The start of a new year is a great time to take stock of different aspects of our lives, both on the personal and professional fronts, and for those of us in the business of developing, implementing, and studying AEC technology, it is fascinating to look back at what has been accomplished so far and what we can look forward to in the months to come. What were the main highlights of 2016? Were there some anticipated developments that did not pan out? What is the “state-of-the-art” of AEC technology at the moment? What’s “hot” going forward? What is the state of BIM? How are the leading vendors in the field doing on technology development? In general, is technology living up to its promise or not really? Are we past the “heady” days of technological breakthroughs in the AEC industry and have to now concentrate on the difficult, relatively unexciting, and often mundane, challenge of implementing these technologies?
Of course, it is not possible to answer all these questions, or even to find the answers to all of them, within the scope of an article. But this first AECbytes article of 2017 attempts to summarize the main AEC technology highlights of 2016 and identify the key trends going forward, looking at where we currently are and where we are headed.
URL: http://www.aecbytes.com/feature/2017/HighlightsTrends-2016-2017.html
AECbytes Blog 
While I agree with Lachmi that progress is slow but steady, I also see that we are just scratching the surface still with BIM. There is so much change potential here, and I do hope we don’t lose focus. To have a 15 year train of thought is good, but we need at least another 15 years. I am seeing nearly 50 use cases for information under the BIM umbrella and all need to mature to the point where they share information so we can truly achieve the BIM vision of entering data once and using it many times. We have much left to do….