Co-Location

Assembling the entire BIM design and construction team in a single location (“Co-location”) enables almost instant and direct communication and coordination among team members. This Co-location of all team members provides the environment, opportunity, and proximity to build trust among teammates, while efficiently designing. The project issues are nearly transparent and solutions start to evolve in near real-time because everyone is working in the same physical space. Some costly logistics such as travel to and from an external meeting address are essentially eliminated. Regular whole-team meetings, and more restricted discipline team meetings, can have standing schedules that permit brief broadcasts of information that get everyone in sync. Such “big room” meetings help downstream participants appreciate upstream obstacles and solutions, as well as enabling downstream participants to propose field-level solutions that designers may have underappreciated.¹

1 The Massachusetts Port Authority, 2015. BIM Guidelines for Vertical and Horizontal Construction.