Asset-intensive organisations face many challenges, including the need to create a responsible methodology and delivery model for risk-managed performance that reinforces organisational objectives.

To break through this long journey, organizations now have many alternatives, such as BIM technology, which supports an organization’s Asset Management System throughout its entire life cycle. The BIM methodology allows the use of 3D built asset models to go beyond the design phase and into the construction and maintenance phase of the built asset, as well as moving the 3D model into a 4D simulation.

Importance of Business Asset Management

The management of physical business assets is a fundamental element in ensuring the competitiveness of organisations that generate value through the use of these assets, but it is also a very important tool for making decisions related to corporate finance.

Asset management helps companies and maintenance planning organisations to achieve a reliable response to business needs. Furthermore, it is not so much focused on taking action on assets, but rather on generating value through assets, in other words, it is focused on the business.

Asset management functions are becoming a key element in organisations that are moving away from reactive behaviour (breakdown – repair) and are adopting the philosophy of total asset lifecycle planning, preventive maintenance processes and other best practices.

Benefits of asset management:

  • Ensure return on investment of assets.
  • Optimise use of installed capacity.
  • Control asset risks throughout their life cycle.
  • Know the useful life and optimise the costs of the assets.
  • Maximize the knowledge of the organization around its assets.
  • Reduce inventory costs and control expenditure.
  • Increase management and reduce operational risks.
  • Highlight operational capabilities through workflow automation.
  • Improve inventory reliability.

A strategic enterprise asset management system must include global management applications, integrating with the design and construction phases of the assets and including tools from construction project management to maintenance management, security or energy efficiency, among many others.

How does BIM support Asset Management?

BIM technology promises to be an important factor in the built asset industry in the future. It can make it easier for users at all stages of the built asset life cycle to perform their tasks, integrating design, engineering, construction maintenance and decommissioning information about a built asset project into a single model. The BIM methodology is much more than a simple modeling software, it is a way to organize a project, through an efficient and effective management.

BIM keeps the purpose (or objectives) of the asset at its core. BIM tools can be considered to go beyond a simple technological evolution of CAD and 2D/3D models, adding to these physical descriptions an information management system that is fully integrated with organisational objectives, providing clear and accessible information for the management of each and every phase of the asset’s life cycle. When properly exploited, BIM can generate efficiencies and enhance the value of assets.

The availability of appropriate asset information is vital to effective asset management, as it underpins decision making, planning and execution of actions affecting these assets. BIM provides this information and that is why the current trend is to integrate asset management and BIM. This is achieved:

  • Improve the performance of assets and the cost of their management.
  • To ensure the long-term predictability of asset performance and the consequence of decisions in the design phase on the useful life of the asset.
  • To reduce the start-up costs of investment projects or asset improvements.
  • Reduce operational and investment/asset improvement costs.

Working with BIM makes it possible to have accurate and updated information in real time on the company’s assets, increasing business knowledge to facilitate maintenance and technical management, but also to make well-informed strategic decisions.

In these situations, the use and incorporation of tools for the implantation of BIM provides greater utility to the model.

Asset Management in a BIM environment

Working with Asset Management in a BIM environment implies being present throughout the life of the infrastructure, in each of its phases:

  • Conceptualization of the project, providing a quick dynamic 3D modeling with all the information about structures, facilities, materials, etc.
  • Construction, providing a planning of times, costs, personnel, etc.
  • Information management and data collection for maintenance, providing the client with the specific service needed to optimise resources, service agility, cost prevention, energy impact analysis, etc.

This generates all the necessary information to be able to evaluate the efficiency of the systems applied and resources used.

BIM contributes to asset management as a critical enabler of both the desired performance of assets and the effectiveness and optimization of in-service costs during the operation and maintenance phase.

It enables asset managers to access the decision-making process at a much earlier stage, where they can influence the optimisation of maintenance costs and improved operational performance and utilisation. Through these tools and based on a BIM concept, Retain enables improved efficiency and reduced life cycle costs of assets, both in the construction and maintenance phases.

Want to learn more about Retain and asset management at BIM? Contact us without obligation.