BIM and the Building Envelope

Building information modeling (BIM) will fundamentally and historically change the perspective of return on investment (ROI) in the building envelope (BE) industry before 2015. Such a bold claim is based on the belief that BIM is a process that acts as an enabling catalyst to two major building industry drivers that especially dominate the facade industry: 1) virtual design and construction (VDC); and 2) lean construction.

The BIM process has the potential to make significant changes in the highly specialized arena of curtain wall design, engineering, fabrication, installation, and maintenance. The BIM opportunity and challenges for contractors, glaziers, glazing system suppliers, and the consultants they use is to understand what the new BIM process is and how BIM changes their businesses today and in the years to come. They then must choose the best path to transform their firms, staff and corporate thinking into a BIM delivery process at all levels of the company. Many will find that the greatest hurdles to a BIM transition are the psychology of changing a corporate culture and not with the technology of installing a new software tool.