One misconception keeps resurfacing — among professionals who are new to BIM, but also among contractors and clients approaching it for the first time: the idea that a BIM Specialist can work alone. You still hear requests such as, “We need a BIM Specialist for the project — just add one to the team,” as if one person could absorb the complexity of an entire BIM process.
The word specialist probably does not help. In Italy, it is often understood as “the BIM expert”: someone you call because BIM is supposedly their field. Or the other way around: I am the BIM expert, therefore I can offer BIM as a standalone service. But BIM changed something much deeper than the tools we use. When we moved from pencil to CAD, each person could still sit alone and draw their own lines. BIM makes that isolation much harder to sustain. Each professional has to be a specialist in their own discipline — and then work with the others, making interfaces, responsibilities and limits explicit.
BIM did not create specialization. It grew out of it. Buildings became more complex, processes fragmented, and more expertise became necessary. But the more we divide the work, the more one question matters: who puts it back together? Who makes sure that all those specialists move in the same direction, with the same priorities and the same timing?
That is where the BIM Coordinator comes in. And this is also where things become interesting. I often meet two extremes. On one side, the coordinator who is willing to make multidisciplinary decisions without enough technical depth to understand all their consequences. On the other, the coordinator who is brilliant at model checking, code checking and automation, but treats the technical project almost as someone else’s problem. What is still surprisingly rare is the professional who accepts that our tools will keep changing, studies them seriously, and then uses them for what they are actually for: developing the project and delivering the building.
Then comes the BIM Manager. In a large organisation, the need may look obvious. In a smaller one, it is often questioned. I think that is a mistake. The BIM Manager is not a luxury role. They are the person who understands how BIM fits into the company’s actual processes, connects people and suppliers, protects internal know-how, manages resources and helps decisions happen at the right level. Their job is not to own every model. It is to keep the whole system on course.
And that is precisely why the role can feel lonely. When everything works, much of the BIM Manager’s work is invisible. Standards are in place. Information flows. Problems are solved before they become emergencies. People simply move on. Recognition often arrives only when something breaks — when coordination fails, a deadline slips, a decision has no owner or a costly mistake suddenly becomes visible.
Many organisations, especially smaller ones, still ask whether they really need a BIM Manager. My answer is yes — although the exact title and organisational structure may differ from one market to another. Someone has to govern the process, protect the company’s operational knowledge, connect technical and organisational decisions, and understand the impact of those decisions on people, time and money.
I know some fellow consultants will disagree with me, but more than ten years ago, when I started working as an external BIM Manager, I learned something very quickly: an external consultant cannot replace a strong internal counterpart. You can support them, train them and help them grow, but BIM cannot become part of an organisation if all the knowledge, authority and responsibility remain outside it.
This is also why I am sceptical whenever BIM is treated as a single-person solution. A BIM Manager can oversee several coordinators, and each coordinator can guide a specialist team — but the point is not the number. The point is the network. BIM works when responsibilities are clear enough for people to rely on one another rather than trying to become the person who knows everything.
In the end, the strongest BIM teams are built on shared competence. A successful BIM process is never the work of one heroic individual. It comes from professionals who collaborate, challenge one another and keep learning together. Perhaps that is also how BIM Managers escape some of the solitude that comes with the role: by building a network in which knowledge moves instead of staying locked inside one person.
BIM is not only a toolset. It is a method that forces us to connect. And, when we let it, that connection is where much of its real value begins.
