The power of BIM to create value with design
Friday, March 17th, 2017
The potential power of BIM
How do I win more clients and beat my competition? I’m sure this is a question you’ve asked yourself.
Offer my architectural or building services more cheaply? Advertise more? Do more jobs? Develop a premium service?
Another important question that you might have asked yourself is; can I reduce costs but not compromise on the quality of what I do?
Here at Integro Construction Software, we believe that the answer lies with BIM. And here’s why. It has the potential to improve both the speed of delivery and quality of your work – whether it be building plans, 3D models, construction cost estimates, Bill of Quantities and other value added services, or take cost out of how you do business by streamlining your processes and sometimes even reducing headcount.
What do clients like?
- Everybody likes 3D representations of their building project, and they like photorealistic 3Ds even better (it’s much easier for clients to understand a 3D model than a plan and this is particularly true of home owners)
- Everyone likes to know what their project costs are going to be…and how they can build it more cheaply (And they’re even more impressed when you can show them the immediate impact of changes to design and specification on cost)
- Customers are more and more interested in the energy performance of their building (and equally as interested to understand the likely cost impact of their design decisions in this area)
- All clients want to know how long it will take to build…and equally interested in whether one build route will deliver the project quicker. Everyone wants everything last month
Clients basically want to know their options. And then make changes. And usually some more changes…it’s their prerogative.
And how do you offer all that whilst improving your business? With one integrated platform to connect building projects from concept to completion. That’s BuildingWorks.
BuildingWorks and the BIM Object Library
BuildingWorks is a seamlessly integrated practical BIM software suite to design and estimate the cost of residential new build homes, extensions, conversions and property refurbishment. As you draft the plan and model, you can see the immediate impact of design and specification decisions on project cost and energy performance. It’s the ultimate in construction optioneering whether you’re looking to impress a client or simply improve and optimise your projects.
BuildingWorks comes with a substantial catalogue of thousands of intelligent BIM products of REAL materials and objects with rich manufacturer product data including their price, size, appearance, waste, thermal properties and more to help define your projects specification as you design and estimate your project. There’s no time wasted setting up a Price Book, as the software comes ready to go and its updated quarterly for free whilst subscribing to the software.*
Furthermore the comprehensive general building & renovation rates library of 3500+ rates plus rates comes pre-populated with resources. This is not the case in many competitor CAD packages which claim to “do BIM”, as in those packages you have to map rates to every single object on to the drawing in order to estimate them…BuildingWorks intelligent objects “know” what they are, and are ALREADY mapped to rates, which are pre-populated with resources. Plus you can customise it til your hearts content, swapping building products in and out of your estimate to compare how they impact your budget or the U-value or thermal value for real time review of your decisions.
So back to the question of the power of BIM to create value…
We’re going to answer this with a question as it depends who is asking…Are you a building firm? Or are you an architectural practice?
Whoever you are we’d recommend that you incorporate BIM within your business and actively market to gain competitive advantage.
For savvy builders and developers achieving value
If you’re a building firm, property developer or house builder you’ll appreciate that BuildingWorks is incredibly easy to use. You’ll be able to provide clients or managers with design options in plan and 3D quickly and easily, fully costed, specified with REAL building products, and with indicative energy performance so they can instantly assess the value. It also helps you to reduce the capital costs of construction and here’s how in our report.
For designers and architects looking to offer more
Architectural technicians and designers will love the fact that they can offer more services and value with not much more effort. Provide a design (building plans and elevations) for new homes, extensions and conversions together with photorealistic 3D models in an instant, together with an estimate of costs at the outset, thereby allowing the client to review their options – perhaps changing the dimensions, or alternative specification and finishes to reduce costs or improve the thermal performance.
Adrian Wild, Managing Director of Integro Construction Software says “This is all achieved very quickly because of the tight integration of the 2D/3D design and underlying costing and thermal information rich data from main stream suppliers.”
Furthermore whether architect or building firm, both can add value to their business by actually charging for these additional services – produce a 3D model directly from the plan, get it fully costed directly from the plan…a full build program from the plan…and revisions cascade through…
Adrian continues, “If you’re smart, why not use the BuildingWorks Fidelity toolset to provide more or less architectural detail on the drawing. You can charge more for the extra detail at the click of a button! Why not produce simple un-textured 3D at the outset and then charge for 3D photorealistic views of the project in situ in less than a minute? Why not provide summary estimates of construction costs in the early stages to give indicative costs then charge more for detailed NRM Bill of Quantities as the project progresses at one more click of a button? BuildingWorks allows you to offer all of this from your original work by “releasing” the detail which BuildingWorks has ALREADY done for you. All of these services are chargeable and can really add to the architect or builders bottom line.”
High fidelity:
Low fidelity:
*BuildingWorks is available on a low monthly subscription. Quarterly price updates are only available with subscriptions of BuildingWorks Estimate module. To find out more, give us a call on 0117 916 7880.
