enhance simultaneous collaboration of various disciplines for sharing and creation of new common knowledge. The increasing number of partaking disciplines uses wide spectrum of specialised visualisation, simulation or calculation tools. The consolidations for realization of sustainable built environment result in increasing complexity of planning and construction process.
In the next step, using mandatory protocols and timesheets, a detailed statistical analysis of the people-process-technology issues will be conducted, as well as comparison of „Open-Platform-BIM“ to „One-Platform-BIM” model. The first results imply at the importance of process-organization techniques such as face-to face communication, coordination and work-load allocation between the team-members in order to conduct the efficient BIM-supported process as well as at urgent need for advancement of the tools in terms of data transfer and exchange. We were able to identify numerous technical problems related to the data transfer and inconsistencies in translation, which resulted in participant dissatisfaction and significant increasing of work-loads. Resultsįirst insights on process-quality, such as team-, process- and technology satisfaction, as well as conflict- and stress levels will be presented in this paper.
From the qualitative and quantitative evaluation of this BIM-supported multi-disciplinary collaboration will enable the compilation of guidelines for efficient use of BIM in design and planning process for the planners and standardization bodies. MethodsĪt the Vienna University of Technology a BIM-supported multi-disciplinary planning process with students of architecture, structural engineering and building physics, using several BIM-software tools was simulated. The BIM implementation implies therefore necessity of fundamental rethinking of the conventional design process, which in CE context is still predominantly based on sequential, segmented practice.
NEMETSCHEK ALLPLAN BIM 2008 SOFTWARE
The optimal data management, transfer and synchronization within inhomogeneous software context, as is often the case within inter-firm construction projects, require enormous organization, coordination and communication effort in the earliest design-phases. The AEC practice using BIM technology in Central European (CE) context is still very young the previous experiences demonstrated a number of upcoming problems with BIM implementation on technical- (heterogonous data, interfaces, large data volumes) but even more so on process-level (question of responsibilities and work-load distribution, lacking standards or conventions on building-representation and in general lack of experience and knowledge on integrated practice).