Achieving the desired visualization, analysis, monitoring, evaluating, and reporting of projects’ performance using the BIM model requires having a BIM-friendly WBS to be adopted when it comes to managing engineering and construction projects.

It organizes and defines the total scope of the project.

By definition, a WBS is a deliverable-oriented hierarchical decomposition of the work to be executed by the project team to accomplish the project objectives and create the required deliverables. This is the Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) practice. Regardless of the project management standards, requirements, or maturity level that exists on any given engineering and construction project, there will always be one practice that all those projects will always have. This is a functionality that stakeholders will continue to ask for even post the COVID-19 pandemic era. The benefits of having such functionality are even more needed nowadays during the COVID-19 pandemic to enable stakeholders to have a better visualization of how and where the different project management processes are impacting their project’s performance while respecting the social distancing and work from home requirements. This requires having a solution that enables integrating the different project management data sources with the BIM model with the least effort as well as being flexible enough to meet the unique nature of construction projects. Nevertheless, what most project stakeholders are looking for is an interactive easy-to-use BIM-enabled business intelligence and visualization solution that enables them to visualize, analyze, monitor, evaluate and report the performance of the different project management processes from their desk. The growing trend to use Building Information Modelling (BIM) in capital project delivery has brought to the market many applications that integrate the BIM model with the project schedule (4D) and cost estimate (5D).

Wbs for construction project example