From BIM to information management: changing terms, changing practice?
From BIM to information management, digital engineering and beyond.
If you have worked in the AECO industry for long enough, you will probably have noticed that its digital vocabulary does not stand still.
BIM is now discussed alongside information management, digital engineering, digital delivery, Virtual Design and Construction (VDC), Digital Twins and wider digital transformation.
Teams change names. Frameworks are repositioned.
New terms enter professional conversations, sometimes describing genuinely new practices and sometimes overlapping with concepts that already existed.
This is not necessarily a problem. As technologies, responsibilities and ways of working evolve, the language used to describe them should also evolve.
But there is another side to this.
New terminology continues to emerge while the meaning and boundaries of some established concepts are still being debated.
BIM is perhaps the clearest example. After decades of discussion about what BIM means and how it should be understood, we are now seeing another generation of terminology becoming more prominent.
That raises a question that I think deserves more attention:
Are we evolving the concepts, or are we sometimes changing the vocabulary before we have fully understood what came before?
A change in terminology can represent many things. It may signal a genuine expansion in scope. It may reflect a shift in emphasis. It may correct an interpretation that has become too narrow. Or it may simply give a new name to activities that remain largely familiar.
And that distinction matters.
AEC does not suffer from a shortage of terminology. It suffers from a shortage of shared meaning.
The important question is therefore not whether the industry should adopt new terminology. It is whether that terminology helps us understand what has actually changed.
From BIM to a wider information management conversation
The UK provides an interesting example.
In 2022, the UK BIM Alliance became nima. The organisation explained that the industry conversation had expanded beyond BIM and that BIM itself was still frequently associated with 3D modelling and technology.
A few years later, the UK BIM Framework became the IMI Framework, as part of the wider Information Management Initiative.
At first glance, this can look like BIM is gradually being replaced by information management.
I do not think the situation is quite that simple.
BIM has not disappeared. Nor has ISO 19650 stopped referring to BIM. What appears to be changing is the position of BIM within a wider conversation about information.
In my own research on ISO 19650, I explored this relationship more explicitly. BIM, information modelling and information management are closely connected, but they describe different aspects of the information process. BIM provides the shared digital representation of the built asset; information modelling concerns the processes used to produce structured and unstructured information; and information management provides the business processes through which that information is defined, approved and exchanged.
This distinction helps explain why the move towards information management is more than a change of label. It shifts attention from the digital representation itself towards the processes, responsibilities and decisions that determine what information is needed, how it is produced, how it is exchanged and how it is used.
You can read the full study here (open access): Activity theory analysis of information management resources in BIM-enabled projects according to BS EN ISO 19650-2.
We may be moving from asking:
“How do we implement BIM?”
towards:
“How do we manage information effectively, and where does BIM sit within that process?”
That is an important shift.
But it also raises another question.
Perhaps BIM did not become too narrow. Perhaps we made it too narrow.
For many practitioners, BIM still immediately brings to mind models, software, clash detection and coordination. That perception is understandable. These have been some of the most visible parts of BIM implementation.
But BIM was never only about producing models.
Information requirements, responsibilities, information exchange, collaboration, decision-making and lifecycle information have been part of the wider discussion for many years.
So when we say that we need to move “beyond BIM”, we should perhaps be careful.
Maybe the limitation was not always the concept itself.
Maybe it was how we chose to interpret and implement it.
Moving towards information management may help correct that perception. It can place greater emphasis on information requirements, governance, responsibilities and the purpose for which information is produced.
But changing the terminology alone does not resolve the underlying problem.
We can rename something and still fail to explain it.
And if information management eventually becomes another umbrella term that means different things to different people, we may simply reproduce the same problem under a new label.
Professional practice has changed too
Of course, not every new term is simply rebranding. AEC digital practice now extends far beyond model production.
We increasingly work with structured data, Common Data Environments, GIS, automation, sensors, artificial intelligence, asset information and Digital Twins. Digital processes connect design, construction and operation in ways that were far less developed when BIM first became part of mainstream industry discussions.
It would therefore make little sense to insist that terminology should remain fixed while practice continues to evolve.
This is where terms such as Digital Engineering, Digital Delivery and Digital Transformation can be useful.
They may describe an expanded scope of work.
They may capture capabilities that sit outside traditional BIM activities.
They may better reflect how an organisation has structured its digital functions.
But we should also be cautious.
Calling something “digital” does not automatically make the underlying practice more advanced.
A Digital Delivery team is not necessarily more mature than a BIM team. A Digital Engineering Manager is not automatically performing a more sophisticated role than a BIM Manager.
The name may have changed.
The capability may or may not have changed with it.
Digital maturity should be visible in what an organisation can actually do, not simply in what it chooses to call itself.
How do we know when new terminology genuinely helps?
This, for me, is one of the simplest tests.
When a new term appears, we should be able to identify what is different.
Has the scope changed?
Have the responsibilities changed?
Has the process changed?
Has the technology changed?
Has the relationship with other disciplines changed?
Has the expected outcome changed?
If the answer is clear, the new terminology may be entirely justified.
If the explanation stops at “this is broader than BIM” or “this is the next stage of digital transformation”, then perhaps we need to look more closely at what is genuinely new.
If we cannot explain what has changed beyond the terminology, we should be cautious about presenting it as a new concept.
This does not mean rejecting new terminology.
It means asking more from it.
The problem is not the number of terms
AEC already has a substantial digital vocabulary.
BIM. Information Management. Digital Engineering. Digital Delivery. VDC. Digital Twins. Information Models. Connected Data. Digital Transformation.
The problem is not that all of these terms exist.
Many describe different ideas.
The problem begins when their relationships are unclear.
Is Digital Engineering broader than BIM?
