BIM Coordination Explained: Workflow, Responsibilities, Deliverables and Common Project Problems

BIM coordination is the organised process of combining discipline models, finding spatial and information conflicts, assigning owners, and publishing a set that construction can trust more than a pile of uncoordinated 2D drawings. It is a management process that uses software, not a software process that replaces management. Architecture, structure and Mechanical, Electrical and Plumbing (MEP) can each be internally tidy and still be mutually impossible. Coordination is how a project discovers that before a ceiling is closed.

This article explains the workflow, the split of responsibilities, the deliverables, and the problems that repeat on live jobs. It links to clash detection, MEP BIM, the BIM Execution Plan, and the outsourcing pillar. If you need a coordinator rather than another modeller, browse freelancers or post a coordination project on BIMProSG.

What BIM coordination is

Coordination has three layers. Spatial coordination asks whether objects occupy the same space or violate a clearance. Information coordination asks whether names, levels, grid codes, system types and parameters match the BEP. Process coordination asks whether the right people look at the right issues on a cycle that matches the design programme. A team that only runs Navisworks once a month is doing a clash export, not coordination.

Federation is the technical act of bringing models into one review environment: Navisworks, Solibri, an IFC viewer, or a Revit host with links. A federated model is not automatically a coordinated model. It is the table on which coordination happens. If links sit on the wrong origin, the federation is fiction. Shared coordinates and a published origin are therefore coordination prerequisites, not advanced topics.

Coordination is also not “making everything fit by moving MEP.” Structure may need an opening. Architecture may need a ceiling change. A plant selection may be too large for the room the architect drew. The coordinator’s job is to make those choices explicit. A modeller’s job is to implement the choice that was instructed.

Roles and responsibilities

The BIM coordinator (sometimes called BIM manager on smaller jobs) owns the process: BEP maintenance, federation, clash tests, issue log, meeting agenda, and publish register. They may not author every discipline model. On a small job one person wears both hats; on a large job they should not.

Discipline leads own the correctness of their model against their drawings and specifications. The architectural lead decides wall types and ceiling heights. The structural lead decides member sizes and opening rules. The MEP lead decides system routes after a clash option is chosen. Outsourcing a discipline model does not outsource that lead’s duty unless the contract says so — and even then, statutory responsibility may not be transferable.