In the early stages of BIM technology adoption, due to limited theoretical knowledge and practical experience, enterprises focused primarily on collaboration within individual design phases rather than across them. Although labor was clearly divided at each design stage, efforts were concentrated on fostering cooperation within the scheme design, preliminary design, and construction drawing design phases. This approach represents a typical design workflow during the initial BIM implementation phase.
Currently, BIM application is largely constrained by the capabilities of software and hardware. These limitations can be partially addressed by enabling better integration between different design stages. BIM software often demands high-performance systems, especially for large-scale projects with complex data that require specialized software tools. In such cases, designers first establish design principles, followed by separate modeling for each discipline, particularly for projects requiring zoning-based models.
At critical design points, a “linking” strategy is used to combine outputs from different disciplines. Through multi-party collaboration, once the current stage’s tasks are successfully completed, the process moves on to the next design phase. This method helps reduce the hardware burden that arises when multiple disciplines work on the same file simultaneously. However, it also presents notable drawbacks:
First, this workflow operates in a sequential manner, with clearly defined roles and deadlines for each discipline, while promoting collaboration. Although this collaboration is an improvement over traditional architectural design models, any design errors can lead to significant rework.
Second, to maintain design quality during stage transitions, designers spend considerable time coordinating tasks within each phase. Because each stage has different objectives, potential issues that arise early on are often not fully addressed. As the project advances, new challenges emerge, resulting in additional rework.
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