Yes but the very first step is ? 
 
Hi Don 
 
Great points about the first step but look closer and you find that the models can do things way outside understood practices. 
 
You mention presentations normally meant to assume arch to client but most clients have a major concern with " How can this product help us make a superior development " any development 
 
This involves cash flow, cost consideration and multiple similar issues. 
 
A great deal depends on the infrastructure creating an environment that enables superior cash flow. 
 
Let for instance take a normal multi faceted housing development with commercial inclusion. 
 
Here I ask and answer a question. 
 
What do LA gangs and Real Estate agents have in common ? They mostly depend on drive buys ( pun )  
 
The marketing data and presentation enticement is strictly localized and often non flexible and when one market dries up no alternatives are included and often the project dies as a result. 
 
Now what if using standard BIM practices you could feed the presentation models to different world and language tastes 
 
* For French clients show modified bathroom and kitchen designs to their tastes and in their language ( They traditionally hate our designs and without a bidet forget it ( same with Dutch German Scandinavian ) 
 
* For Arabic clients orient the house / factory whatever so that Mecca directions are prevalent and obvious and room operation interfaces is modified to the family mix 
 
* For Asian clients understand Feng Sui and the colors used are paramount 
 
* Heck even in the good old USA we have very different psychological profiles that drive kitchen designs but we seem to be locked in a standard one size pattern fits all design by the opposite sex at that. 
 
* Let the client within reason perform draq and drop components in patterns such stand in their primary favorite places ( Kitchen - Formal room ) see the views comment etal 
 
* Your insurance company can be plugged in to the model to see that best practices are REALLY being followed and I can confirm your rates will drop as a result 
 
* Let you industrial clients see successful operational workflow patterns operating in the model 
 
All this involves and makes you clients client a part of the project from the get go 
 
It adds real $$$$$ value just by getting the model to open a different window on the project 
 
Yes but is it cost effective well read this http://www.ideapete.com/blindmen.html and it was done by bright high school kids 
 
The flexibility of using BIM ( parametric ) models for the above are endless ( If you look at it differently everything is a parameter ) and all the above is equally relevant to commercial applications 
 
Yest indeed the first step is important but that first step is way before most of us in the industry think it is. 
 
( : ( : pete

great article. unfortunately doesn't address the underlying quality of the model. ost folks want to do a lot of the things on your list but can't or won't build a good model.

Thanks for this simple and practical article that answers the questions that most owners/ developers and contractors ask about BIM and what it can do for them.  
 
I would like to see a similar approach to the topic of a systematic and efficient approach to work with BIM in an integrated practice with a team of diverse consultants. I would like to see a checklist methodology on the process of developing BIM through all the stages of a project - perhaps this might end up being a template for each stage. Hope you take this one on.

"Every jouney begins with a step" 
And every step on this journey begins with another journey.