UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO, BUILDING TALL RESEARCH CENTRE
Annual BIM Report 2019
Building Tall Research Centre at University of Toronto first partnered with the Residential Construction Council of Ontario (RESCON) and Toronto BIM Community (tBIMc) in 2017 to conduct a detailed survey of BIM implementation within the Canadian architecture, engineering, construction, and facility management industries (AEC/FM). It was motivated by the lack of a consistent benchmark for BIM implementation in Canada. Starting
small, the effort resulted in the 1st Annual BIM Report – 2018 for the Greater Toronto Area1.
Although, the first report focused on only one economic region of Canada, it had overwhelming support from the local industry with over 250 respondents to the survey and more than 20 in-person interviews. The success of the first survey attracted interest from national organizations, CANBIM and Building SMART Canada, and motivated the research team to expand the survey scope to include the entire country.
The 2nd Annual BIM Report 2019 comprises responses from 398 participants from coast to coast. Although significant effort was expended, the response rates did not fully mirror the activity in all of provinces and territories. Therefore, we will double our efforts to promote participation and improve proportional representation next year. Further coordination with local BIM communities and industry organizations and associations will be essential in achieving this goal.
Around the world, countries are integrating innovative BIM-based processes and analyses throughout their AEC/FM industry. Most, if not all, achieved this in a top-down approach through national mandates requiring BIM for all public and/or private projects. As of 2019, Canada is the only G7 country without a national BIM mandate. Instead, the BIM momentum is being driven outward from the middle by the design community. As the visibility of BIM grows, the push upstream to owners and downstream to contractors is making evident the value of BIM processes and efficiencies.
Building Tall Research Centre from University of Toronto has recently partnered with Residential Construction Council of Ontario (RESCON), Qoo Studio, and National Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), to develop applications for the use of BIM during the permitting processes at municipalities (through e-permitting solutions), and more importantly on construction site for the complete duration of the construction process (through augmented and virtual reality technologies).
Governments and regulators are recognizing the potential for reducing time and red tape, and for improving process transparency. We anticipate that these annual reports will capture this revolution as BIM philosophies are embraced throughout the Canadian industry. The research initiatives between University of Toronto, RESCON, Qoo Studio, and NSERC will investigate and demonstrate the benefits that BIM can provide throughout the entire lifecycle of construction projects, from preliminary design, through permitting, construction, inspection, operation, and maintenance of a facility.
As always, the research team at Building Tall welcomes feedback from anybody who reads this report and has suggestions on how to improve its future iterations.
What do you use BIM for?
The majority of respondents indicated that they use BIM for coordination, visualization, collaboration and clash detection. These functions are all cross- discipline applications of BIM, so it makes sense that they report the most use. This also speaks to BIM’s strength as a communication tool. Other common uses include architectural design, scheduling, quality control and quantity take off. These applications are more discipline specific, understandably resulting in less use overall.
Very few respondents use BIM for inspection or facility management, a significant potential that remains mostly untapped in the
Canadian market.
How likely are the following technologies to have a significant influence
on the industry over the next 10 years?
With the exception of 3D printing, this year’s respondents were more optimistic about technology influencing their industry in the near future. Cloud-based technologies and VR/AR had the highest agreement, with 96 and 92% of respondents indicating that these would be influencing technologies.
Other technologies that garnered over 80% include AI, Drones, Big Data, the Internet of things, machine learning and robotics. Belief that 3D printing will have an effect on the industry dropped 7%.
Just 52% agreed that Blockchain would influence the industry, though only 10% outright said that it would have no impact with the rest unsure. This was not evaluated in 2018.
