Third Annual BIM Report

Results from the latest Building Information Modeling (BIM) survey have been published in a report that explores views about BIM from more than 800 Canadian respondents – primarily BIM users – over the past three years. The report provides valuable documentation and benchmarking indicators of Canada’s BIM transition progress and process.

The annual BIM survey is a collaborative effort between academia and industry to capture and illustrate the state of BIM implementation within the architecture, engineering, construction and facility management industries (AEC/FM) in Canada. It has been conducted by the Building Innovation Research Centre at University of Toronto in collaboration with Residential Construction Council of Ontario (RESCON), Toronto BIM Community (tBIMc) and this year with AECO Innovation Lab. The effort was motivated by the lack of, and thus need for, an industry benchmark for BIM practices in Canada.

Key findings from the report include:

• Ninety-four per cent of participants acknowledged that BIM is the future of project information and design practices.

• Ninety per cent of participant organizations have adopted some level of BIM in their current operational workflow, and 80% of the remainder indicated that they have plans to implement BIM in the next few years.

• Eighty-eight per cent of the participants shared their BIM files with at least one external organization, with one-third of participants engaging five or more parties.

• Nearly half of survey participants encountered interoperability obstacles in their projects. Despite the potential of OpenBIM to address this, 43% of participants were not aware of OpenBIM.