UK and Netherlands embrace BIM

The UK and the Netherlands are said to be at the forefront when it comes to the knowledge and, especially, usage of Building Information Modelling (BIM) in Europe, according to a survey of architects by Arch-Vision.

It found that architects in these two countries started with BIM because they were forced by the market, and because clients demanded it. In France, too, the usage of BIM has been on the up over the past few years, mainly because of government regulations, it said.

These are some of the conclusions in the Architectural Barometer report for the fourth quarter of 2015 European, which is research conducted among 1,600 architects in eight European countries and published quarterly.

It found that 36% of British architects used BIM, while among Dutch architects it was 56%. Apart from market pressure to take it up, the optimisation of their own business processes was also mentioned as an important advantage of BIM.

France and Spain were found to be up and coming countries when it came to the familiarity and usage of BIM.

Arch-Vision reported that familiarity with BIM had increased massively among architects in Spain and France compared to 2013. In France, a bigger growth was seen in the usage of BIM compared to other European countries. Arch-Vision pointed out that the government of France was actively promoting the use of BIM among its architects.

“The plan to develop 500,000 houses using BIM by 2017 is one of the main reasons why BIM in France is getting more attention,” it said.

Apart from the increased number of architects working with BIM in the past two years in France, another 22% think they will start using BIM in the coming year.

Only 13% of the architects in the Netherlands that are familiar with BIM have no plans start working with it, which Arch-Vision said was again a clear indicator that the Dutch industry was at the forefront of BIM usage.

It found that other European countries were lagging behind, with many architects still seeing major limitations which made them reluctant to use BIM.

While architects said they saw many advantages of BIM, the most often mentioned limitations of BIM were its complexity and the fact that it took more time. The time-consuming aspect of BIM especially has to do with the fact that architects need to put in a lot of data directly at the start of a new BIM supported project.

The European Architectural Barometer is conducted by Arch-Vision in Germany, France, Italy, Spain, the UK, the Netherlands, Belgium and Poland.