The Importance of Project Management in the Early Stages of a BIM-Led Project: A Case Study of the Construction of Judicial Square in Zagreb

Currently in the Republic of Croatia (RH) there are insufficient regulations that would indicate the implementation of public projects by using BIM, despite the fact that this is a global trend and obligation for public contracting authorities in many countries. Public investments, especially projects whose capex is (co)financed by grants, while opex is nationally financed, have to be planned and designed in a way to have optimally balanced opex and capex within life cycle of the project i.e. building. The paper presents case study - positive example of recognizing the benefits arising from the implementation of integrated platform of information modelling on a public project "Judicial Square in Zagreb". After the timely involvement of the project management team in the early stages of the project (creation of the procurement strategy and the tender phase for designing), the Ministry of Justice and Administration of RH adopted a strategy for realization of the project on an BIM platform in order to enable effective and sustainable assets management in the operational phase. The paper concludes that, despite the lack of regulation in RH and the still lack of understanding of the benefits that BIM brings, it is possible to apply BIM on public projects in RH autonomously. By creating national guidelines, i.e. a national framework and platform for the application of BIM, it is possible to create preconditions for its cogent application in all public projects in RH i.e. to enable the creation and adoption of a national strategy that would determine the manner and period in which BIM would be implemented as an obligation on public projects.