Pretty BIM vs. Serious BIM

At the BIM Forum at the Arizona Grand Resort in Phoenix last week, the education sessions ranged from design to fabrication, CNC production, and owners’ use of BIM case studies, but the best new acronym of the two-day conference came from Christof Spieler, director of technology and information at Morris Architects in Houston, in his talk on standards for construction-ready BIM models, the idea of the Building Prettiness Model (BPM).

“The problem is BIM models look beautiful and many designers get carried away with what they CAN accomplish,” Spieler said. “These are not Building Prettiness Models. In this way models can LOOK complete but actually be quite incomplete and inaccurate.”

Spieler said Morris completed its firstst contractor BIM project in 2008 and is seeing a lot of owner RFPs that require BIM. The firm is also producing construction documents from BIM software and seeing good advantages from BIM use, such as avoiding clashes before drawing them.  After his presentation he elaborated a bit more on pretty BIM vs. serious BIM.

“It is a pandora’s box and we have created expectations (among owners) that this is what you should expect, you should expect a BIM presentation and a detailed rendering” Spieler said. “We’re not going to go back, but we can make sure that what we don’t overpromise and that what we provide to the client is accurate while also providing everything the construction community needs.”

I’ve certainly seen some BPMs that didn’t deliver in the past three years. I still want that second half of the Harmon Tower I was promised for CityCenter in Vegas. Has Pretty BIM ever let you down and was Serious BIM standing there with all of its parameters saying “I told you so,” after?

We loved your pretty BIM rendering, Harmon, but we only got to see half of you get built.