Maxime Haloche – BIM Lead
BIM today is far from keeping its promises. The future of less expensive, less risky projects is compromised by professionals that remain rooted in their work habits, with old procedures, despite all the interest they find in working with a digital model.
- How to get out of these obsolete procedures installed for so long in each discipline?
- How to get out of silos and sequential work imposed by contracts and legal codes that prohibit the sharing of information due to liability issues and litigation?
- How to stop this counterproductive mess of mockups and data?
Arranged Marriage or Love Marriage
The different disciplines have to work with common rules and in a collective way rather than each of them even against each other. Impose BIM in a context of distrust, it is the assurance of a counterproductive process (overproduction, duplication, confusion, …).
The beneficial effects will come when everyone has responded to what’s in it for me? And has understood that this gain is not direct but a part of a mutual gain. It is about building a culture and common references for a fruitful, sincere and serene collaboration.
A double revolution is needed: digital and legal
We are in a society of individual rights and BIM demands to insert “common” right to work better collectively. We can find an interesting example in the insurance industry. In France the “Dommage Ouvrage” (work injury) is only a buffer common insurance the time to activate individual insurance; UK goes further and experiments with the IPI (Integrated Project Insurance) a collective Project Insurance.
More than a digital transition already well in place in the building sector, it is a legal change of all trades, that must operate to work together and share data legitimately in a common project.
A Technology of Trust at the heart of business collaboration
Waiting for this digital and legal revolution to happen, the implementation of a BIM via an exchange protocol and data sharing tools will not be enough to protect and legitimize the contributions of each on a collective work.
It is necessary a technology that makes it easy for everyone to engage and protect themselves and the Blockchain is the best candidate. The Blockchain is a shared register in which transactions between users are stored in a secure, verifiable and permanent way.
Based on peer-to-peer technology is coupled with electronic signature principles. When applied, this revolutionary technology builds trust between heterogeneous stakeholders without the need for a centralized authority.
It makes processes completely secure by giving indisputable value to data exchanged via a system of proofs. These proofs are perennial, unfalsifiable and easily accessed.
Besides, the Blockchain can be immediately applicable to the contractual space and we can now build and deploy Blockchain-based applications that manage legally binding, electronic time stamped proofs.
