Building Information Modelling and Virtual Design and Construction : Differentiations and interaction

Sammanfattning: Within the last decade BIM technology products have been providing the construction industry with various tools that can be used in all construction phases and aspects with a wide set of potentials that range from visualization to simulation, scheduling and cost estimation (Kam , et al., 2016). As a result, the term BIM started to have new interpretation from a process- oriented perspective beside the product-oriented interpretation. These different interpretations and definitions of BIM creates an ambiguity regarding BIM. The ambiguity about what is BIM takes another direction when the term “Virtual Design and Constructions” VDC is used as synonym of BIM as well in many situations. VDC is defined as the use of integrated multi-disciplinary performance models of design-construction projects to support explicit and public business objectives (Kunz & Fischer, 2012). This study is an attempt to answer the following questions: What are the differences between BIM and VDC and how BIM and VDC interact and affect each other. As a result, a timeline for both terms was created based on a historical analysis for the emergence of both terms. Furthermore, more differences between VDC and BIM were located through literature reviews and empirics and this mapping was used to find how each term affects the other.   The study was conducted in Tyréns Swedish consultancy company and it covered two infrastructure projects where VDC is used.