BIM PEDANTRY

I am down to give a talk at a conference with the theme “Open BIM & industry 4.0 “  As usual I have my own take on these topics.

Let’s start with BIM. There is a sense in which this term repeats the same word three times. To model is to shape, to give form. To inform is to shape ideas, to build a picture in our minds. And building is also a process of forming. You could almost translate BIM as “Form Information Forming”

I first realised this while questioning the pedants who wanted to ban the term “BIM model” Language is supremely malleable. It is constantly “shape-shifting” even as we use it. It turns out that “BIM” is distilled from 3 words that probably originate in one of our earliest trades: pottery. The act of shaping clay with our bare hands became a rich source of metaphor.

A Potter takes a shapeless lump and transforms it into an object with beauty and purpose. The Hand-Eye-Brain feedback loop operating for thousands of hours during the career of a Potter gives rise to deep embodied learning : knowledge wisdom, competence. Drawing and painting tap into the same process. So does, sculpture, stone masonry, wood carving, carpentry.


You can use an abacus to manipulate numbers, giving shape to abstract concepts that underpin the very real world of trade and commerce. Today our financial models are digital, databases in the cloud, but still we use the same hand-eye-brain loop to interrogate them on our mobile devices.

We talk of Intelligent Models and Information Management. Those 3 letters from the alphabet can generate infinite shades of meaning. The world of BIM has absorbed a myriad of spin-off technologies. AR, VR, laser scanning, Drones, digital twins linked to real world sensors, online rendering, issue tracking, structural analysis, thermal modelling,

I regard BIM as shorthand for “Digital Tools and Processes related to Construction” Their purpose is to transform the “Way We Build.”  Ultimately BIM sets out to realise the long-standing dream of automating construction. Hence the infatuation with robotics and generative design in recent years. 250 years ago Richard Arkwright kick started a process that transformed age-old cottage industries into factories churning out textiles. Productivity gains were so huge that a chain reaction ensued. Steam Power, Railways, Steel, Machine Tools.

So let’s talk about Industry 4.0  Well maybe that’s another blog post. I take a longer view of history. I also take a broader view of Open BIM. What is the “Future of Work” for us, when robots and algorithms do to building what Richard Arkwright did to hand loom weavers? In the short term, lots of jobs for BIM nerds (factory hands) In the long term a fundamental shift in work-life patterns.

My work on Project Soane led me into a much deeper understanding of the Industrial Revolution period. The Bank of England certainly played a role. Paper money took over from coinage as the economy exploded. Soane employed half a dozen domestic servants to maintain his upper middle class lifestyle. He started work age 15. Child labour was commonplace.

My sons were still attending university at the age of 25. The knowledge industry has become a major employer in its own right. People earn a living in entertainment, sport, tourism. Art galleries and Museums have mushroomed incredibly in my lifetime. Activities that were considered hobbies 50 years ago can be lucrative careers. You can be a YouTuber, a public intellectual, an online trainer, a bitcoin trader. Now kinds of income generation have begun to emerge via apps like Uber, Air BnB, kickstarter,  Patreon etc. Why do we assume that construction projects will continue to be the primary employer of BIM specialists? If we truly believe in disruption, and in the automation of our industry, surely we can imagine a world where education and collaborative research become the dominant activities.

I started with a few comments about language as metaphor. Here are a couple of mine. The BIM pencil promotes the idea that BIM tools and processes continue a long tradition of visual thinking and learning by doing. We are tapping into that hand-eye-brain feedback loop that has served our species so well for millennia. Why can’t BIM be intuitive and fluid? Why can’t it be as versatile as pencil and paper?

The Business Blinkers metaphor refers to a refusal to see this broader perspective, an insistence on framing BIM within the building industry as it is today. But this restriction did not apply to hand drawing. Why would we see digital tools as more limiting than manual processes? Some examples.

Vitruvius wrote one of the first known text books for architects and builders. Where is the BIM edition of Vitruvius. McKay is another classic example. Technical drawings that condense the knowledge of traditional building methods and Transmit them to future generations.  Bannister Fletcher still stands alone as a visual encyclopedia of our built heritage.  The analogy with BIM is inavoidable: plans, sections, elevations and perspective views, densely intertwined with dimensions and annotations.  These are not “just” drawings, they are packed with information and insight.

Another genre is the polemic.  The Townscape series by Gordon Cullen, applying the techniques of the design team to broader issues of concern about how we are shaping our cities.  Standing back and reviewing the direction our society is taking, using the tools of a design architect to tell a story.  Why can’t we do that with BIM?  If it’s such a significant leap forward in the way we think about buildings, why are we limiting it to the narrow confines of our day jobs?  What about the grand visions of Le Corbusier.  You may feel that he was misguided (or not) but he could certainly frame an argument by juxtaposing language and images (geometry and data)  In the past I have attempted a BIM version of his “Four Points” translating his 2d sketch into a Revit model.  OK so this is “borderline BIM” but don’t just dismiss it.  Take that idea further into the realm of “full on BIM”  Why not?


And what about Nolli’s map of Rome, Piranesi’s marvellous architectural fantasies, Camillo Sitte’s incisive analyses of how civic spaces function in the grand old cities of Europe.  Is this kind of work too insightful and imaginative to fall within the purview of BIM. Why?  Surely it was underpinned by the cutting edge technology of its day.  Etchings brought superpowers to the architects of that era, just as BIM is doing for us today.

It’s not that we don’t have equivalents to McKay or Vitruvius that use Digital tools and media. There are YouTube channels and blogs. Authors that leverage 3d software. But, crucially, this is not seen as part of the BIM endeavour. We teach about BIM, but we don’t use BIM to teach about building or design or history.


BIM is not a thing. It’s a process, an attitude, a method. BIM is the digital enhancement of the Hand-Eye-Brain feedback loop.  We should be applying the “BIM pencil” to a much broader range of activities.  It seems to me that the “Business Blinkers” are constraining our vision to the narrow confines of conventional building contracts, and thereby creating an artificial wall between the world of BIM and the world of everyday life.

One last example.  There have been many “Design Manuals” that have guided and informed the work of architects and builders over the centuries, from Serlio to Neufert, the AJ Metric Handbook the inspirational drawings of Francis Ching.  Surely this is an obvious genre where BIM could make a dramatic contribution.  I have made one or two sallies along these lines in this blog.  My study of Sliding Sash Windows for example, a technology that fascinated me as a young builder in the 1970s.  The field is wide open, in my view, and it can only be a matter of time before the “Knowledge Economy” transforms the way we organise and share this kind of information and distilled collective experience.