Is BIM part of information management, or is information management part of BIM?
Is Digital Delivery a process, a function or an organisational team?
Does a Digital Twin replace a BIM model, extend it or depend on it?
The answer often depends on who you ask.
And this is where the industry can create expertise through vocabulary rather than clarity.
Every new term brings new job titles, frameworks, presentations, training programmes and professional identities. Some of that reflects genuine development and specialisation.
But we should also be willing to ask whether familiar knowledge is occasionally being presented as something entirely new because the vocabulary around it has changed.
That is not an argument against innovation.
It is an argument for continuity.
Are we changing the practice or changing the label?
Professional roles make this particularly visible.
A BIM Manager, Information Manager, Digital Engineering Manager and Digital Delivery Manager may have clearly different responsibilities within one organisation.
In another, there may be substantial overlap.
A title alone therefore tells us surprisingly little.
What matters is what that person is expected to do.
What information do they manage?
What decisions do they support?
What responsibilities do they hold?
What processes do they establish?
What interfaces do they coordinate?
What competencies are actually required?
The same applies to broader industry terminology.
A newer term should not automatically be interpreted as evidence of a newer or more advanced practice. At the same time, dismissing every new term as unnecessary rebranding would be equally simplistic.
Some concepts genuinely are new.
Others are extensions of existing ones.
Some represent a change in emphasis.
And some may simply give a new name to familiar activities.
The challenge is knowing which is which.
The risk of solving definition problems with more definitions
This is where I think AEC needs to be particularly careful.
When a term becomes difficult or contested, our response is often to introduce another one.
But if the original problem was a lack of shared understanding, another term does not necessarily solve it.
It may simply move the ambiguity elsewhere.
We risk solving problems of definition by creating more definitions.
This is not unique to BIM. Similar discussions appear around Digital Twins, BIM dimensions, digital engineering, sustainability terminology, modular construction and other evolving areas of AEC.
That is partly inevitable.
Emerging fields rarely begin with perfectly stable terminology.
But AEC has an additional challenge: these concepts need to travel across disciplines, organisations, contractual relationships and project stages.
A term that works within a specialist digital team still needs to make sense to the architect, engineer, contractor, client and asset operator.
Shared meaning therefore matters.
So, is rebranding beneficial?
Sometimes.
But I am increasingly cautious about using rebranding as the description for every terminology change.
A new term may represent:
a genuinely new concept;
an expansion of an existing concept;
a shift in emphasis;
an attempt to correct an existing misunderstanding; or
a different way of describing something that already exists.
These are not the same thing.
What matters is whether the change adds clarity.
If a new term helps explain an expanded scope, distinguish different activities or communicate more effectively across the project lifecycle, then there is a good reason for using it.
If it introduces another label without explaining how it relates to existing concepts, the benefit is much less obvious.
Five questions and one final test when terminology changes
Instead of asking:
“What should we call BIM now?”
I think we should ask:
1. What does the new term actually describe?
2. How is it different from the terminology we already use?
3. What has changed in the underlying practice?
4. Has the scope genuinely expanded?
5. What does the new terminology help us understand that the previous terminology did not?
And perhaps one final test:
Can we explain the difference clearly to someone outside our own professional group If we cannot, then introducing another term may not be solving the problem.
Evolution needs continuity
AEC will continue to change, and its terminology will change with it.
That is not something we should resist.
The shift towards a wider information management conversation may help move the industry beyond a model-centric interpretation of BIM. Digital Engineering may better describe practices that integrate models, data, systems and wider engineering processes. Digital Twins may introduce relationships between physical assets and digital information that require different terminology altogether.
But evolution does not require us to continually disconnect new concepts from what came before.
In fact, doing the opposite may be more useful.
We should be able to show how BIM relates to information management.
How information management relates to Digital Engineering.
How Digital Twins build on, interact with or differ from existing information models.
And where the boundaries genuinely lie.
Sometimes continuity is more innovative than rebranding.
Mature disciplines do not need to present every development as a complete break with the past. They build new knowledge on top of existing knowledge and make those relationships explicit.
Perhaps this is what AEC needs from its digital terminology.
Not fewer terms. Not necessarily more terms.
But clearer relationships between them.
Terminology should evolve when the concept evolves.
And when it does, we should be able to explain what has changed, what has remained, and why the distinction matters.
For an industry built on collaboration and information exchange, the words we use matter.
Changing them may sometimes be necessary.
As our understanding evolves, so does our terminology
There is an ongoing debate in AEC about whether the move from BIM towards information management, digital engineering and related terms represents genuine progress or simply another change in terminology. I support this evolution.
Our understanding of digital practice has developed, and the language we use should be able to develop with it. If an earlier term was interpreted too narrowly, defined inconsistently, or no longer communicates the full scope of practice, we should not preserve it simply because it came first.
The challenge is to make the evolution understandable.
When a new term is introduced, we need to connect it immediately to what people already know and explain the difference clearly, even if that explanation sometimes needs to be detailed. We should be able to answer the traditional questions:
What is changing? Why is it changing? When is the new term more appropriate? And for whom does that distinction matter?
In the case of information management, the what is a wider focus on information, not only models; the why is the need to better reflect how information is required, produced, exchanged and used; the when is when our purpose extends beyond model-centric activities; and the for whom is ultimately everyone involved in creating, managing, exchanging or using information across the asset lifecycle. Evolution is necessary. But if we want people to move with it, we also need to explain the journey.
Author: Nicoleta Panagiotidou for Breakwithanarchitect
Breakwithanarchitect © 2025 by Nicoleta Panagiotidou. Licensed under Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). Sharing is encouraged with credit and link to the original post, but full reproduction requires prior written consent.
