UK surveyors remain slow to adopt BIM despite awareness of risks ⁰

According to a new survey from the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, around a half (49 percent) of surveyors do not use Building Information Modelling (BIM) on a regular basis, despite the fact that a significant majority (74 percent) have considered the business case and a similar proportion (73 percent) acknowledge that non-adoption will create significant challenges for the UK construction sector. When asked for the reason for non-adoption. around two thirds (68 percent) feel  they lack the information to adopt BIM properly, a third (31 percent) claim there is no need for their own firm and a quarter (26 percent) say they lack the technical skills needed for adoption. This is in spite of that fact that over half of all respondents (55 percent) say that they are currently working with architects that use BIM.

Alan Muse, global director of RICS built environment professional groups, said: “Our research clearly shows that the importance of BIM is not being lost on the UK’s surveying sector with 73 percent identifying that non-adoption is likely to have a negative impact on the industry as a whole. However, the research also shows that there is still a large percentage of firms that are not currently using BIM technology on a day-to-day basis as part of their operations. It’s clear from the research that the industry needs to be doing more to help smaller surveying firms – as well as the wider industry – in getting up to speed with the technology, particularly when it comes to how they can implement the technology across their organisation. This is something RICS is helping to contribute to with its Certificate in BIM Project Management and its regular publication of guidance notes.

“BIM is the future, not just of the surveying industry, but the entire construction sector. It has the power to unlock cost and time efficiencies which will enable the UK industry to become more efficient and competitive on a global scale. With this in mind, surveyors – particularly quantity surveyors – need to lead the charge when it comes to BIM and ensure that they have the right skills in place to implement it across their organisation. What’s more, we need to ensure that the surveying profession is one of the first to be consulted when BIM models are being developed on projects – this helping to maximise cost and resource efficiencies on all projects.”