Why BIM coordination fails when it's treated as a box to check

Construction coordination has a perception problem. In too many organizations it's treated as a line item in the spec rather than a discipline that runs through the entire project lifecycle. When it gets reduced to a box to check, the consequences show up on site. In a recent episode of Bridging the Gap: The Conversation — 2026 Reality Check, Alicia Martino, VDC Director at Consigli, made the case for a fundamentally different approach. Here, we break it down into 6 takeaways: 

1. Coordination isn't something you do. It's something you run

When coordination is treated as a task, it gets assigned to a VDC team, happens in a room between specialists, and produces a model that gets handed to the field. When it's treated as a process, it involves every stakeholder who will be affected by the decisions being made — and it starts long before anyone is pouring foundations.

"Coordination is not just a line item in the spec or a box to check. It's a process. It's not siloed, it doesn't happen in a vacuum. We really want all of the stakeholders that are part of the project to be involved, from our project manager, our superintendent, our architects, our engineers and their consultants, right down to the people completing the work and installing it."
‍Alicia Martino, VDC Director, Consigli

That list is worth sitting with. Project managers, superintendents, architects, engineers, consultants, and the trades installing the work. Not just the BIM team. Not just the people who are comfortable in a model. Everyone whose decisions affect how the building goes together — and everyone who will be affected when those decisions go wrong.

The reason this matters is accountability. When the people who can make decisions are present in the coordination process, issues get resolved at the point where they're cheapest to fix. When they're not, those issues travel downstream and become rework.

Key takeaways on BIM coordination as a process:

• Coordination is not a VDC team responsibility. It's a whole project team responsibility
• The people who need to be in the room are the people who can make decisions, not just the people who can read a model
• Issues resolved in coordination cost a fraction of what they cost on site
• A BIM coordination process that happens in a vacuum produces a model nobody outside the VDC team trusts

2. Build the building virtually before you build it physically

The core discipline of effective BIM coordination is straightforward in principle and demanding in practice: build the building virtually before you build it physically. Identify every conflict, every access issue, every sequencing problem while it still exists only in the model rather than in poured concrete or installed ductwork.

Alicia describes this as creating and fostering a collaborative environment — one where every stakeholder's knowledge and expertise is brought to bear on the shared goal of building the project virtually ahead of the trades. That requires productive meetings, respect for people's time, and a consistent demonstration that the coordination process produces value for everyone in the room, not just the VDC function.

"By running productive meetings and being respectful of people's time, we really get people to buy into the process. And in turn, you do this enough times, they start to see the value down the road in the future."
‍Alicia Martino, VDC Director, Consigli

That last point is important. BIM coordination culture doesn't get built in a single project. It gets built through consistent demonstration of value over time, project after project, until the people who were once skeptical become the ones pulling others into the process.

The 2026 Bridging the Gap report found that 92% of AEC professionals report project budgets overrunning by 6% or more, with rework among the primary drivers. Client changes and scope creep top the list of causes, but poor coordination runs close behind. The firms that have built genuine coordination culture — where decisions get made in the model rather than on site — consistently report fewer surprises at handover and shorter punch lists.

Key takeaways on building virtually first:

• The goal of BIM coordination is to make every significant build decision before work starts on site
• Productive, time-respecting meetings build the trust that drives long-term coordination culture
• BIM coordination culture compounds over time. Teams that have been through the process once are easier to bring along the second time
• The firms with the shortest punch lists are usually the ones with the most consistent coordination discipline

3. Know your risks before you start, not after

One of the most practical elements of Alicia's approach is the upfront risk assessment that happens before coordination begins on any project. Before the team sits down to coordinate, Consigli looks at the project specifics: what are the obstacles, what is the model sharing basis, what does the schedule look like, and where are the sequencing risks?

"When we look at projects, we want to look at what are the obstacles that we're going to contend with. Are we going to be pouring foundations before we have a plumber on board to locate sleeves in concrete? So really planning the project, knowing our risks, knowing what we need to focus on, and then executing it."
‍Alicia Martino, VDC Director, Consigli

That question about the plumber and the concrete is a simple example of a sequencing risk that, if missed, becomes expensive quickly. Foundations poured before sleeve locations are confirmed mean core drilling after the fact — additional cost, additional time, and a site team that has learned to expect problems rather than trust the coordination process.

The value of identifying these risks upfront is that it focuses the coordination effort on the areas that matter most. Not every clash is equally important. Not every model conflict will cause a problem on site. The teams that coordinate most effectively are the ones that know which risks to prioritize and build their process around resolving those first.

This is also where compressed timelines — an increasingly common reality across AEC — make the upfront risk assessment even more critical. When construction starts before design is finalized, the window for coordination is narrower and the cost of missing something is higher. Knowing your risks before you start is the only way to make that window work.

Key takeaways on BIM coordination risk assessment:

• Before coordination begins, map the project-specific risks — sequencing conflicts, model sharing gaps, and schedule pressure points
• Not all clashes are equal. Prioritize the ones that will cause the most expensive problems if left unresolved
• Compressed timelines make upfront risk assessment more important, not less
• The model helps limit interpretation of drawings — but only if the right risks have been identified and resolved before the trades arrive

4. What regional BIM adoption tells us about coordination culture

Alicia's experience in the Boston market offers a useful lens on what happens when BIM coordination culture takes hold at a regional level — and what it takes to get there.

