{"id":25346,"date":"2024-03-25T19:50:49","date_gmt":"2024-03-26T02:50:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/essential.construction\/news\/how-solibri-is-continually-guiding-its-customers-to-bim-success\/"},"modified":"2024-03-25T19:50:53","modified_gmt":"2024-03-26T02:50:53","slug":"how-solibri-is-continually-guiding-its-customers-to-bim-success","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/essential.construction\/news\/how-solibri-is-continually-guiding-its-customers-to-bim-success\/","title":{"rendered":"How Solibri Is Continually Guiding Its Customers to BIM Success"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Solibri is a trailblazer in the automated checking of building information models and it has been a leader in this field for many years. I had the pleasure of discussing with CEO Ville Kyyts\u00f6nen how the company is expanding its offering and future-proofing its customers\u2019 success.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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\u201cWhen I learned that Solibri was looking for a new CEO, I had an extremely positive impression of the company and I still have,\u201d stated Kyyts\u00f6nen. \u201cSolibri has always been a trailblazer with its leading and quite unique product.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kyyts\u00f6nen\u2019s career has been in BIM development. His work on the development of Tekla BIMsight and Trimble Connect gave him the experience necessary for taking on the CEO position at Solibri almost two years ago. Kyyts\u00f6nen also knows the realities of the construction industry, which has a pressing need to improve its productivity but is still a slow mover in adopting digitalization.<\/p>\n

Under Kyyts\u00f6nen\u2019s leadership, Solibri has renewed and expanded its offering, creating software that enables customers to collaborate efficiently and gain new value from using BIM in their processes.<\/p>\n

The full potential of BIM has yet to be unleashed<\/h2>\n

\u201cEven though BIM is on its way to becoming mainstream in most AEC firms in developed countries, how it\u2019s used is still tied to the past. For many, BIM is a tool for generating drawings or displaying 3D views of a design,\u201d as Kyyts\u00f6nen noted.<\/p>\n

Most often, the full capabilities of BIM as a tool for managing information are not used. The creators of a BIM model regularly don\u2019t add the data that the next team in the project chain could use. Hence, there\u2019s a lot of rework and guesswork in construction. Furthermore, clients are not aware of the real potential of BIM, so they buy drawings instead of valuable information. Thus, the business case for BIM is often, at best, tenuous.<\/p>\n

The poor quality of the information in models is most evident in BIM-based building permitting. Building authorities receive models that are missing essential information that would have allowed automated model checking. For example, designers may not have included accessibility or fire safety information in a machine-readable form. Such omissions are understandable if the designer\u2019s commission does not cover that work.<\/p>\n

BIM is no longer just for experts<\/h2>\n

As more people are getting involved in digital construction processes, BIM experts and heavy users have become a small minority in the workflow. Making BIM easier and automating it for the majority is critical for reaping the full benefits of model-based construction. Being able to automate processes is a key success factor, as is the delivery of information in a format that best serves the user.<\/p>\n

Solibri aims to make the transition to model-based construction as smooth as possible. It allows clients to check automatically that what they are getting from designers is what they paid for. Similarly, designers can use the tool to self-audit their models. For many, the valuable output of BIM is not the graphics and the 3D but the information. Using BIM through Excel is answer to many real-life challenges in construction.<\/p>\n

Integrated project delivery (IPD) and project alliancing are gaining popularity as they solve many of the problems inherent in traditional construction, which separate more than unite project participants. When the whole project consortium is working toward a common goal and the risks and rewards are shared, then the benefits of integrated BIM are self-evident.<\/p>\n

Being able to combine models via IPD and inspecting them in Solibri saves time and helps to eliminate costly errors. It also allows findings to be recorded, so that the best solutions are passed on to the next project. Kyyts\u00f6nen calls Solibri a \u201cneutral party\u201d in the process.<\/p>\n

Solibri\u2019s renewed offering<\/h2>\n

Solibri\u2019s user base is about 50-50 designers and construction companies. The biggest customers are international contractors. The top 1% are heavy users with a desktop license, doing rule-based assessments. A larger group are companies that want to standardize their BIM environment and pass all their models through Solibri. They use Solibri as an interface to the models.<\/p>\n

Meeting the needs of the latter user group is the one the reasons why Solibri reorganized its offering last year. Solibri Site allows them to view various models and search for information without mastering the rule-based functions. Solibri Office, on the other hand, is a model checker with the full functionality.<\/p>\n

Solibri Anywhere is a basic tool that everyone should have. It\u2019s a model viewer that can now manage combined models. Many customers have all three products for various purposes and use cases.<\/p>\n

Solibri adapts to its customers\u2019 needs<\/h2>\n

Instead of buying licenses, customers now have a subscription option. This allows them to pay flexibly for the tool when they need it. Optimizing a license by combining subscriptions and floating licenses is also possible.<\/p>\n

\u201cSolibri has, perhaps, been profiled as a high-end product, in terms of costs,\u201d Kyyts\u00f6nen admitted, \u201cbut if you consider the new product family and the overall cost, especially being able to use Anywhere as part of the overall solution, they are comparable to any other BIM product out there.\u201d<\/p>\n

The change that makes Solibri even more versatile is the introduction of Rule API. A small, but growing group of customers are organizations that have established their own BIM requirements. With the API, they can now develop proprietary rules that check whether a model complies with their requirements. This also opens business opportunities for professional rule-developers to offer services to the growing userbase.<\/p>\n