BIM and specification writing:
The great disconnect
Software to associate specifications
writing with BIM fails to capture
market traction and relevance in
Canada and the U.S.

Canadian Design and Construction Report staff writer
The idea seems simple (and valuable) enough: If Build-
ing Information Modelling (BIM) provides architects, engi-
neers, contractors and owners the capacity to resolve
conflicts, test out ideas before they are carved in stone, and
improve long-term building reliability and efficiency, surely
BIM could be a significant aspect of the specification
process for virtually all projects.

However, the story turns out to not be quite as straight-
forward as it seems. Despite initiatives to develop BIM-
relevant software by several organizations in Canada and
the U.S., uptake has been limited and most specifications
continue to be done the old way, with word processing
programs and limited if any connection to the BIM
process. These issues are reflected in challenging business cir-
14 – June 2017 — The Canadian Design and Construction Report
cumstances for two Canadian specification software
providers, Digicon Information Inc. and Innovative Technol-
ogy Inc., who have independently developed different BIM-
related solutions, but have failed to attract significant
market interest in their BIM innovations despite several
years of effort.

The story isn’t much different in the U.S., says Beth
Stroshane, managing partner at Applied Building Informa-
tion LLC, an independent specifications consulting busi-
ness in Seattle, Washington.

Stroshane has used two U.S. BIM specifications soft-
ware products, e-SPECS and BSD Linkman, and says nei-
ther are providing enough value to offset the effort of
making them work. She has presented her findings at Con-
struction Specification Institute (CSI) conferences. CSI is
the U.S. counterpart to Construction Specifications Canada
(CSC). CSC and CSI jointly publish North American stan-
dards concerning specifications in both countries.

The problem of building effective BIM specifications
software is “not Canadian,” she said. “It is pretty universal,
the software does what the software people say it does,
but the architects don’t do what the software people as-
sume they do.”



In other words, she says, there is a disconnect between
what the software assumes happens as the project evolves
from concept to design and then construction and what
happens in practice.

She said the problem relates to the way designs evolve
and the way design teams work.

Many people look at creating a BIM as collecting “a
mountain of data, and as the project goes along, you add
more and more information.”
“The challenge with that kind of view is it isn’t how proj-
ects work,” she said. “It’s more like a moving train” as dif-
ferent ideas and material options are considered, weighted,
and then decided they are put on the train and pushed off
the train. If it was continually added to the “mountain of
data” there would be six options for each material. The act
of “pushing all of these options through to BIM models cre-
ates an unwieldy data volume that taxes the limits of many
of the programs, and does not provide enough value to out-
weigh the effort,” she said.

There are other problems with BIM implementations at
the specification stage, she says. Generally, the cost in
time, learning and resources is loaded on the architects –
who cannot collect additional fees to cover this expense –
while the benefit flows to the contractor who, using BIM,
can resolve job conflicts, discover efficiencies, and reduce
costs. This has resulted in situations where contractors employ
architects to help manage the integration process, but at
this stage, the specifications are not being used in this way,
she said. In theory, BIM modelling and specifications
would work well within the design/build construction
model, but she says there are still problems with the way
professional service providers think and view specifica-
tions. This lack of uptake in Canada is reflected by Digicon,
Inc.’s story. The specification software provider has an al-
liance with CSC and company president David Watson says
it introduced BIMdrive as a tool to integrate specifications
writing and BIM about three years ago.

The company has sold its tool to some large organiza-
tions but Watson frankly admits there isn’t much interest in
the resources currently on the market.

“BIM technology and that way of doing things, it’s not
even close to being here yet,” he said. “Early adaptors are
merk@merx.com doing some good things with it, but most of the practition-
ers haven’t embraced it.”
Watson says he believes that in Canada, BIM is being
used less than five per cent in the specification writing
process. These observations have been borne out with interviews
and email exchanges with several architects and engineers
across the country. One engineer in eastern Ontario said,
when asked about his potential interest in BIM specifica-
tions software: “What is BIM?” Although that level of con-
ceptual ignorance would be the exception rather than the
norm, only a small portion of people interviewed indicated
interest in using or exploring the technology and for those
who responded affirmatively, their interest certainly lacked
urgency. www.merx.com
www.merx.com/events The Canadian Design and Construction Report — June 2017 – 15