Building Information Modelling and offsite construction in civil engineering

In 2011, the UK Government mandated that all construction projects (buildings and infrastructure) that they procured would be undertaken within a 3-D BIM (Building Information Model) environment by March 2016. This has caused both construction procurers and providers to embark on a journey towards universal BIM adoption, including the integration of BIM within a revised construction process. Offsite construction has also seen significant development in the building sector in the past decade; in infrastructure however, offsite exploitation has been more limited. This paper presents research regarding how innovation initiatives such as BIM and offsite can and need to be considered together, thus allowing leaner design, a greater integration of lifetime project data and more novel technical solutions. The analysis outlines the benefits of utilising offsite within a BIM environment, the challenges currently facing the supply chain, and recommendations are made as to how best to implement the emergent benefits.