On the face of it, the results of Building’s fifth annual BIM survey are encouraging. The responses to the 2018 poll suggest that usage has edged up, more firms are using Level 2, and fewer firms see the benefits of the technology as “overhyped”.

With more companies seeing value to their businesses from digital construction technologies and with backing from the government’s 2016 mandate to use BIM on new public sector work, BIM is more embedded than ever in the UK construction industry. Indeed, the country itself appears to lead the way globally, with its standards for BIM – as enshrined in BS 1192 – set to be adapted into a new international standard, ISO 19650, in a matter of months.

It’s not all good news, however. A sizeable minority of companies still don’t opt to use BIM in their day-to-day work. The cost of getting started on BIM remains a barrier, with the number of those citing the expense as a reason for not using BIM up on last year’s poll, and while concerns around the amount of time spent on BIM in the design phase have subsided, one of the most cited barriers to getting into the technology seems to be client disinterest.

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