How Does BIM Affect Health and Safety? A Practical Guide

BIM affects health and safety by letting teams find hazards in the model before anyone is on site. Clashes, crane and traffic conflicts, unsafe sequences and awkward access show up in 3D and 4D, designers can design risks out, workers can rehearse tasks, and the safety information is recorded and handed over as part of the golden thread.

More and more businesses use BIM in their design and construction processes. But how does BIM affect health and safety? What do you need to know about using BIM to keep your team safe? In this blog post, I discuss how BIM can help you reduce health and safety risks.

1. How Does BIM Affect Health and Safety

BIM, or Building Information Modeling, has changed how the construction industry works. By creating a digital model of a building, BIM lets architects and engineers coordinate their work more efficiently and avoid conflicts.

But what does BIM mean for health and safety? By giving everyone a more accurate picture of the project, BIM should make construction sites safer and help identify hazards before they become a reality.

For example, if two cranes are shown in a 3D BIM model, you can see a potential clash between them before it happens and change the site layout to avoid an accident.

Similarly, BIM can predict traffic patterns and congestion, so designers and contractors can plan site access and road networks to keep vehicles and pedestrians apart.

BIM can also create virtual 4D simulations of construction projects - the model linked to the programme - to identify potential hazards during the construction phase.

These simulations can train workers to carry out tasks safely and point out hazards before they meet them. In practice, BIM makes the biggest safety difference in five places:

• Design: designers can see and remove risks - work at height, awkward maintenance access, heavy lifts - while they're still lines on a screen.
• Site logistics: cranes, deliveries, exclusion zones and walking routes planned in the model.
• Sequencing: 4D shows trades working on top of each other, or temporary works missing, before it happens.
• Fewer site fixes: clashes solved in the model mean less improvised cutting, drilling and hot work on site.
• Briefings and handover: visual inductions for the workforce, and safe-access information for the people who maintain the building later.

As a result, BIM helps identify risks early, avoid accidents during construction and create a safer working environment for everyone involved.

2. Challenges to Implementing BIM for Health and Safety

Every industry has its naysayers, but that's especially true in design and construction - one of the oldest industries in the world! So while BIM has massive potential to make sites safer, there are some hurdles to consider.

First, BIM isn't new any more, but using it for health and safety still is on many projects. There's a learning curve, and dedicated BIM-based health and safety tools are still maturing. As contractors use BIM for more of their business, the curve will flatten.

Second, the safety information itself is rarely structured. Risk notes sit in PDFs and drawing notes rather than in the model, so they get lost between design and site.

Third, some people worry that relying on digital models will reduce on-site inspections. After all, if everything looks fine on screen, why send someone out to double-check? Could this reliance on technology lead to missed hazards and devastating consequences? It's a fair worry: a model should add to site inspections, never replace them.

3. How BIM supports the Golden Thread

Better information management, through BIM, isn't just important - for some buildings it's now the law.

The "golden thread" comes from Dame Judith Hackitt's 2018 review of building regulations and fire safety, written after the Grenfell Tower fire. It means keeping accurate, up-to-date information about a building - how it was designed, built and changed - so the people responsible can keep it safe throughout its life.

In England, the Building Safety Act 2022 made the golden thread a legal requirement for higher-risk buildings (at least 18 metres or seven storeys tall, with at least two homes), and the new regime has applied since October 2023. Outside the UK the names differ, but the idea is the same.

This is essential for health and safety, because it means hazards can be identified at any stage of the project. If there is a problem with the design of a building, it can be spotted early and fixed before a catastrophe occurs - a huge improvement on traditional methods, where problems could go unnoticed until it was too late.

BIM doesn't create a golden thread by itself, but a well-run BIM process - clear information requirements, a common data environment, agreed naming and status, version history and checked models - is most of what one needs. Used correctly, BIM helps us avoid many of the dangers on construction sites and collect critical information about what has actually been built. That means fewer accidents and injuries, and ultimately it saves lives.

CDM 2015: designing out risk

In the UK, the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2015 require designers to eliminate, reduce or control foreseeable risks, and the principal designer to plan and coordinate health and safety before construction and prepare the health and safety file. A shared model makes design risks visible to the whole team, and the file can be built from the same checked project information instead of being pieced together at the end.

PAS 1192-6 and ISO 19650-6

PAS 1192-6:2018 sets out how to share structured health and safety information using BIM: identifying hazards and risks, recording them against the model and passing them on to the people who need them. It's the basis of ISO 19650-6, the health and safety part of the ISO 19650 series.

