Germany’s Governmental BIM Initiative – The BIM4INFRA2020 Project Implementing the BIM Roadmap

The technology of Building Information Modeling (BIM) promises a significant increase in productivity in the design, construction and operation of buildings and infrastructure facilities. In the entire world, the AEC industry is starting to transform itself by moving from 2D drawings to digital building models that do not only represent 3D geometry of the building components, but also all the non-geometric data required throughout the building’s lifecycle. As this technological change has an impact on all stakeholders of the AEC in a fundamental way, a carefully planned transition is necessary to avoid economical damage. In many countries around the world, government-driven initiatives are underway to initiate the necessary changes. Also Germany is preparing the transition to BIM-based workflows in its AEC industry. In 2015, the German Ministry of Transport and Digital Infrastructure defined a comprehensive roadmap for the stepwise introduction of BIM methods with the goal to make BIM mandatory for federal infrastructure projects in 2020. The authors present the outcomes of the large-scale project BIM4INFRA2020 initiated by the government that helped to pave the way towards the German BIM mandate through a number of measures, including the precise definition of the BIM implementation on the basis of well-defined use cases, the guidance and supervision of a number of carefully selected pilot projects, the creation of extensive guidelines and handouts, and the formulation of measures to be taken by industry and government to overcome yet existing hurdles.