The BIM Feedback Gap: Why Good Feedback Doesn’t Always Mean Good BIM Content

As the creators of BIMcontent.com, we also work closely with manufacturers, architects, designers and BIM professionals every day. Those conversations, together with our experience developing manufacturer BIM content and observing how it performs within real project environments, have highlighted a recurring pattern that many manufacturers are unaware of.

BIM Content Is More Than a Technical Deliverable

For building product manufacturers, BIM content is far more than a technical deliverable.

It’s an investment in making products easier for architects and designers to evaluate, incorporate into projects and ultimately specify.

The success of that investment isn’t measured by how many times a Revit family is downloaded. It’s measured by whether that content is confidently used within projects, retained within architectural practices and continues supporting specification opportunities over time.

A single project can deliver an excellent return on investment. However, the real value comes when designers choose to use that content again—or when an architectural practice adopts it into its trusted internal BIM library. Every future project can benefit from that original investment without the manufacturer needing to persuade the designer to download the content again.

For BIM content to create that long-term value, it doesn’t simply need to get into a project – it needs to stay there. And that’s where we’ve observed an interesting phenomenon.

We call it the BIM Feedback Gap.

What is the BIM Feedback Gap?

One of the most common conversations we have with building product manufacturers goes something like this:

“We’ve got files…..nobody has ever complained.”

Or…

“We asked someone who can open the files in Revit and they said the files look great.”

These are all encouraging comments and, on the surface, is exactly the feedback every manufacturer hopes to hear. But what if the problem is that these comments don’t necessarily answer the questions manufacturers are trying to answer?

Which is… Is our BIM content genuinely helping maximise specification opportunities?

Over many years of developing BIM content for building product manufacturers while working closely with architects, designers, BIM Managers and BIM Coordinators – one observation has become increasingly clear:

Positive feedback doesn’t always indicate that BIM content is performing well where it matters most.

The feedback itself is usually genuine however; it’s the difference between the feedback manufacturers often receive and how their BIM content performs inside architectural practices.

Different People Evaluate BIM Content Differently

One of the biggest misconceptions manufacturers make is assuming everyone who uses Revit evaluates BIM content in the same way…

They don’t – and in many cases, the person who downloads and uses a Revit family isn’t the person responsible for evaluating whether it meets their organisation’s BIM standards.

Architects and designers are usually searching for BIM content while actively designing a building. Their priority is finding the right product quickly so they can continue developing the project.

If the family is easy to locate, inserts into the model without issues and allows them to keep working, they’ll often consider it good BIM content and that’s a completely valid assessment.

However, BIM Managers and BIM Coordinators are often evaluating that same family from a very different perspective. They’re asking whether it’s suitable to become part of the practice’s standard library and perform reliably across many projects—not just whether it worked well on a single project.

This is particularly important for larger practices delivering major commercial, healthcare, education and infrastructure projects. A Revit family for something as simple as a light switch may be placed hundreds or even thousands of times within a single model, before being reused across many future projects. If that family contains inefficient geometry, inconsistent parameters or poor behaviour, even small issues are then multiplied at scale and can place a project model at risk.

That means they are considering things like:

• Model performance
• Parameter consistency
• Documentation quality
• Scheduling behaviour
• Update and maintenance
• Coordination with other disciplines

Both perspectives are correct. They’re simply evaluating the content for different purposes.

The designer is evaluating whether the content helped them complete their project efficiently. Whereas, the BIM Manager is evaluating whether the content can be trusted by hundreds of users, across multiple disciplines, on projects where consistency, performance and reliability have a direct impact on project delivery.

For manufacturers, recognising this distinction is important.

Positive feedback from a designer tells you the content was useful in their workflow – that’s valuable. But it doesn’t necessarily tell you whether the content meets the standards required for firm-wide adoption, inclusion in a practice’s BIM library, or long-term use across multiple projects.

Understanding who is providing the feedback—and why they’re evaluating the content—is just as important as the feedback itself.

