Experiences learned from an international BIM contest: Software use and information workflow analysis to be published in: Journal of Building Engineering

Abstract The use of Building Information Modelling (BIM) is getting more and more popular since governments worldwide are increasing the demand of this methodology as a requirement in their projects. One of the most encouraging ways to promote the use of this methodology is based on the so-called BIM contests, where practitioners are challenged to build a virtual model of a structure collaboratively. These challenges are usually designed to take the participants out of their comfort zone and to encourage them to experiment in the use of the latest software and collaborative software connections. Unlike other activities encouraging BIM, these contests have the additional advantage of easing the comparison in terms of software, exchange file formats and information flows as all the proposals are framed into a common project with the same working time. Despite the interest of this kind of comparative analyses, no studies of the results of BIM contest proposals can be found in the literature. To fill this gap, this paper analyses the summary reports of the different proposals submitted in three editions (2014, 2015 and 2016) of the BIM Valladolid contest in Spain. The results of this study provide usefull insights into the use of software in a number of disciplines (Architecture, Structural Analysis, Energy Efficiency, Measurements and Budget, Facilities, Planning Execution and Coordination) and the most common file exchange formats. The evolution of teams in software use throughout the different contest editions as well as the information flow among the Architecture and the Structural Analysis disciplines are also analyzed.