CHAPTER 1INTRODUCTION1.1 BackgroundThe construction industry has established and used the foundation of object-oriented building product modeling since the 1990s. Initially, some market sectors such as structural steel used 3D parametric modeling in their design. Recently, various BIM tools have become readily available as the benefits of parametric 3D have been realized throughout the construction industry. This is a reward for the construction industry's dedication to Building Information Modeling over the past 20 years (Eastman, 2008). The construction industry has realized the true benefits of technological progress in transforming the construction process for improvement. 1.2 What is BIM? The conceptual foundations of the BIM system date back to the early days of information technology. Already in 1962 Douglas C. Englebart offered us a disturbing vision of the future architect. Englebart suggests object-based design, parametric manipulation, and a relational database. Seeing buildings through the lens of the database contributed to the breakdown of architecture into its constituent components, one of the first projects to successfully create a database of buildings was the Building Description System (BDS). ) which was the first software to describe individual library items that can be retrieved and added to a model. This program uses a graphical user interface, orthographic and perspective views, and a sortable database that allows the user to retrieve information categorically by attributes, including material type and supplier. The project was conceived by Charles Eastman who trained as an architect at Berkeley and went on to work in computer science at Carnegie Melon University. Eastman continues to be an expert in BIM technology and a professor at the G...... middle of paper ......ion of BIM goes hand in hand with a new method that allows for more partnership-type relationships between stakeholders. These collaborative relationships can create greater cohesion among stakeholders, thus making it easier to work together towards a common goal of BIM implementation. The initial expenses associated with training and the acquisition of hardware and software are necessary for the transformation from traditional construction projects to BIM. Based on the questionnaire result of Yan and Damian (2011), this category poses the greatest challenges: approximately 40% of US respondents and 20% of UK respondents believe that their companies need to allocate a lot of time, expense and human resources in BIM training. BIM experts emphasized that this is not a real challenge, but should rather be seen as an investment, which would pay off for the construction company in the long term.