4. Four Things to Plan for When Using BIM Software

• First, BIM is not a panacea. It won't guarantee your project is successful or 100% safe. Many factors matter when designing and building a structure, and BIM won't solve all your problems.
• Second, BIM can be expensive. If you're not careful, you can easily spend more on BIM software than you need to.
• Third, BIM can be complex. If you don't understand how some software works, you may struggle to use it effectively.
• Finally, BIM can be disruptive. If you're not prepared for the change BIM brings, adjusting to the new way of working can be hard.

Good read: 10 example BIM goals and my guidelines for successful BIM projects - start with what you want BIM to achieve, safety included.

5. How To Reduce the Impact of BIM

Here are four ways to reduce the risks of using BIM for the first time:

1. Make sure you clearly understand the software before using it. As I said, BIM tools can be complex, and it's easy to make mistakes if you're unfamiliar with them. Before using BIM on a project, take the time to learn how the process can help you. Not every BIM tool is as simple as Plannerly!
2. Keep your data safe. Because BIM files are digital (and large!), they can be corrupted or lost. Keep them in a CDE (common data environment) with version history and backups, so if something goes wrong with a file, you can go back to the last good version.
3. Work with a trusted BIM consultant. On your first BIM project, I recommend partnering with a BIM consulting company you trust. Do your research and choose a partner with BIM experience whose ability to deliver you feel confident in.
4. Be prepared for rework. The first time you use BIM, you'll find more issues than usual - which is both good and bad news! Be ready to manage long lists of clashes, and have a plan for dealing with them.

6. The Impact of BIM

Here are just a few ways BIM can make a difference:

1. A detailed 3D view of the work helps communication between all project stakeholders
2. 4D simulations identify potential hazards before they become a problem
3. BIM can be used to create method statements, evacuation plans and other emergency procedures that help eliminate hazards to construction workers
4. BIM can help managers track site progress, the movement of equipment and materials, where workers are, and many other site activities
5. Visualising the data helps identify trends and pinpoint where improvements are needed
6. BIM can be used to create training materials and simulations, so fewer people are exposed to real-world hazards
7. and many more!

Perhaps most important of all, when used correctly, BIM can help to reduce accidents, injuries and even fatalities. I believe Building Information Modeling is essential for any organisation committed to improving workplace health and safety.

Good reads: My top 10 uses for BIM in construction management and 9 benefits of virtual design and construction (VDC), including safer planning on site.

7. How to get the safety information you need from every team

Safety information goes missing for a simple reason: nobody asked for it clearly, nobody owned it, and nobody checked it arrived. Fix those three and BIM starts paying off for health and safety:

1. Ask for it in the information requirements. Say which safety information you need, on which elements and by which milestone - residual risks, maintenance access, fire ratings, lifting points. The free lesson on exchange information requirements (EIR) shows how, and the EIR slides (PDF) (opens in a new tab) are free to download. Here's how to write OIR, AIR and EIR step by step.
2. Give every item an owner. Put each deliverable in the responsibility matrix, so one team is accountable for it - see creating the detailed responsibility matrix, the matrix slides (PDF) (opens in a new tab) and how to agree the RACI with every team.
3. Check it's there before you accept the model. Check each model for the safety properties you asked for, at each milestone, not at handover - start with the model checking intro lesson, or see how Plannerly's Verify module does it automatically.
4. Keep the risks in one register. Track information risks alongside the rest - the free lesson on managing a risk register shows how.

Conclusion

BIM use keeps growing, and on many public projects it's now required. But what have we learned about how BIM improves health and safety in the construction industry?

Well, BIM allows better communication among team members, which leads to fewer mistakes in design and on site. It also helps identify many hazards on site long before they become a problem.

We can also use the models to keep a log of what has happened along the golden thread of the project, so we know who made which design decisions and have a record of exactly what has been built. And we can learn from our mistakes and avoid them in future. This is going to save lives!

With growing awareness of how BIM can improve health and safety, now is the time to start using tools like Plannerly to manage your BIM projects. They help you work to industry standards (like ISO 19650) and plan earlier to avoid accidents and save lives.

So, what are you waiting for? Get started with Plannerly today for free!

Two Bonus Resources

Below you'll find two bonus resources: 1) a video of the complete BIM management workflow, and 2) answers to the questions I often get asked.

I blog for the Five BIM Bloggers series, where every week we share different perspectives on important BIM topics. To hear our views first, join Plannerly free or browse the Plannerly BIM blog.