BIM Implementation Challenges: Industry resistance or lack of trained staff

BIM Implementation has some challenges, we must not underestimate them to succeed in improving the industry
Català - Castellano - Deutsch
I met yesterday with a Partner of a very forward thinking architectural and engineering practice in Barcelona. The idea was to explain the benefits of BIM for the different stakeholders. I must admid, the talk was very interesting.

Sometimes those who believe in BIM (me included) tend to think that all is wonderful and people should adopt BIM from one day to another, forgetting that as any other process or tool BIM needs the acceptance of the industry stakeholders. The challenges for BIM implementation in Spain as I have been seeing lately are the following:

• Lack of understanding: When you finish explaining the benefits of BIM to someone, try to think what the person you talked to would explain someone else if he/she explains the conversation. The odds are high that they will say 'they tried to sell me another 3D software". It happened to me, I said BIM, people understood 'something like 3D Studio'. How to solve this? Be sure to emphasize the I of the BIM more than the M. People hear modeling, they think only 3D. If you talk about information, maybe you will catch their attention.
• Lack of trained staff: This is a key point, something that might become a bottleneck if schools don't embrace BIM further than giving a one week course where people learn the 3D capacities of programs like Revit or ArchiCAD. Why would you embrace a new technology if there are no BIM proficient potential employees out there? How do we solve this?Step by step I guess. Talk to Architecture and Engineering schools, offer more and cheaper courses, try to convinnce people at the architectural or engineering associations to let you explain the benefits of BIM. I think this will be a double sided effort. Once more professionals embrace BIM, more students will see it as a must and slowly it will make BIM implementation easier by finding more prepared people out there.
• Lack of institutional support: Nowadays in Calatonia, most of the public work is done through GISA, the government agency that funds and/or manages many of the government facilities. Should GISA embrace BIM (instead of specifically asking for DWG as a standard) or at least give points to those who innovate in their technology and processes (that is what BIM is at the end, innovation) that could really be a tipping point for BIM in Catalonia. Other agencies and governmental bodies could do the same. Daydreaming? Maybe, AEC Industry in Spain tends to be quite reluctant to innovation, but we did adopt CAD right? So nothing is impossible.

Right now these are the three main challenges in Spain as I see them. What do you think?
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