Improving the Use of BIM Using System Engineering for Infrastructure Projects

BIM is defined and used in several ways. As standardisation is now increasing on BIM, it is time to optimise the use of BIM, especially for civil infrastructure projects. The level of detail of the information produced and exchanged is not defined enough to allow production optimisation. It concerns a lot of processes and documents in the project, not only the BIM Execution Plan. It is proposed here to use system engineering principles to complete the BIM principle, helping to optimise the use of BIM. Some of these principles are similar but they have to be merged, regarding both System Engineering and BIM paradigms. Finally, integration of systems composing the civil infrastructure is the final aim. Using BIM and System Engineering principles in an efficient way is crucial to make BIM not a constraint but a need for the project.