‘Going Digital: A guide for construction clients, building owners and their advisers’, authored by JCT chair, Richard Saxon CBE, has been published by the UK BIM Alliance.
Richard Saxon, who originally published the book ‘BIM for Construction Clients’ in 2016, has revisited the topic to further update and simplify it, providing this new, eight-step, plain language guide that enables construction clients and building owners to see the long-term value of a shift to a digital way of working, and to take practical measures within their own businesses.
The first four steps – Becoming Aware, Strategy Making, Equipping the Client Office, and Formalising the Use of Digital Working – are considered an essential starting point, with optional steps to follow.
The guide recognises that different clients have different needs and will take the steps most relevant to them. The guide’s incremental approach means that appropriate steps can be taken both by clients procuring smaller-scale or one off projects and by private and public bodies who regularly procure building works and retain their assets.
The guide also helps clients to understand the long-term benefits of digital methodology and helps them to build the business case and understand the value of investment in BIM.
Further, optional steps in the guide include an overview of how productive BIM-based teams are formed, what decision support information is useful and what asset information could be delivered.
Finally, it looks at the creation of standards digital models of elements which repeating clients might need.
JCT chair, Richard Saxon CBE, said:
“Digital methods offer a step-change in value and productivity for clients. But these methods are not yet being adopted by mainstream private and public clients because they don’t perceive that value.
“This guide focusses on the message to clients and to their advisers. It sets out a path for clients into the use of BIM and its related techniques. It uses plain language rather than the jargon which has sprung up amongst suppliers. It demonstrates the return on investment available and the nature of the investment required by clients.”
To download the Going Digital guide, visit www.ukbimalliance.org and go to Resources.
The UK BIM Alliance is a campaign by all who want to see BIM become business-as-usual. Richard Saxon was assisted in the writing by Kester Robinson of Deploi: BIM Strategies, a consultancy where Richard also works, and by lawyer May Winfield, an authority on the legal side of BIM.