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Commissioned by the UK Government Department of Business, Innovation and Skills and published in February 2015, this world-leading strategy sets out how the UK can further develop digital technology used in the construction industry and wider built environment to encompass the full lifetime of a building or infrastructure facility.

Digital Built Britain is a strategy to maintain the UK’s global leadership role in the application of BIM in both construction and the wider digital economy.

The strategy aims to integrate the technologies transforming the UK's approach to infrastructure development and construction with the aim of making fully virtual construction the norm in the UK and ensuring that the benefits of these technologies are felt across the country.

Read Digital Built Britain: Level 3 Building Information Modelling - Strategic Plan [pdf, 1.9MB]

The Institute was commissioned by the Future Cities Catapult to deliver the research and foresight report City Scale Building Information Modelling - State of the Art Research as part of their Integrated Urban Planning theme. Delivered in conjunction with the University of Northumbria and IntraTeamIT, the report considers how building information modeling might scale up to the city level.

Although largely invisible, the foundations for big data and predictive data analytics are being laid across our cities. BIM as it is commonly referred to, uses digital descriptions of built assets in a 3D environment, providing a process for creating, sharing and managing information during planning, design, construction and management.
 
Geoffrey Stevens, Urban Internet of Things Manager at Future Cities Catapult, said:

“Cities are complex systems made up of buildings, infrastructure and people, and their interactions and exchanges. BIM has huge potential beyond just new buildings, to help design and operate buildings in a way that increases efficiency, wellbeing and productivity. This report highlights ideas from multiple sectors, showing how BIM could optimise the existing built environment, and better provide for cities and their citizens."

Interoperability with other digital city systems to support open information sharing will be one change high on the agenda of possible next steps. A series of provocations for how BIM might coincide with city life in 2050 were also developed. These all assume a default position of open data and imagine a future where new data sources and forecasting/modelling capabilities are developed in citizen centric and citizen comprehensible ways.