Boston has been one of the most BIM-mature markets in North America for over a decade. Alicia attributes that maturity to a combination of sophisticated owners who drove early adoption, public institutions that set BIM standards, and trades who realized relatively quickly that BIM coordination made prefabrication more efficient and kept them competitive on price.

"Our trades quickly realized how helpful BIM coordination could be for prefabrication. They realized the value, and then how it leads to more productivity, less waste, less rework. It also helps them remain competitive in their pricing if they're able to save more on the back end by coordinating on the front end."
Alicia Martino, VDC Director, Consigli

That last phrase — coordinating on the front end to save on the back end — is the economic argument for BIM coordination in a single sentence. It applies at every level of the project team, from the GC managing overall delivery risk to the subcontractor managing prefabrication efficiency.

The Boston story also illustrates how adoption spreads. It didn't happen because everyone was mandated to use BIM at once. It happened because enough people saw enough value often enough that the culture shifted. Owners pushed. Institutions required. Trades followed the economics. And the market reached a tipping point where not coordinating became the harder choice.

The 2026 Bridging the Gap report found that North America still has among the lowest BIM adoption rates of any market surveyed. The gap between markets like Boston and the broader North American average suggests the potential for the same cultural shift to happen more widely — but it requires the same ingredients: owners who demand it, institutions that require it, and trades who can see the economic case.

Key takeaways on BIM coordination culture:

• BIM adoption spreads when enough stakeholders see enough value often enough for the culture to shift
• The economic argument for coordination is strongest for trades — coordinating on the front end directly reduces prefabrication cost and rework on the back end
• Owner sophistication is one of the most reliable drivers of BIM coordination maturity in a market
• Cultural adoption is more durable than mandated compliance. Build for the former

5. Getting coordination right on every project

The consistency of Consigli's coordination approach across projects is not accidental. Alicia has built a standardized setup structure within Revizto that runs across the majority of their projects, with project-specific nuances applied on top of a consistent foundation.

"Internally, we run the same structure for setup within Revizto on the majority of our projects. The consistency our trades appreciate, because they know when they're going from one project to the next, they're not learning a whole new system. They're learning something that has mostly similarities." Alicia Martino, VDC Director, Consigli

That consistency is what turns individual project successes into organizational capability. A trade that has worked within Consigli's coordination environment on one project arrives at the next already familiar with the structure. A superintendent who has seen the model used well on one job is more likely to engage with it on the next. The learning curve flattens. The trust compounds.

The other half of Alicia's adoption approach is hyper-focused pain point identification. Rather than presenting the platform as a suite of features, she goes on site, finds out what problems the team is actually facing, and shows them how the tool connects to those problems directly.

"When I'm on site, I find out what are your pain points, what is something that you have a problem with, and then try to make the software connect to that pain point. From there, adoption takes off."
‍Alicia Martino, VDC Director, Consigli

The signal that it's working is organic. A superintendent outside of VDC who is in the model every day. A team member who peeks over a shoulder, sees how easy it is, and starts engaging without being asked. That kind of spread doesn't happen with platforms that require specialist operation or impose a new way of working without connecting to existing problems. It happens when the tool is genuinely useful to the people closest to the build.

Key takeaways on consistent BIM coordination workflows:

• Standardize your coordination setup across projects. Consistency reduces the learning curve every time a team moves to a new job
• Find the pain point first, then show how the tool solves it. Adoption that starts with a real problem is adoption that lasts
• Organic adoption driven by curiosity and visible value is more durable than mandated compliance
• The superintendent who opens the model before a site walk without being asked is the sign that coordination culture has taken hold

6. The pre-construction opportunity most teams miss

One of the more underutilized levers in BIM coordination is pre-construction involvement — getting into the design phase early enough to influence spatial coordination before the window closes.

Alicia describes Consigli's approach as interjecting as early as possible into the design phase to get a pulse check on how well spatially coordinated the project is, understand where influence is possible, and point out constructability issues at the right time.

"We do try to interject ourselves as early as possible into the design phase to kind of get a pulse check on how well spatially coordinated projects are, and then understand our risk, understand where we could influence, and point out things constructively and at the right time in the design so that we could mitigate some of those items and issues when we get into coordination."
‍Alicia Martino, VDC Director, Consigli

The benefit is felt downstream. Fewer RFIs. Fewer document changes. A coordination window that starts from a better place because the most significant spatial conflicts have already been surfaced and addressed. And a design team that has had the benefit of constructability input at the point where it's most useful rather than discovering the problems during coordination or on site.

This is the argument for treating BIM coordination not as something that happens after design is complete, but as something that runs alongside it — a continuous process of alignment between design intent and build reality that starts as early as possible and doesn't end until the project is handed over.

Revizto supports that continuous coordination process across the full project lifecycle, from early design review through to field deployment. Book a demo today to see how it works in practice.