Get Support From the Whole Company

Implementing an online BIM catalog is not a one-department project. It breaks down silos across your whole company by fostering collaboration, so introdcuting them will significantly change your entire organization. Therefore, you must have support from every part of the company, including leadership.

Make a Plan

BIM requires organizational buy-in from your team and company, so forcing it into the middle of an ongoing project is not ideal.

To make a smooth transition into using a BIM catalog, you’ll need a well-articulated plan. Meet with leadership to discuss the goals you want to achieve with BIM objects and what the transition process will look like. When planning, keep every department in mind, and consider including representatives from each department in your planning meetings.

You may have to educate executive leadership on what an online BIM catalog is and how it can benefit your company. Make the monetary benefits clear with statistics and real examples, and prepare answers to likely questions.

Complete a Pilot Project

You can conduct a hypothetical project, complete a new client project, or repeat a past project and compare results.

Whatever pilot project you use, document and review your findings. What worked and what didn’t? Share the positive results with leadership. 

Invest in Training

Set up your team for success by making sure they know how the new tech works both internally and externally.

Prepare Data

When implementing BIM objects, you’ll need to arrange where and how you’ll transfer data between team members. With BIM, interoperability is critical. Interoperability is the ability of computer systems or software to exchange and utilize information. It enables engineering data to pass from the original design all the way through the product life cycle.

BIM requires a lot of data storage and transfer, so it’s important to have interoperability among team members and to make sure that all of your project data is in formats that every team member can read.

To avoid having multiple copies of the same file in different locations, create a common data environment: a central location for team members to share and store the architectural/construction project information, AKA a “single source of truth.”

Once you’ve decided where and how you’ll transfer and store project data, you can start to gather your product data for your public BIM library. Provide product data that will best fit your customer and prospect needs. What will your typical customer need for their BIM files? For example, are your customers architects who need specific dimensions? Maybe they’re contractors who need building materials. Walk in your users’ shoes, and if possible, ask them directly what data they need.

Create BIM Objects

When creating the actual BIM objects, you’ll typically start with original documents such as 2D drawings (digital or paper) or with 3D scans of your real products. You’ll also need to add parametric data and info from your product data sheets. The parametric data lets users configure your product within specific parameters like size, material, and product-specific attributes. These constraints standardize a scalable framework for all possible product attribute combinations.

Take the Next Step Toward Providing BIM Objects.