BIM to be a standard in 2013?

But as other results of the study show, many architects in Europe are not familiar enough with Building Information Modelling to be able to estimate if BIM will be the future for construction and architecture. Therefore, many architects didn’t give their opinion, particularly in Spain and Britain. How many years will it take this young technology to be widely implemented in the architects daily business? Only those architects were asked for an estimate who felt confident enough to make a statement on the future of BIM. Again, the German architects are among the most sceptical among their colleagues: They think it will take about seven years for BIM to be widely spread. But even the Dutch architects expect this to last more than five years, even though the architects in the Netherlands have the most positive opinion on BIM’s future of all six countries. So, even those acquainted and content with the technology expect change in the field of architectural software to proceed comparably slow. The also quite BIM friendly French architects are more positive and indicate a period of less than three years. Most remarkably, the very few Spaniards who gave an estimate believe that Building Information Modeling will be widely in use in less than three years, too. This can be best explained by the fact that although only a small minority of the Spanish architects gave an estimate, the overwhelming majority of those few claimed to believe in the future of construction and architecture. Source: Arch-Vision

Building Information Modeling (BIM), a design and building method applying a digital 3-D model and database to develop the building or construction, is still comparably seldom in use among architects. According to many architects in France and the Netherlands, this is to change soon: In their view, BIM is the future of construction and architecture. But in other parts of Europe, architects are still more skeptical. This results from the latest issue of the European Architectural barometer, a research project initiated by Arch-Vision, covering the UK, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, and the Netherlands. Most believers in BIM come from France and the Netherlands: 55 per cent of the Dutch and 42 per cent of the French architects think that BIM is the future for construction and architecture. In Germany and Italy the architects are more sceptical, as a quarter of the Italian architects and one fifth of their German colleagues disagree with this expectation.