Germany’s governmental BIM initiative – Assessing the performance of the BIM pilot projects

The technology of Building information modeling (BIM) promises a significant increase in productivity in the design, construction and operation of buildings and infrastructure facilities. In the entire world, the AEC industry is starting to transform itself by moving from 2D drawings to work with digital building models that do not only represent 3D geometry of the building components, but also all the non-geometric data required throughout the building’s lifecycle. As this technological change impacts all stakeholders of the AEC in a fundamental way, a carefully planned transition is necessary to avoid economical damage. In many countries around the world government-driven initiatives are underway to initiate the necessary standards, guidelines and contract templates. The most prominent example is the United Kingdom where in 2010 the Cabinet office has initiated the BIM initiative with April 2016 demarking the official starting point for mandatory use of BIM in all public projects. During the preparation process, a large number of carefully elaborated guidelines and standards defining BIM processes, contents and handover have been developed. Also Germany is preparing the transition to BIM-based workflows in its AEC industry. In 2014, after analyzing the reasons of failure in a number of large-scale construction projects, a national commission recommended as one measure for reducing projects risks to make extensive use of digital methods such as BIM in order to make the complexity manageable. In consequence, the German Ministry of Transport and Digital Infrastructure has defined a strategic plan for stepwise introduction of BIM methods in public construction projects. In addition, a number of BIM pilot projects, all in infrastructure, have been initiated. The authors have been assigned with the scientific analysis of the performance of these pilot projects. This paper reports on the outcomes of the study and the future steps towards widespread BIM adoption in Germany.