Last year, the UK government mandated that all centrally-funded work must be undertaken using BIM by 2016.

First and foremost, the process of implementing BIM is about change management. To do this successfully, the process must be carried out methodically. The best way is to make a ‘BIM implementation plan’.

Announced at ICE BIM 2015 and reaffirmed at Digital Construction Week, the UK Government’s Building Information Modelling mandate officially came into effect on April 4, 2016.

From this date, centrally procured public sector projects are now required to implement BIM at Level 2. Furthermore, centrally funded government departments will be required to provide “clear and complete” EIRs with all contracts.

Also launched on April 4 was a new dedicated website (www.Level2BIM.org) filled with Level 2 guidance, documentation and materials to support the industry. The BIM Task Group will also carry on providing assistance to the construction industry.

As well as the first timeframe, a further important date was announced. October 3, 2016 marked each government department’s capability to “electronically validate BIM information delivered from the supply chain”.

The BIM Task Group’s Mark Bew offered further comment on the deadlines. He told Infrastructure Intelligence: “Because we have met the April date we now want to start to drive the quality of data up. It is all very well pushing data at each other but if that data is rubbish then what is the point?

“The stretch target will be some kind of requirement around electronic validation capability a year from now. It is the future and linked to an research project where we started to understand how we can check data electronically. These tools are now available so we need to develop the techniques and pass them down into the supply chain.”

Here are some industry views on the announcement from April 4 to October 3:

Data validation by October 2016. But what data? How do we test before signing up to live projects?

— Bond Bryan BIM (@bondbryanBIM) October 22, 2015

4 April is BIM mandate date.. Govt has handed the gauntlet to industry to meet it. Time for push is over. It’s time for #AEC to pull #ICEBIM

— CONJECT (@conject) October 21, 2015

BIM – the journey is the destination. It is not all about key dates; they are only staging points on our digital voyage

— David Philp (@ThePhilpster) October 23, 2015