Streamlining Building Information Model creation using Agile project management

Abstract

Building Information Modelling (BIM) offers tremendous advantages to multidisciplinary teams from a coordination standpoint throughout the project lifecycle. That said, there are potential pitfalls with the use of BIM if coordination and communication between the disciplines is not properly managed, resulting in rework and inefficiencies in delivery. Agile project management techniques, widely adopted within the software industry to allow incremental development of products, have great potential for application to BIM model development throughout the project lifecycle. These techniques focus on simple and regular communication between core project members and stakeholders, regular priority identification to set the goals for the next phase ("Sprint") and incremental product development. Applied to BIM model development, these techniques provide a framework for multi-disciplinary coordination and interface management and reduce re-design and abortive effort from miscommunication and poor task sequencing.