In the third instalment of the webinar series organised by AICE (Associazione Italiana di Ingegneria Economica), Eng. Giampiero Brioni addressed the shift from value assessment, the subject of the previous webinar on Cost Benefit Analysis, to its operational management. In conversation with Emanuele Bianchi, the talk explored how BIM, paired with Cost Management, can serve as an information infrastructure for more informed decision-making throughout the entire lifecycle of a project.
The discussion touched on the cultural gap between the traditional Italian figure of the computista and that of the Quantity Surveyor, the need to involve cost expertise from the very drafting of the BIM Execution Plan, and the role of BIM’s fifth dimension in producing reliable estimates. Two concrete project experiences supported the argument: a multiparametric estimate for a student housing development in Milan, and the collaboration with Arup UK on the Stadio Artemio Franchi in Florence, which demonstrated how a properly structured information model can withstand the test of construction without complications.
The central theme remains cultural rather than technological: BIM offers the opportunity to restore a collegiate dimension to the design process, but only if the economic dimension ceases to be a secondary concern and becomes an input from the very earliest stages.