The Feedback Manufacturers Rarely Receive

One of the biggest challenges for manufacturers is that they rarely see what happens after their BIM content has been downloaded.

Within many architectural practices, BIM content is often reviewed before it’s approved for inclusion in the firm’s internal library. During that process, BIM Managers and Coordinators assess whether it meets the organisation’s standards for performance, consistency and maintainability.

If issues are identified, the family may be:

• Replaced with another manufacturer’s BIM content
• Swapped for a generic family
• Excluded from the firm’s standard library
• Quietly recommended against for future projects

The manufacturer is rarely aware any of this has happened – from their perspective, the family was downloaded, used and perhaps even received positive feedback.

This is why “nobody complained” shouldn’t automatically be interpreted as “the BIM content is performing well.”

Designers and BIM professionals are focused on delivering projects, not providing free consultancy to manufacturers. If a Revit family creates unnecessary work, the quickest solution is usually to replace it and move on.

There is often no email, no phone call and no explanation – the specification opportunity simply disappears.

Building BIM Content for Widespread Adoption

If your objective is to maximise specification opportunities across the market—particularly within larger architectural practices—it’s worth ensuring the feedback you seek reflects the expectations of the organisations you ultimately want specifying your products.

The goal shouldn’t simply be to create a Revit family that works.

It should be to create BIM content that can be confidently adopted across the widest possible range of architectural practices, projects and workflows.

Every BIM Manager has slightly different preferences, every project has unique requirements, and every organisation has its own standards and workflows.

It’s impossible to create BIM content that perfectly suits everyone.

Instead, the objective is to create content that is predictable, consistent and flexible enough to integrate into as many workflows as possible while requiring the least amount of modification.

This philosophy underpins the BIMcontent.com Quality Standard.

The Quality Standard doesn’t replace a firm’s own BIM standards or internal workflows. Rather, it provides a consistent development methodology for creating Revit and Archicad content. This consistency gives architects, designers and BIM Managers confidence that every family has been developed using the same principles and makes it easier for practices to apply their own preferred modifications where required.

At IGS Group, this methodology has been refined through years of creating manufacturer BIM content and is continuously informed by feedback from architects, designers, BIM Managers and consultants through the IGS Advisory Group.

Our focus isn’t simply on creating BIM content in a way that one particular group of people want it created.

Why? Because manufacturers don’t benefit from BIM content that ten designers think is excellent.

Our focus is on maximising its utilisation, as manufacturers benefit from BIM content that thousands of designers can confidently use, BIM Managers are comfortable approving, and practices continue specifying across project after project.

Free BIM Content Adoption Review

If you’ve invested in BIM content, one of the most valuable questions you can ask isn’t simply “Does it work?”

It’s “How well is it likely to be adopted by the architectural practices we want specifying our products?”

Our Free BIM Content Adoption Review is designed to help answer that question.

Using the methodologies behind the BIMcontent.com Quality Standard, together with practical insights gained from working with architects, designers, BIM Managers and the IGS Advisory Group, we’ll review your BIM content from the perspective of the people most likely to use and evaluate it.

Rather than focusing solely on technical compliance, we’ll identify opportunities to improve real-world usability and long-term adoption.

Our review considers areas such as:

• Ease of use within architectural workflows
• Model performance and usability
• Graphics and level of detail
• Scheduling and parameter structure
• Coordination with other building services
• Consistency of modelling methodology
• Suitability for inclusion within practice libraries
• Opportunities to improve adoption and specification potential

Whether your BIM content was created internally, by another provider or by IGS Group, the review provides an independent assessment of how it’s likely to perform in the hands of architects, designers and BIM Managers.

Because ultimately, the success of BIM content isn’t measured by how many times it’s downloaded.

It’s measured by how many designers continue using it, how many BIM Managers are confident approving it, and how often it contributes to product specification.

Request your free BIM Content Adoption Review and gain practical recommendations to help maximise the value of your BIM content investment.