BIM Has Been Couch Surfing the Construction Industry for 20 Years

BIM has been couch surfing the construction industry for 20 years. Have data centres finally given it a home?

The industry is projected to spend $5 trillion on terrestrial data centres by end of decade.

SpaceX has filed for a million-satellite orbital compute network. Solar panels in orbit generate up to 8x the energy of ground equivalents. No permitting delays, no grid constraints, no water consumption for cooling.

The timeline is debated. The direction is not.

So here's the question nobody is asking loudly enough: what happens to all this terrestrial infrastructure when compute moves?

I've spent 30 years in facilities management and infrastructure delivery. Asset lifecycle planning, component reuse, whole-of-life cost modelling. The FM industry has been doing this forever. The data centre construction sector largely hasn't.

Here's where it gets interesting.

BIM has promised element-based design for 20 years. Every component tracked as a digital object, material, cost, lifecycle, reuse value, from day one. In theory, perfect. In practice, almost never fully delivered.

Data centre components are more standardised than almost any other building type. Power systems, cooling plant, structural modules. Design them as tracked, recoverable elements from day one and they don't get demolished when compute migrates.

Add digital twins and you've supercharged the whole system. Not just a design model, a live operational asset lifecycle platform. Every component tracked, its condition known, its reuse value understood, its next deployment planned before the current one ends.

The FM industry has known this works for decades. Data centre development might be the moment the construction industry finally catches up.