## 7 BIM Implementation Technologies and Processes
### BIM-Related Processes in the BRDF Expansion Project
#### 7.2.3 Communication Process  
According to our research (Figure 21), the majority of communications among project team members occurred through emails and regular project meetings. This was followed by additional interdisciplinary meetings scheduled directly by project members. The use of the model for communication, such as marking, flagging, or commenting on issues within the model, was limited and confined to only a few respondents who had both access to the models and the necessary skills.  
Despite the limited \"direct use\" of the model as a method of project communication, the research team was interested in evaluating its \"indirect use\" in project communications. Specifically, as the research team was integrated into the project and actively participated in most communications, we had the opportunity to review project emails that pertained to BIM usage, allowing us to investigate BIM-related communications in the BRDF expansion project.  
It is worth noting that since the VDC service provider was contracted directly by the general contractor, all communications involving the VDC service provider, and thus interactions with the federated models, had to be routed through the general contractor, as they were responsible for the associated fees charged by the VDC service provider.  
Figure 22 illustrates an example of such communication, where a project team member (like a subcontractor) would provide their latest discipline-specific model to be federated  
Figure 21: Communication approaches in the BRDF expansion project.  
Figure 20: The process of generating the first federated model (courtesy of Cadmakers).  
with other models. For this purpose, they would send their model to the general contractor (technically an email that would include a link to a shared drive). The general contractor, in turn, would forward the model to the VDC service provider via another email, along with other required design documents, and would ask for integration into the federated model. This request would usually be combined with a request for a design review by the VDC service provider, which would essentially entail identifying potential conflicts.  
Once the review was completed by the VDC service provider, they would develop a report and submit it to the general contractor via email. The general contractor would then forward the design review report via another email to the project team members. If any of the project team members had questions regarding the identified conflicts or any other items in the report that needed clarifications by the VDC service provider, they would then contact the general contractor via email or inform them during the project meetings to manage this communication. This type of communication cycle would typically take about 10 working days for a project team member to get a clear answer to their questions. Please note that this example does not include any potential clarification requests from the VDC service provider while creating the federated model. This communication process resulted in many unnecessary steps, which ultimately contributed to the low level of satisfaction with the communications in this project. This fact was reflected in our research findings as well, where the level of satisfaction with the BIM-related communication process in this project was only 27% (Figure 23).  
Figure 22: Example of the BIM-related communication process.