Why a model office may be the answer to introducing the new BIM system.
The rail industry faces increased levels of upheaval as the Government’s latest mandate is introduced on all public procured projects. From 2016 projects will need to adopt the Building Information Modelling (BIM) system.
For CIOs and project teams this will cause increased technology demands. As well as the specific project systems, consideration of how BIM will interact with existing systems in the organisation needs to not only be explored but also trialled, preferably within a safe test environment.
Work by Project (EU), one of the sector’s leading independent consultancies who provide specialist business process and finance systems advice, has begun developing model offices for key rail organisations.
“The environments are tailored to individual organisations,” explained Donna Butchart, MD of Project (EU). “This means rapid installation and developing of prototype solutions that can be demonstrated back to the business and key stakeholders.
“The advantages of having a model office environment are multiple. It demonstrates new software and features uninhibited by customisations; it also allows real sample business data to be loaded making it feel far more relevant and any configuration will be aligned to the data.”
One of the over-riding benefits of creating a model office environment though is that it significantly reduces development timescales; thus minimising cost and impact. After all the developed packaged software components can be implemented back into the production systems.
For many CIOs considering how to successfully implement BIM, a model office environment may well provide the obvious solution.