Sub and specialty contractors are at the workplace every day, so many practical benefits that proponents of BIM claim will arise from its use should translate directly into cost and time savings for them, and they do, but not always, and not to the same degree as advertised. One concrete subcontractor who has spent four years and “invested millions” in developing his own system for producing construction BIM for process planning, and then purchased display technology for taking BIM to the jobsite to prep his crews, has decided the exercise hasn’t been worth it.
“If you know your work well and have processes in place that works, traditional processes and planning work very well. A model, or what they are calling BIM, doesn’t help,” says David Hudgens, president of Accu-Crete, Arlington, Va. “I don’t have much faith in it, and I went all over the world.”