CHAPTER 6
Conclusions and Suggested Research
6.1 Research Conclusions
This research focused on defining structured approaches to developing a business case for BIM adoption to support transportation infrastructure projects in the United States. Through analyzing and quantifying enterprise-wide benefits and costs, a transportation agency can identify the value of adding BIM implementation strategies to gain efficiencies and foster comprehensive, data-driven lifecycle management of transportation assets. The information for this research was gathered using domestic and international examples, with the findings targeted toward U.S. transportation agencies and DOT stakeholders.
Several consistent conclusions drawn from multiple data sources include the following:
- BIM provides a significant opportunity for highway agencies to improve the lifecycle management of assets through the creation and use of digital data.
- International and domestic standards initiatives can provide a structure for planning the asset information needs to support a structured lifecycle information management approach.
- While ROI case studies have been reported, the project- and organization-specific context means broad application of results from these individual studies is not always appropriate. Instead, this research can assist organizations in developing a customizable framework for calculating a project’s ROI.
- Agencies should develop a high-level asset data management strategy to support the adoption or expansion of BIM to support the entire asset lifecycle.
- Communicating the BIM plan and operationalizing the plan by defining clear practices is critical to successful adoption.
Why do state DOTs continue to struggle to implement BIM as a standard practice? The answer lies in the complexity and perceived cost of moving an organization forward. In a world of dwindling public funds, it is difficult to invest in all initiatives while also maintaining a large and deteriorating transportation infrastructure. Thus, getting the executive support to invest in BIM deployment is unlikely without a robust business case that demonstrates its value. Throughout the literature, case studies, and expert panel discussions, it is clear that in many organizations there is a strong business case for adopting BIM to support the efficient and effective delivery of projects, as well as the larger, more long-term effort to use BIM information in support of O&M. There is a strong and timely need for a solid framework for determining a repeatable approach to calculating the ROI for adopting BIM for Infrastructure and strategies for a strong business case.
This study identified 24 benefits associated with implementing BIM for transportation projects. Based on the six monetized benefits of the BIM ROI Tool developed during this study, cost savings from avoided change orders is the largest benefit. This finding aligns with qualitative
findings from the case studies. Transportation agencies agree conceptually that there are many benefits of BIM, and that these benefits likely exceed the costs of investment. All five of the case studies identified avoided costs associated with change orders as a significant benefit of BIM.
BIM adoption requires investment from an organization. Some of the top investment categories include training and building competencies, software and professional services for systems setup, and hardware or equipment.
It is important to recognize the value and need for champions to clearly develop the business case, but also clearly communicate the business case to organizational leadership and stakeholders. The multi-media kit supports this communication and includes an overall roadmap, along with videos and responses to frequently asked questions.
6.2 Future Research
The research team identified several items that would benefit from investments in future research and development activities. These can be separated into the categories of standards, structured guidance, legal and contractual, and education and training.
There is a significant need to support the development of standards related to BIM to ensure consistency across projects and throughout organizations. There are international standards (ISO) that we can leverage within the United States, but there remains a need to continue building upon these standards. For example, openBIM data standards are necessary to support the interoperability of data on a project. At this time, there are ongoing activities to develop open data schema standards to support infrastructure projects, such as the IFC defined within ISO 16739, but these standards are not yet complete or adopted.
Standardization initiatives include clearly documenting the information needed for each information exchange between participants within the delivery and operations processes. For these exchanges, it is important to know the objects, attributes, and relationships of the information elements in an open, standard data schema. Additional options, such as creating a common LOD/LOI approach, may also support designers and constructors when creating, using, or validating information contained within a model.
In addition to data standards, process standards and guidelines can be applied to BIM adoption. These include standardizing processes to ensure consistency, such as the adoption of information management standards documented in the ISO 19650 standard.
One limitation of documenting and evaluating the impact of BIM on delivering and operating assets is a lack of clear benchmarking data to support the business case. Throughout this study, many organizations and project teams shared that they did not have consistently collected, readily available information regarding the costs or impacts of implementing BIM or on aspects of their current practice.
There is also an opportunity to develop a guide to define the approaches to adopting BIM specifically for transportation agencies, which could expand upon the framework and asset data management planning contained within this report. This guide could clearly expand upon the CMM and recommend common practices for planning and implementing BIM strategies.
Development of the BCA framework in this study provides a structure to initiate the collection of this information within transportation agencies. A more formalized benchmarking initiative could support additional research into the costs and benefits of specific BIM use cases in the future, leveraging this comment evaluation framework.
There is also a need for solutions to legal and contractual challenges. These include common contract language to support BIM adoption, mechanisms for signing and sealing digital models to enable transitioning to the model as the legal contract document, and policy to address risk management.
Finally, the industry must create and provide avenues to support the education and training of all affected employees of transportation agencies and stakeholders. This could include common education programs, software training, and potential BIM certifications, if they provide value to the industry.
6.3 Final Remarks
While there are many remaining topics related to BIM adoption in the highway sector that need to be advanced, there are currently significant opportunities to leverage BIM to improve the delivery and operations of transportation infrastructure. These opportunities will continue to improve as more standard processes and data exchange schemas are developed, and as agency employees and stakeholders continue to develop their BIM skills. BIM can provide the foundation to support the continued digitalization of information related to transportation infrastructure. This transformation may ultimately contribute to providing and operating infrastructure that is more resilient and safer, while reducing the cost and time required to support the infrastructure.
