BIM in Real Estate Development

Ricardo Rosa, Director of Digital Business Development, Sonae Sierra

As Developers and Real Estate Services providers, we have been implementing BIM to improve our products and develop better Real Estate solutions with lower costs and faster development schedules. The BIM process starts in the Business Plan, where we can make better and more accurate cost estimates based on more standardized ratios and data. For developers, the process will end at the time of selling the asset, when BIM brings more transparency to the transaction, reducing costs and time of Due Diligence.

Between these two key points, Business Plan and the Sale, BIM adds value to a variety of activities and processes related to the asset life cycle. We can sum advantages and reduce risks, costs, and time during the different phases of development.

Advantages in Licensing phase

 Authorities are working together with universities to develop BIM-based models to validate urban rules and regulations. 

At this moment the experiments reveal that 70% of the actual verification tasks can be done by computers. This will reduce licensing delays and costs related to human errors and misunderstanding of the design elements benefiting investors and developers.

Advantages in Design, Procurement, and Construction phases

Some years ago, we developed our projects with BIM, and our experience revealed strong advantages in the design phase, in particular, the coordination between the different teams involved.

"Between these two key points, Business Plan and the Sale, BIM adds value to a variety of activities and processes related to the asset life cycle."

Coordination meetings become more productive, requiring less time to identify problems and find adequate solutions. And because we can work with a 3D virtual model, the coordination meeting is not around the table but around the video screen where all the consultants can see the problems and work together on the solution. Recently, with the pandemic, this became an even bigger advantage because it fits perfectly in the videoconferencing model.

In addition, all the preparation of the works, normally done during construction, is done during the detailed design, and the errors and conflicts are anticipated and immediately solved, avoiding future extra costs and delays. 

Although the higher investment costs, the design with BIM does not exceed 5% of the total investment, and risk can be reduced to a level of 5%. In addition, working with BIM can also anticipate the value engineering phase that normally occurs during the procurement phase.

Our experience is that 90% of the “value” of the project can be created before the construction phase. During construction, the planning and quality control is more accurate. Today we can use image tools associated with machine learning algorithms to follow up the construction process by comparing reality with the developed model.There are additional advantages to commercial buildings, like offices and shopping centres. The use of a BIM model also brings better communication between asset owners and tenants. The tenant design team can also work inside the building model and develop the entire fit-out with maximum accuracy reducing time to market.

As an example, we can say that in a commercial building, a small-size shop that some years ago spent 3 months with construction works before opening to the public, now with BIM can reduce this delay to 2 months, this means that this shop can be selling goods one month before and paying the normal rent to the asset owner. For a big shopping centre with 400 shops with a 10% rotation of tenants, this means less than 40 months of lost rent. Certainly, worth the initial investment to start working with BIM.