How many BIM Managers are there?
I asked this question on my Annual BIM Survey and so did AUGI. AUGI did its Salary Survey for 2010 and published the results in AUGIWorld magazine which you can see the full report here.
I want to zero in on the BIM Manager title to see how it has changed over the years. I looked back to 2008, 2009 and 2010.
What the AUGI survey shows is that there is a larger and larger portion of managers who are starting to use the BIM Manager title. In 2008 there were 131, then in 2009 there were 148 and finally in 2010 there were 258. This is a showing that now 30% of the responders who define themselves as Managers are in BIM positions. That is over 15% more than last year.
In my survey I asked for job titles and found that over 44% of those that used some form of a BIM title were defined as BIM Managers.
That compares to 43% last year and 41% in 2008.
The 33% that have some other form of title include things like:
CAD Manager
BIM Program Manager
BIM Technologist
Engineering IT Manager
Senior Design Software Analyst
BIM Implementation Specialist
BIM Specialist
Digital Design Manager
Design Systems Manager
Production Manager Revit
What I’ve found is that many BIM managers are also CAD managers that have kept that title because they still do so much work with CAD. Plus CAD is still Computer Aided Design which is part of the BIM process, where as BIM isn’t necessarily part of the CAD process.
Brian, I agree with your comments. A lot of CAD Managers are responsible for implementing and managing BIM, based on their experience of CAD ‘systems’.
Brian, I second that. CAD managers think they are BIM managers, thinking that the “drafting” part is the only aspect to BIM. Well, it’s not. There is so much more to BIM, even Revit Architecture makes only 1/10 of the BIM process.
That’s why I think that companies looking to hire BIM managers will either hit a major home run by hiring a really talented or knowledgeable manager (which are really hard to come by), or will be sold to the idea of a knowledgeable manager, and be a total fluke.
I think that a good BIM manager can “develop” within a firm; someone that has the understandings of technology, software, hardware, programing, implementation, etc… and have good experience in the field.