How does Blockchain support the use of BIM?
Ilustración 1: Desarrollo de BIM en el mundo
Fuente: https://www.geospatialworld.net/article/bim-adoption-around-the-world-how-good-are-we/
The use of BIM in construction is a commitment to challenge a large number of companies, professionals, and governments worldwide.
Initially, it has been thought that governments should promote its use, making it mandatory in public constructions, since it is a tool that would allow optimization of public resources, giving transparency to the entire construction process. In this way, the State could know every detail of how a public infrastructure or building has been constructed, reducing risks and increasing productivity and transparency for all committed agents.
Perhaps the most relevant thing about BIM is that it is a tool based on collaboration, which becomes more intense as the level of BIM use increases. In this way, BIM becomes a tool that blurs the limits established in reality.
In more developed countries, where BIM is used more massively, limiting factors that prevent professionals from using it, despite its benefits, are already beginning to emerge. These issues are the following:
- Intellectual Property.
- Responsibility of the participants.
- Supervisory duties.
Today, the answer to those concerns is the elaboration of more sophisticated contracts specialized in each need that emerges. An example of how to cope with this new reality has been developed at the Institute for BIM Canada [1]
A number of special clauses have been agreed there to safeguard intellectual property in BIM, use rights to that property, and supervisory responsibilities and obligations.
However, even with these contracts, there are still issues that persist as a permanent challenge in the use of BIM. These are lack of confidence in the data; the impossibility of traceability of changes in the model; and a new focus on participant accountability.
The BIM user community is convinced that this tool is here to stay and will increasingly replace paper documentation with digital files, just as every existing economic sector is being digitized.
Therefore, it seems that BIM needs permanent technological and contractual adaptation to ensure its development.
¿ BLOCKCHAIN for full BIM deployment?
To achieve full BIM deployment we need a technological tool that works like paper, but gives us the confidence to get involved in the project.
Blockchain is another way of storing information. It is a digital database that can be accessible by all devices that have previously agreed to be part of the project. Each element of the information is stored in a block.
Each block will have the date, the information and the identity of the contributor. The information can be seen by all participants (distributed base), who validate and accept the block. At the moment of accepting, the block is added to the rest of the history of the project. The blocks are chronologically ordered and linked to each other by cryptographic systems. In this way, changes are also recorded as such, leaving a record of when and by whom they were made.
In this way, it is shown that blockchain can be the foundation for BIM, so that:
- It allows the recording of all the information and documentation of a project;
- Ensures reliability, security, traceability and perpetual storage of information added and integrated to the BIM model; and
- It allows to register and supervise the accounting of the participants
BLOCKBIM Workshops
What we describe above has not been captured from a science fiction story. It is an ongoing discussion in Canada, where BIM programs are underway and where academia has participated in the investigation. It is based on an interdisciplinary workshop with those who are not scared of the changes technologies can bring to the construction sector.
The diagnosis of obsolescence in this sector is unanimous and undeniable. Those who start to get involved in research processes today will have the key to what the real estate and construction market will mean in the next 20 to 30 years.
Soon our Workshop #3: “Tokenization of real estate assets and smart contracts”
[1] https://www.acec.ca/source/2014/december/pdf/BIM.PDF
NOTE: This article was written based on a presentation made by the Canada BIM Council April 2018. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XNq7ajv7g4
Author: Alejandra Labarca and Blockbim team
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