BIM in the FM context

Facilities management (FM) encompasses multiple disciplines with the aim of ensuring optimal functionality of the built environment – integrating people, places, processes and technology. It covers everything from maintenance and cleaning, real estate and financial management. The variety of services highlights the complexity of the industry.

At present, most new build or major refurbishment contracts require manual handover of paper documents, vital in supporting the management of facilities by the owner and facilities managers. Existing buildings have varying levels of quality and consistency of information, due to this handover process. Construction handover processes benefit from having all the complete, accurate and required information, so that it is easy to locate as needed. This prevents the need to invest additional time and money in recreating information and working with inefficient workflows.

Even though the majority of costs occur during the operational and maintenance (O&M) phase, buildings are driven by short-term construction savings, rather than long-term operational savings. As a result, there is a substantial economic and environmental requirement to improve the management of new and existing facilities in an efficient way.