BIM case study
- May 22, 2020
I was recently in Munich at the world’s largest building digitalization exhibition, where a German market research institute told me that 17% of construction projects in 2019 were BIM-based and that this is forecast to increase by 20% per year for the next 5 years.
That’s pretty harsh because it means that the BIM design method will displace traditional design from large and complex projects within 5 years, and then gradually from smaller ones.
But why is BIM as exciting for the Germans as a bargain mineral water in the desert?
Forget marketing for now and let’s take a look at a simple numerical example. For our BIM case study, let’s imagine a typical factory or office building that costs fej10 billion HUF for easy summing in the head. This is what this magnitude looks like in real life:


The pictures show the buildings of two projects in the US that we are doing the digital QA for. I’m showing them here for scale.
Let’s start at the beginning: is it so important how much BIM design costs?
Based on the cost figures, the design of a HUF 10 billion house using the classic method (concept plan: 0.2%; design: 1%; construction plan: 4%) is about HUF 520 million.
By contrast, BIM-based design and digital services together account for around 3% of the total cost over the life of the project, which is in essence HUF 1.0 billion, double the cost of traditional design.
Of course, every project is different, and there will be a time lag, but the projections for 2025 from international engineering firms, analytical institutes, and national standards give a broad picture:


It is not difficult to decide the race on the basis of the diagrams, but two conclusions can be drawn immediately:
- It is obvious that classical design is significantly cheaper, so it is not the low design fee that makes BIM projects attractive.
- It is at this point that a committed purchaser – whose clarity is not mystified by the context and benefits of BIM – can kill a BIM project with a quick and uninformed decision.
But even better than that would be to walk away with the company’s cash.
In order to avoid unpleasant fiascos like this, it is worth familiarising yourself with the digital lifecycle, and some basic concepts of BIM and it is very reasonable to involve an expert in the tender process.
This helps a lot to be able to distinguish Hollywood BIM from a real BIM project and to avoid being put in an awkward position with a tragic building model in your marketing stuff. I will write more about this later, so let’s get back to the point.
So we can conclude that
BIM-based design is 2x as expensive as classical design.
This is quite logical, as it requires much more software and tools, as well as more man-hours and much more skilled people.
So why is it spreading so much?
Well, because it is paradoxically very cheap! More precisely, it pays for itself very quickly. Now I guess you’re looking at the screen like I did when I heard from one of the country’s top financial experts that “we’re good now because money is cheap.”
Everything will be clear soon.
The pattern is similar to or better than that of electric cars. The new technology is available and, while noticeably more expensive, it is not unaffordable, but it is significantly cheaper to produce, maintain, and operate, and it is also wicked cool.
To get a sense of the proportions, we need to see that such a house will burn approximately HUF 30-35 billion of building materials, energy, and services over its lifetime. At approximately this rate:


(Source: BuildEXT)
- 3% will be the fee for design and digital services, which is about 1 billion HUF (design, BIM information upload, CDE service, FM system implementation),
- 30% of the cost is the construction itself, which we have set at 10 billion in our BIM case study,
- 67% of the house will be burned in energy, services, in other words, operation costs during its lifetime, which is about 20-25 billion HUF.
If you compare the total life cycle cost in the two (classical vs BIM) methodologies, you will understand the fact that the procurement colleague had no chance to see:


If you look at the bottom bar of the graph above, you can clearly (not) see that BIM design costs twice as much as traditional design.
This gives you an idea of why it does not matter how much extra BIM costs.
Because it is effectively a rounding error compared to the savings
If all this is not reason enough, you may be reassured to know that the additional digital service fee due to BIM, which is about 5% of the total investment, usually returns within a year, i.e. practically double during the construction!
This is because the systems are optimized by algorithms, so the house will work better, which saves, for example, material and resistance, so we need to buy smaller machines to run it. The plans will be much better coordinated, and easier for the contractor to understand, so there will be much less extra work and chances are that the construction will not be delayed by the constant fire fighting.
So no bad news to tell the owner, no bad news to tell the manager, no penalty and it’s a story where everyone is better off overall.
Construction is faster, cheaper, and, because of the far fewer problems, much safer
But what’s really cool is that over the entire lifecycle, the operating costs of a building designed and operated in a digital workflow are at least 20-30% lower. Over its lifetime, this is approximately equal to the total construction cost, i.e. HUF 8-10 billion!


The total construction cost can be returned
through more efficient operation.
At first, I didn’t believe it either, but the more I looked into it, the more plausible it seemed, and when I saw in our first 3 major projects that the facilities were built with a tenth of the problems and conflicts, I was completely convinced.
That’s why I’m writing this blog, and why all the leading Scandinavian, American, and Asian companies are hooked on this technology. In fact, it is no coincidence that it is being made a national standard in England and Australia.
I know, it was a lot, but I’ll sum it up clearly
If you add +5-8% to the design fee to finance a good BIM model and digital services:
- double this expenditure within a year,
- and then over its lifetime, it will pay for itself by a factor of 16-20x, which will recoup the entire construction cost.
If that still didn’t convince you, the bonus is that during the implementation you get rid of:
- a lot of headaches,
- conflicts,
- extra work,
- missed deadlines,
- and when the house is finished, it will be incredibly easy and enjoyable to operate.
It will have much lower overheads than its competitors’ houses, so the cost of the product it produces will be cheaper – or the profit on the rent will be higher.
Whatever you like.
Unbelievable
Of course it is. But we live in an age where progress has created a new digital toolkit and language that has opened up previously unimaginable opportunities in the construction industry. Just as the speech did to communication and the invention of numbers boosted science and commerce.
If you have a project where it makes a big difference whether you get the hall or the office right the first time, it’s a big mistake not to look for a good integrator. Someone who designs well has references and can see the full BIM lifecycle and digital ecosystem.
These are the aspects to look out for, but if you can’t find one or are unsure of your designer, I’m happy to help, feel free to contact me!
We only want to do a few pilot projects in the Hungarian market, so the goal is not to out-compete the local competition.
If you’d like to learn more about this technology or how it came about, how it works and doesn’t work, or where we’ve been sucked in by it, check out our blog and follow me on my LinkedIn profile or on our social channels!
Soon, we’ll be bringing you lots of detailed case studies to help bring more good BIM designers, contractors, and projects to the Hungarian construction industry.