The Military Engineer l No. 66259 Maximizing the Value of BIM By Bradley Schulz, M.SAME Compared to legacy technologies, BIM enables government projects throughout the entire building lifecycle to be completed faster, greener and less expensively. Design & Construction I ncreasingly, government agencies are embracing building information modeling (BIM) lifecycle capabilities for the same reasons private industry has: to improve communication among stakeholders, maximize ef?ciency, cut costs during design, construction, op- erations and maintenance, and analyze and implement sustainability features. The General Services Administra- tion (GSA) was among the ?rst to real- ize BIM could help government achieve ef?ciency and cost savings. Since then, GSA has led the charge for BIM in gov- ernment, helping jumpstart adoption of the process and technology in 2003, when the agency established the Na- tional 3D-4D BIM Program. The de?n- ing moment for BIM in government, however, may have come in 2007, when the GSA began requiring that all pro- spectus-level projects use a BIM model for ?nal concept approvals. Today, mili- tary engineering organizations also are more widely adopting and deploying BIM processes and 3D technologies and enjoying their bene?ts. Complex Requirements Federal buildings must meet func- tional needs—such as sound isolation, venting and blast protection as well as program requirements for information technology, square footage and opera- tional tools—at a much higher level of speci?city than is common in the com- mercial buildings market. Thus, military engineers have even more to gain from leveraging BIM in early planning. Collecting all the requirements of a facility in a database early helps ensure data currency, said Marwan Bakri, HNTB BIM Technology Manager. Rather than depending on individually- collected information input by hand, data on building requirements are managed, organized, stored and formatted so data loaded for planning can be easily transferred into the BIM model during design. In the past, blocking and stacking models worked to ?nd the ?rst de- sign that ?t requirements. Today, BIM processes and 3D technology found in software applications such as Autodesk Image courtesy HNTB BIM renderings, such as this one of the Human Resource Center of Excellence facility at Fort Knox, Ky., integrate data on structural elements, utilities and other systems to help avoid clashes and lengthy cost and time overruns during construction.