Project Management - Essay Example

Download file to see previous pages Summary of the article and exploration of the raised issues The article identifies Mark Bew as the man who is in charge of ensuring that government contractors subscribe and adhere to Business Information Technology. He heads a government agency whose role is to ensure application of BIM and recounts that significant progress has been achieved over the scope of his work and that of his agency. Even though the application promises a higher level of efficiency and reduced costs, it has been a difficult task convincing both government departments and contractors to adapt BIM. In its scope of reducing the cost of government constructions, the application faces both culture and technology based challenges. While technological developments empower institutions to BIM’s application, only about 33 percent of professionals applied BIM by the year 2011. This was an improvement from the recorded 13 percent in the year 2010 and about 75 percent of the professional who were informed of the application promised to use it in the year 2012. The application has also been poorly defined and this could be a factor to its low rate of use besides different opinions and expectations from stakeholders. The different groups of stakeholders report their developed concerns, to Bew, that are then forwarded to the cabinet for consideration. BIM also operates in different levels of shared information. Level 2 BIM reserves proprietary rights while level 3 BIM is more open. Its information disclosure is however similar to the current impacts of the social media and should therefore not pose serious threats. The swift implementation of BIM and its associated jargon has also identified differences among stakeholders. “Culture and integration” is one of the bases of such differences, as some of the stakeholders believe that implementing the application requires a preliminary cultural transition and development of a level of integration (Construction Manager, 18). The amount of information to be shared in the model is another concern of the different stakeholders with opinions that the government would require more than necessary data from subscribing parties. Balancing scorecard in application of BIM is another identified concern because of the government’s procurement need that prioritizes the lowest bidder and the need for BIM compliance since the lowest bidder may lack the compliance as opposed to the most costly bidder. Other issues that application of BIM faces include “finding a wider audience,” “integrated project insurance,” and “charter for new consultants” (Construction Manager, 20). Crotty however identifies a competitive advantage and efficiency from contractors’ application of BIM as benefits because of the precision in description of construction components and ease in identification of contractors’ products (Construction Manager, 2012). Development and application of Building Information Modelling has marked a significant transition in the construction industry, from two dimensional drawings that required multiple representation and could still not be interpreted by computers, to a three dimensional models that are can be interpreted by computer systems (Easman, 2009). The new approach applies computer software for managing data (Chartered Institute of building, 2011). The application has diversified advantages such as ...Download file to see next pagesRead More