The Sydney Opera House was designed in the 1950s and 1960s and opened in 1973, long before building models existed. From 2004, its owner took part in an Australian research project, the FM Exemplar Project, to test how a model-based approach could support facility management of a building whose information was spread across drawings, databases and people's heads. The work is one of the earliest public case studies of BIM for operations, and the owner's work on it has continued since.
At a glance
| Building | Sydney Opera House, Australia (opened 1973) |
| Owner | Sydney Opera House Trust (New South Wales Government) |
| Research | FM Exemplar Project, CRC for Construction Innovation with the Australian Government's FM Action Agenda, from 2004 |
| Main report | Adopting BIM for Facilities Management: Solutions for Managing the Sydney Opera House (2007) |
| Theme | Using a model as the way into asset and maintenance information for an existing building |
| Follow-up | Later research by the CRC's successor, SBEnrc, including a 2015 case study report |
What was done
- A model of an existing building: parts of the building were modelled to test whether a model could act as an index to asset information, rather than a design tool.
- Linking systems: the research tested connections between the model and the systems facility managers already used for assets and maintenance.
- Standards for information: the project looked at which information FM needs and how it should be structured, so that it can be found and kept up to date.
What it shows
The case is often cited for a lesson that still holds: for operations, the model's value is in the information it gives access to, not the geometry. A building already in use has its asset data in many places; bringing it together, structured and owned, is most of the work. It also shows that BIM for operations is a long programme rather than a single project.
Often misquoted
- "The Opera House was designed in BIM." It wasn't; the models came decades after construction.
- "A full digital twin was delivered." The research tested parts of a model-based FM approach; the reports describe trials and recommendations.
Where to read more
The CRC for Construction Innovation's 2007 report on adopting BIM for facilities management at the Sydney Opera House, and SBEnrc's later Sydney Opera House case study (Sanchez, Hampson and Mohamed, 2015), both published on the SBEnrc website.