What is BIM/IPD?

What is BIM?  We hear it talked about.  We see the marketing.  We hear there are real savings to be had and money to be made on this BIM thing.  But what does it mean?  Especially, how does it affect our businesses?

To be clear; BIM and IPD are PROCESSES not SOFTWARE.  Both acronyms are used to describe a collaborative approach to design/construction/maintenance: meaning LIFE-CYCLES. PARAMETRIC MODELING SOFTWARE and CENTRALIZED DATA are simply utilized to foster collaboration throughout these life-cycles.  Life-cycles of buildings or products. 

BIM stands for Building Information Modeling and is usually associated with architectural projects.  IPD stands for Integrated Project Delivery and is associated with Industrial/Manufacturing processes.  What ever the label, one thing is definitely in common.  COLLABRATION.  Early and often.

Traditional processes created "silos of information" existing throughout the project delivery chain.  Design team members and construction team members are disconnected.   BIM seeks to reconnect the information.

The current state of BIM implementation has been generally described as spotty.  Reasons for the seemingly slow market acceptance are varied.  Issues involving software, hardware, training, strains on network infrastructure and limited document management are often cited as major obstacles and has relegated BIM implementations to large projects or niche markets.

With increasing frequency, both the design teams and construction teams are finding places to utilize the tools of BIM to experience real ROI's.  

Design teams are streamlining their processes including animation and calculations made directly on the Parametric BIM models. 

Construction teams are realizing tremendous efficiencies and reducing costly field RFI's by implementing just a small part of the total BIM process during pre-construction phase.  This process is becoming the industry standard.  This process has been labeled VDC (Virtual Design Construction).

Who should be interested in BIM/VDC?

On the IPD side, industrial and manufacturing have long been pushed to find more and more efficiencies to get a competitive advantage.  Just in Time, Lean Manufacturing, Concurrent Engineering are but a few labels placed on these processes.  Generally accepted language in these design markets are PLM and PDM.  PLM is Product Lifecycle Management.  PDM is a subset of PLM (Like VDC is  a subset of BIM).  PDM stands for Product Data Management.  As with BIM, this is a process change supported by technological advances in Parametric Modeling software.

How does CADD Connection support PLM/PDM?