Dear Patel,

It can be done. Please note the following guideline.

1. The cost of BIM - say X USD.

2. Life expectancy of BIM in the organization - Y years.

3. No. of projects approximately going to use BIM - Say Z numbers.

4. Total project value of all the projects BIM is going to use - Say Z1 USD.

Now,

Calculate the cost of BIM per year as follows:

Cost of BIM (X) / Life of BIM (Y) = A.

Calculate the BIM contribution per project as follows:-

Total project value (Z1) / Number of projects used by BIM (Z) = B.

If the value of B is more than A, than it's worth to use BIM. If not on the other way round. This is a simple (POOR MAN WAY OF CALCULATING) ROI for any subjective items in an organization, where you can't directly quantify the returns.

Regards.

Sekar Gopal.

You are correct that accurate calculation of Return on BIM Investment has complexity, as your projects have varying contract language, culture of sharing data, technical maturity (skills and tools), and motivation to collaborate.  You may read our site.

I have a structured method that takes about 4 hours per project that I have delivered in workshop form in 16 countries.  Using 40 academic and research and case studies on the performance improvement that has been measured (BIM vs 2-D environment), the workshop analyzes 19 financial impacts of BIM implementation.  The financial benefits generally tackle what I call the “dominos of failure”.  Among those are Errors & Omissions, Requests for Information, Change Orders, Cost of Rework, Delays, Overtime, Quality Failure, Safety Failure, and Unstable geometry inhibiting prefabrication.  Also, there is increasing evidence of savings at turnover, early occupancy, and efficiencies during Operations & Maintenance.

Once the project team benefits are calculated, the next workshop task is to apportion the savings to the stakeholders who will be the beneficiaries according to the contract.  Finally, the costs to implement are calculated. 

The UK government has indicated that they expect to invest 1% of the project cost as premium to implement BIM, and get 6% return for a net of 5%.  On the 90 projects that I have analyzed with team workshops, 5% net is usually close to the resulting forecasted target, but teams are encouraged to see that return as a goal that is reachable, but perhaps not on the 1st project experience.

If you are looking for an enterprise-wide ROI, you can analyze typical ROI for each industry segment of your portfolio, and extrapolate.  You may want to calculate the savings that may result from improved “win rate of pursuit” for the contractor and designers, because owners are the beneficiaries of 60 to 70% of the project benefits…and the providers may be able to prove that their BIM methods and leadership were key to better project outcomes.

Douglas Chelson's PhD thesis has some great metrics for your task.  Also, Lauri Koskela and Rafael Sack's have done some brilliant work on the synergy between implementation of BIM and Lean Construction principles.

Thank very much Mr. Ken stowe, 

Can you please share document in which you have calculated roi of BIM in any project? 

 Dear all,

I am very interested in this question as I am currently undertaking my PhD around BIM and FM.

Ken I would also like to read your paper - Is that the one you have online here?

I am also interested in connecting with Douglas Chelson, if you could put me in contact I would be grateful.

Best regards

Simon

 Dear all,

I am very interested in this question as I am currently undertaking my PhD around BIM and FM.

Ken I would also like to read your paper - Is that the one you have online here?

I am also interested in connecting with Douglas Chelson, if you could put me in contact I would be grateful.

Best regards

Simon

to add more understanding about benefits quantification in general, you can read " benefit realisation management" by Bradley. This book can help you to know are you really need to quantify BIM benefits or there are other ways to see and manage BIM benefits. good luck you mention very good topic.

Hardik,  The submission that I referenced is titled “Capturing the ROI of All-in Building Information Modeling: A Structured Approach”.  It is available here at ResearchGate.  I have developed a spreadsheet used in the BIM ROI Workshops that allows for analysis of 19 benefits (the mantra is “every penny, for every stakeholder, for every phase”), which I can make available with some common understanding.  ([email protected]) The performance metrics that I have collected over 7 years, and present in the workshop, support the assertion that the model-based environment can produce savings when compared to the traditional 2-D/paper methods.  The metrics come from many sources.  Those include company-reported case studies, and academic studies from:

Center for Integrated Facilities Engineering (CIFE) – Stanford - USA

Construction Industry Institute – Auburn, TX  USA

Chalmers University of Technology – Sweden

University of Alberta - Canada

University of British Columbia - Canada

University of Salford – UK

BIM Task Group – UK Government

Yonsei University – South Korea

Delft University – Netherlands

Building and Construction Productivity Partnership – New Zealand

Curtin University - Australia

Israel Institute of Technology - Israel

University of Maryland - USA

University of Southern California - USA

Lean Construction Institute

Simon, I greatly admire Douglas Chelson, whose  PhD Thesis, “THE EFFECTS OF BUILDING INFORMATION MODELING ON CONSTRUCTION SITE PRODUCTIVITY” located on line has an abundance of just the kind of metrics that help the attendees of the workshop work up a reasonable forecast of each of the savings categories.  Douglas is now at Western Kentucky University.  I hope that I can help you with your PhD efforts.

Thanks Ken