Skip main navigation

BIM perspectives from other regions

Globally, countries are increasingly becoming aware of the usefulness of BIM. This article provides latest developments of BIM in selected regions.

Having looked at the situation in Europe and Africa, you now find out about BIM adoption and implementation in other global regions.

Read two articles that provide a thorough review of BIM adoption around the world: ‘BIM Adoption and Implementation around the World: Initiatives by Major Nations’ (Singh 2017) and ‘Global BIM – which countries have adopted Building Information Modelling?’ (Mistry N n.d).

Two further regions that are discussed in these articles are Asia and North America.

Asia

In Asia, countries like Singapore, China, South Korea, Japan, India and Malaysia are already implementing BIM in their projects (Singh 2017; National Building Standards 2016; Ismail, Chiozzi and Drogemuller 2017).

However, it is observed that there is a slow pace in adopting BIM in Asian countries compared to some parts of the world, like Europe. There are several obstacles affecting the adoption ranging from cultural mindset, needing to stick to the old approaches of 2D plans, and difficulty in finding BIM trained professionals.

North America

The American region has an interesting history of BIM adoption and implementation. Despite BIM having been around since the 1980s, it was only in the early 2000s that implementation of BIM became noticeable in some states of the USA (Singh 2017).

In Canada, adoption varies by state, so some are still lagging behind in adopting BIM for their projects. It also varies by the fact that:

‘some projects utilise the complete suite of BIM project options where others only use the technology for mechanical, electrical, and building envelope components’ (Orr 2017).

Your task

In your locality, what is the adoption timeline, the responsible authority, and the standards used?
Consider the trend of adoption of BIM by the nations featured in this section. What do you think is the best way to speed up adoption?

References

National Building Standards (2016) International BIM Report. Newcastle upon Tyne: RIBA Enterprises Ltd

Singh, I. (2017) ‘BIM Adoption and Implementation around the World: Initiatives by Major Nations’ Geospatial World [online] available from https://www.geospatialworld.net/blogs/bim-adoption-around-the-world/ [27 April 2018]

Ismail, N. A. A, Chiozzi, M., and Drogemuller, R. (2017) ‘An overview of BIM uptake in Asian developing countries’. in Saloma, W. (ed) Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Construction and Buildings Engineering. ‘Smart Construction’. held 14-17 August 2017 at Palembang, Indonesia

Mistry, N. (n.d) ‘Global BIM – which countries have adopted Building Information Modelling?’ [online] available from https://www.stroma.com/news/global-bim [30 April 2020]

© Coventry University. CC BY-NC 4.0
This article is from the free online

An Introduction to Building Information Modelling

Created by
FutureLearn - Learning For Life

Reach your personal and professional goals

Unlock access to hundreds of expert online courses and degrees from top universities and educators to gain accredited qualifications and professional CV-building certificates.

Join over 18 million learners to launch, switch or build upon your career, all at your own pace, across a wide range of topic areas.

Start Learning now