Guidelines for BIM approach in infrastructure projects

Encouraged by the trend of model-based working, integrated practice as a new context of construction projects and the planned number of investments at the state level, the Croatian Chamber of Civil Engineers has developed specialized guidelines for Building Information Modelling approach in infrastructure projects. The guidelines were presented to the professional public in 2021 with a clear message that it is the right time for Croatian companies to implement BIM approach in their operations to increase competitiveness in domestic and foreign markets, raise the quality of design and construction and reduce construction and maintenance costs. The Guidelines describes BIM approach and procedures during design, collaboration and coordination, construction and maintenance. An overview of the most widespread BIM tools in the field of infrastructure projects, basic settings of project cooperation, a common shared environment and interoperability is given. Digital collaboration modes, types of models, levels of detail and model management complete the first part of the document. The second part of the Guidelines describes key processes in BIM implementation at the company and project level. This content provides an overview of how BIM affects the current working model and what needs to be done to move to a fully collaborative model-based infrastructure project development. The guidelines are supported by LOD tables for the most common types of buildings in infrastructure projects. In order to overcome the lag in adoption of BIM in infrastructure projects it is necessary to identify the key challenges and the most common reasons that stand in the way of its significant and frequent application. The results of research conducted so far indicate that these include lack of cooperation, costs associated with the BIM adoption, lack of knowledge and skills, software limitations, lack of compatible product information, national context for classifying product data and clearly defined standards for sharing data between project participants.