© Amelyn Ng 2024
Beyond Business as Usual: BIM and the Future of Public Works
online-publication
YEAR:
2020
TYPE:
Essay published in POWER: Infrastructure in America, Temple Hoyne Buell Center, August 14, 2020.
2020
TYPE:
Essay published in POWER: Infrastructure in America, Temple Hoyne Buell Center, August 14, 2020.
INFO:
The managerial persistence or business as usual of Building Information Modeling (BIM) and indeed, its role in remote digital collaboration and uninterrupted business operations, resonates all too acutely with the present reality of a pandemic-stricken, remotely working world. Yet even as digital ways of working preserve existing modes of productivity, the world finds itself at a critical inflection point of deep, intersecting crises and compounding uncertainty.
What is BIM’s place in this uncertain future? Its proliferation as a major organizational force for public works may either continue to contribute to business as usual logics of large-firm capital, or—and one urgently hopes this is the case—be reconfigured by skilled professionals everywhere, toward a just transition of infrastructure across the planet.
The managerial persistence or business as usual of Building Information Modeling (BIM) and indeed, its role in remote digital collaboration and uninterrupted business operations, resonates all too acutely with the present reality of a pandemic-stricken, remotely working world. Yet even as digital ways of working preserve existing modes of productivity, the world finds itself at a critical inflection point of deep, intersecting crises and compounding uncertainty.
What is BIM’s place in this uncertain future? Its proliferation as a major organizational force for public works may either continue to contribute to business as usual logics of large-firm capital, or—and one urgently hopes this is the case—be reconfigured by skilled professionals everywhere, toward a just transition of infrastructure across the planet.