Investigating Owner Requirements for BIM-Enabled Design Review

The emergence of BIM represents a considerable opportunity for stakeholders in the AECO industry to more effectively deliver and manage the built environment. Of the lifecycle opportunities that have been documented for these stakeholders, none have apparently more to gain than large built asset owners. There is a challenge, however, in moving from theoretical applications of BIM to implementation, especially for large organizations such as public owners. This study aims to uncover how BIM can be effectively used for design review in a large owner organization. The research team undertook a retrospective case study and analyzed a series of design review comments on 12 different projects. During the analysis, prevailing, and recurring issues were extracted and characterized to better understand how a BIM-enabled design review process could benefit the owner compared to conventional 2D drawing-based review methods. The results of this study showed that 26% of the design review comments were related to information content or structure. This suggests that the current method being used to convey information is inefficient, and considerable amount of time is being spent simply retrieving and processing information. Examples of BIM-enabled design review are also provided to demonstrate the potential benefits of BIM from an owner's perspective.