VDC refers to Virtual Design and Construction, the act of building a digital equivalent for the physical infrastructure that you have been tasked to work on. BIM refers to the Building Information Model, a digital database of information related to a building, which consists of both geometric and non-geometric information. VDC refers to the process in which BIM is used through the lifecycle of a project.

In the real world, the construction of a building undergoes numerous process, quality checks, and validation before the product is considered to be finalized. In VDC, this set of processes are duplicated in the digital world so as to reduce the amount of time and resources spent in coordination and rectifying mistakes during the actual execution of project. The VDC process relies on the use of BIM Model to achieve its goals and objectives.

In the initial phases of BIM adoption, we saw many clients that continued to use 2D drawings to coordinate all their work on the project, approaching us to simply convert the model to 3D for submission. While these clients do meet their BIM submission deliverables, they missed the point of BIM adoption entirely – which is to help everyone be more productive in the Built Environment! Instead, the BIM deliverables were an additional burden which they had to meet.

This need not be the case if a BIM model is used intelligently to lighten everyone’s workload in a design and construction project. This is the exact reason why VDC is introduced to the Built Environment: it offers guidance and milestones for how a BIM model should be used collaboratively for the good of all stakeholders within a project.