Coulter BIM Information Management

As 2025 comes to a close, I’ve found myself reflecting more and more on BIM Information Management — not just the standards, tools and acronyms, but what actually works on real projects, with real people, under real pressure.

This year I’ve written about ISO 19650, IFC, COBie, CDEs, openBIM, digital handover, and the ever-expanding ecosystem of guidance and technology. But stepping back, a few consistent themes keep coming up, and they’re not always the ones the industry likes to shout about.

Adoption is still king

If there’s one lesson that overrides everything else, it’s this: adoption beats theory every time.

We can create more standards, more guidance documents, more workflows, more software platforms, and more certifications — but if people don’t actually follow them, they’re meaningless.

I’ve seen perfectly written BIM Execution Plans ignored. I’ve seen beautifully structured CDEs bypassed with email attachments. I’ve seen teams nod along in meetings, only to revert to whatever they’re comfortable with under pressure.

None of this is because people are malicious or lazy. It’s usually because they’re busy, under-trained, or unconvinced that the process genuinely helps them do their job.

No standard, however well written, survives poor adoption. And no amount of technology compensates for a lack of buy-in.

Simplicity beats complexity (almost every time)

Another big takeaway from 2025 is just how damaging over-engineered processes can be.

I’ve seen projects try to create the “perfect” workflow for issuing drawings through a CDE — complete with five approval stages, rigid gates, layered permissions and automated notifications. On paper, it looks robust. In reality, it becomes a bottleneck.

Drawings sit in approval for weeks. By the time they’re approved, they’re already superseded. Frustrated teams bypass the system and send PDFs by email “just to keep things moving”. The process undermines itself.

The lesson is not to abandon standards, but to apply the minimum necessary complexity. ISO 19650 gives a framework, not an excuse to design a bureaucratic monster. Not everyone on a project has had the same training, experience or digital confidence, and processes need to reflect that.

Simple, well-understood workflows that people actually use will always outperform complex ones that look good in a flowchart.

The EIR still makes or breaks the project

From an information management and facilities management handover perspective, I’ve become more convinced than ever that the EIR is the single most important document.

If the Employer’s Information Requirements are a generic copy-and-paste template, with no meaningful input from the facilities or operations team, the project is almost guaranteed to fail at handover.

You can’t retrofit good information requirements at the end of a job. If the FM team hasn’t been involved early, the data delivered will reflect assumptions rather than needs. And no amount of COBie validation or model checking can fix that fundamental disconnect.

Good handover outcomes start with asking the right questions at the start, not with scrambling to “make it work” at the end.

COBie deserves more respect than it gets

I’ve spent a lot of time this year digging deeper into COBie, and the more I learn, the more I feel it’s been unfairly treated by the industry.

COBie has a reputation problem, but in my experience that reputation usually comes from misunderstanding or poor implementation, not from the standard itself. When used properly, and aligned to genuine FM needs, COBie remains one of the most effective structured data handover formats we have.

Tools like COBieOM have reinforced this for me. The idea of delivering a self-contained, royalty-free, long-life handover package that doesn’t rely on subscriptions or proprietary platforms is incredibly powerful. It might not be flashy, but it’s practical — and that counts for a lot.

openBIM is still more aspiration than reality

I keep reading about openBIM, interoperability and vendor neutrality. I support those principles fully. But in day-to-day practice, we’re still a long way from where we need to be.

I still can’t send a document directly from Autodesk Construction Cloud to Aconex with its metadata intact. I still have to download files, re-upload them, and start from scratch in another CDE. And this isn’t an Autodesk problem or an Aconex problem — it’s an industry problem. All CDEs behave this way.

At the same time, we seem to get more standards, more schema versions, more guidance every year. IFC evolves, IDS emerges, Level of Information Need matures — all valuable, but also adding cognitive load.

There’s a tension here. We don’t need more things to read. We need simpler, better-adopted mechanisms that actually solve the problems people face on projects.

Always remember the purpose

One final lesson I’ve tried to keep front of mind this year is to always ask: why are we doing this?

Why are we arguing about IFC versions when the contractor is building from a printed black-and-white drawing?
Why are we obsessing over Level of Information Need definitions when the site team just needs clear, current information?
Why are we debating COBie versus models without first asking the facilities team what they actually want and will use?

BIM Information Management should support delivery, not distract from it. Before diving into standards debates, it’s worth grounding ourselves in the reality of how buildings are designed, constructed and operated.

Looking ahead

If 2025 has taught me anything, it’s that progress in BIM Information Management won’t come from more complexity or more technology alone. It will come from better conversations, clearer intent, simpler processes, and genuine engagement with the people who have to live with the outcomes.

Standards matter. Tools matter. Data matters.

But people matter more.

And that’s something I’m keen to keep at the centre of everything I write and practice going into 2026.