The disruptive innovation concept was introduced in 1995 by Clayton M. Christensen...

The term is used to describe a technology or innovation that enhances a product or a service to the point where this product replaces the predominant technology on the market or one that’s well established.

Among the most well know disruptive innovations; let’s mention the invention of printing, of the automobile and of personal computers. For a few years now, BIM earned its place on this list of new technologies that changed completely the way things are done.

The invention of computer-assisted design (CAD) certainly helped increase tremendously the quality and the productivity of the drafting process, but in the end, the process itself leading to the final product remained relatively unchanged. On the contrary, the modeling tools combined to the BIM concept change completely the existing paradigms of the construction industry. Some tasks are bound to disappear while new ones will be created. The distribution of tasks will change as well, just like some responsibilities will shift, but these changes will allow the industry to benefit from the advantages of BIM.

Currently, all the major modeling software developers (Bently, Autodesk, Tekla, Vico, etc) are trying to appropriate the BIM concept and sell their complete software suite, insisting that it’s the only product that allows for seamless communication with the other disciplines. End-users, though, really have nothing to gain from such solutions because it means giving a lot of power to the software company that will win the BIM race. This developer will then have the possibility to dictate its own standards to the rest of the industry, but also its technological choices and, of course, prices. This kind of situation is called a technological lock-in. The example of the Microsoft monopoly should be enough to prove the point that such a situation is not desirable for the construction industry.

Presently, there is not one BIM suite that integrates all the construction disciplines, although some claim they do. We highly encourage all users to keep their power over change by making informed choices. The key for the members of the industry is to achieve good information management much more than having the opportunity to buy an integrated software, because such an integration really cannot be achieved completely.