Going through the literature and exploring the world of BIM. I keep running into various uses of the BIM acronym. My sense is that its makes learning about BIM and understanding what BIM is so much harder. My goal with this article is to inform: provide context on the use of the BIM acronym and, resolve some issues for some. A second goal with this article is also to get feedback what other practitionairs think, and how we can articulate what BIM is, and what it isn’t.

BIM in my opinion should stand for building information modelling. Building information modelling (BIM) is a methodology that manages the building information in digital form along the entire lifecycle of the building from pre-planning to end-of-life. The three parts of BIM are:

• The technologies which include hardware and software.
• The processes and best practises involved in creating and maintaining the digital representation during all phases of the project. (SMART goals & Right Information. Right Person. Right Time.)
• The collaborative agreements and contracts between team members to mitigate risk and clarify responsibilities (legal).

The BIM acronym is sometimes used to mean building information model or building information management.

The building information model is the digital model representation of the building, building information management is a series of processes, reference tools, various project artifacts, communication protocols and contract language to manage the information on a building project between different parties and, building information modelling a methodology to use a building information model to manage the building along the entire lifecycle of the building.

At this time, among BIM practitioners, BIM is often spelled out as building information modelling; the term encompasses all aspects mentioned above.

Sometimes the use of building information modeling/management is used to indicate that it’s more than modelling of the building but, also includes many management practises. Sometimes “BIM process” is used, where “BIM” refers to the building model and “process” refers to a pathway to obtain a high-value building model. This integrated collaborative digital “BIM process” often set in contrast to the “traditional” take-make-waste paper-based process of building construction. Sometimes “BIM model” is used where we specifically refer to a building model which has been created with a BIM methodology.

A confusion exists because BIM has been in use for a long time in the building industry. It started in the 1970’s when BIM was used to mean the 3D building model. Later the term building information modelling was popularized by Autodesk in the early 2000’s with a white paper that talked about the idea of a single building model that contains all information. This model could be used to accomplish a variety of different tasks and facilitate a collaborative building design process. To manage this collaborative nature, in the last decade building information management has been significantly advanced to effectively use these new tools by larger teams. Building information management created processes, contracts, and terminology to mitigate risk and clarify responsibilities among all team members.

Some useful guidelines how I think we should use BIM to prevent confusion:

Guidelines:

• BIM stands for building information modelling: an all-encompassing term.
• Instead of BIM as in building information model: I favour using “digital representation” “building model” “building information model” “virtual model” “BIM Model”
• Instead of BIM as in building information management: I favour ”building information management”, “BIM process”, “best practises”, ”standards” and “processes.”