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Digital Construction
Start-up lowdown: BIM Audit
Justin Stanton Editor, CM Digital
Want to end the tedium of reviewing and analysing models? Got something better you could be doing with your time? Perhaps BIM Audit has the answer.
BIM Audit, as the name suggests, enables users to audit their models “in just a few seconds”. A few weeks after Digital Construction Week, where the startup launched, BIM Audit co-founder Mladen Varbanov gives BIMplus the lowdown.
BIMplus: Let’s have your elevator pitch – how does your technology help those in the built environment?
Mladen Varbanov: Imagine being able to audit your BIM models in just a few seconds – that’s what our platform does for you. We know how time-consuming and tedious it can be to review and analyse complex models, looking for errors or areas of development, trying to get an understanding of whether teams are following company standards and industry best practice to produce their models.
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With our tool, architects, engineers, contractors, and others can visualise the project data with a single click of a button. All the data is automatically collected from the model and then visualised on our user-friendly website, making the audit process not only faster, but also incredibly easy to understand. Once people have an understanding of the data, they can then make better-informed decisions about any actions needed.
What was the genesis of your technology?
“We realised there had to be a better way to help people understand their project data and improve the health of their models. That’s why we decided to build this platform.”
Mladen Varbanov
After working with many companies across the industry, we kept seeing the same struggles over and over again. We realised there had to be a better way to help people understand their project data and improve the health of their models. That’s why we decided to build this platform.
Our goal is simple: to help architects and engineers create better-quality models. From our background providing BIM training and support, we wanted to build an audit system that could support users and provide guidance on how to improve their modelling quality.
Who is your senior management team and what’s their background?
BIM Audit was founded in 2023 by myself and Mike Turpin after many discussions on the topic of BIM auditing and seeing a gap in the market.
I’m an architect with a background and keen interest in design technology. I have worked in London with several architectural companies since graduating, starting as an architectural assistant and working up from there. My passion for software and programming led me to transition into the role of BIM coordinator where I developed a passion for assisting architects with troubleshooting, providing essential support, and managing BIM projects.
Mike is originally a civil engineer by background, but had an early career focus on the adoption of technology to increase productivity and efficiency. The focus led Mike to picking up software such as Revit, Civil 3D and Navisworks over 15 years ago. Having spent the majority of his career as a BIM and digital consultant, his speciality is delivering digital change programmes, looking at the people and processes that are needed alongside the technology.
Which businesses have tested it or are currently using it?
Currently BIM Audit is at the very start of its journey, having only launched officially as a product at Digital Construction Week 2024. Our focus from launch to now over the previous weeks has been user feedback. Our system looks at many different model health checks and metrics. However, we know we need to expand this list and we would love potential users to contribute to this.
A typical audit from BIM Audit.
We’ve had a great response so far from both large and small companies, including London-based architects and multinational engineering companies. We’ve also seen some interest from end clients who are considering how they can use the tool to audit the models they receive from their supply chain.
Are you looking for more funding?
At the moment, we are not specifically looking for more funding, but haven’t ruled this out if we need to scale quickly. Our main focus at the moment as a very early-stage startup is getting feedback and comments on the MVP we have developed. Getting the tool into people’s hands and having it running in the real world will enable us to understand the future direction of travel based on feedback and insights from our users.
In our view, it’s crucial to get the potential users involved at this stage to help define our roadmap with us. This, in turn, will help us to consider how we fund and to what level of funding we need to achieve the next step.
What are your plans for the next two years?
Quite simply, our plans are development and growth. We have just released our V0.1 product, which several organisations are using, but we have a huge roadmap of further features we want to add.
We are currently working at full speed in the background, refining the tool and adding more functionality every day and we’d like to offer our customers regular updates.
Alongside this is the growth side, having more conversations with more people and spreading the word about our tool. We want to continue to get feedback to steer our further development and get the tool into as many people’s hands as possible.
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