Existing BIM to digitize and manage the built heritage in Campania Region

Abstract

It is now 48 years since Eastman theorized what would become known as BIM:

Building Information Modelling. Despite this, we can observe that the methodolo- gy, together with its associated tools, is still considered an exception to estab- lished practice, an eternal novelty with clearly something unfinished.

If we exclude a few excellences, such as the United States and the United King- dom, and countries vying for keeping up, such as France and Italy, there are still a

lot of regions where BIM is completely unsystematized. As a result, it is first im- plemented in large design studios and public projects and only then, with difficul- ty, does it spread to the rest of the market.

While we could accept the idea of a silent revolution that takes time to gain a

foothold, it is now clear that too much pressure has been applied to the AEC (Ar- chitecture Engineering Construction) sector, which was not ready for such a radical

change, first in thought and then in practice. Putting this aside, the time required for innovation is in any case not compatible with that necessary for digitization in other sectors, generally between 5 and 10 years (NBS’ 10th National BIM Report). The fourth industrial revolution (Industry 4.0), the one of data and connections, has brought out the limits of our domain, which is unable to keep up with other sectors of production and services. While it is right that transition can only be triggered by an awareness of needs, it is also true that managing interactions with external fields is an equally relevant factor. This paradigm can also be extended to the associated tools, which must interact and be connected to the web in order to ensure proper data management and the realization of the so-called “digital twin”. The new AEC software has metabolized the

BIM methodology, or at least it is oriented towards it, although consistent and signif- icant examples are still linked to large projects and established professional actors.

There are no reports or analyses in the literature that disprove the inevitability

of BIM for any product (infrastructure, buildings, etc.), application (new construc- tion, renovation, restoration, etc.) or stakeholder (clients, designers, companies,

etc.). Despite commercial maturity and a broad spectrum of technical standards that seem to be converging towards organicity, the most common image is that of an unfinished revolution. Apart from the abovementioned excellences, we can identify an uncertain use

of tools, very specialized, based on approximations through trial and error, ac- companied by a limited knowledge of the IT (Information Technology) and com- plexity behind the software front-end. They are compounded by the weaknesses

of a mistaken approach to change: on the one hand, there is a very fragmented experimentation, which has difficulties in dissemination and systemic interaction, and on the other hand, we have the inefficiency of a top-down body of rules and laws, which risks excluding the bottom from participation. [...] [edited by Author]