Zweigwhite report: Firms still planning to expand BIM usage this year

While their were plenty of negative headlines about Zweigwhite’s recently released 2009 "Information Technology Survey of Architecture, Engineering, Planning, & Environmental Consulting Firms," reading through the actual report shows some very positive signs for Building Information Modeling (BIM) adoption and IT investment in BIM applications.

Leaders of 97 firms from every region in the U.S. and many different firm sizes completed the 106-question, 8-page survey in February and March. 

Some select data from the survey, available for purchase in its entirety from Zweigwhite:

- Firm leaders tied for their number one information technology priority for 2009: computer-aided drafting and design (CADD), BIM and technical applications (46%) and managing costs and profitability (46%). That BIM still ranks as high as managing costs in this economy is a testament to how important firm leaders view the new technology.

- 77% of respondents are using 3D CADD and AutoCAD still dominates the market with 81% of it. However, 61% of firm leaders also said their firms are using Revit. No other application penetrated more than 51% of the market.

- A quarter of firms are already using BIM in at least 20% of their work and close to two-thirds of firms (65%)  plan to increase their use of BIM in 2009.

- Firms’ median total IT spending per employee ($4,806) has reached a ten-year high.

-IT staff labor makes up the largest percentage of firms’ IT expenses, accounting for a median of 30.2% of their total IT spending.

So while the study reports that more than half of  AECP firms (55%) are budgeting less for information technology in 2009 than they did in 2008, it also reports that most firms (65%) plan to INCREASE their use of either existing or new CADD and BIM software.

With IT labor making up the lion’s share of expenses (30.2%) and pre-packaged software coming in at a lower median cost (16.7%) and BIM tied for the number one priority of all respondents, you can read between the lines of this report a bit. The industry has unfortunately already seen much of effect of the cost reductions the respondents were planning in the form of layoffs of IT staff.