Free information for small and medium-sized firms has been released by the trade body the Electrical Contractors’ Association (ECA). It’s to coincide with the government’s April 2016 introduction of requirement to use BIM Level 2 in significant centrally procured contracts.
The ECA’s ‘BIM Basics’ checklist highlights the essentials that firms within the building services sector will need to meet to work on BIM projects. Developed with the Chartered Institution of Building Services Engineers (CIBSE), the ECA’s ‘BIM Basics’ checklist includes the basic requirements within these key areas:
– Capability and skills
– Processes
– Software and hardware
– Digital information.
Bill Wright of the ECA says: “Central government spends billions each year on buying goods and services, and it’s vital that building services firms of all shapes and sizes quickly get up-to-speed with BIM Level 2. BIM won’t work properly if the specialist supply chain is fully ready, and the ECA’s easily digestible ‘BIM Basics’ Checklist will help smaller and lower tier contractors to understand what may be their most likely interactions with BIM projects.”
The ECA’s free ‘BIM Basics’ checklist can be viewed as a pdf. A more extensive version, containing more ‘advanced’ BIM requirements, is available to ECA members only. The ‘BIM Basics’ checklist is freely available until July 1, 2016.
Research by the ECA last year found that over half of contractors (54pc) with a turnover of less than £1m are ‘not ready at all’ for BIM, while three in ten firms with earnings between £1m and £20m were in the same position.
