BIM Manager vs. BIM Management

Regardless of whether you have a BIM Manager, your firm needs to do BIM Management.

In larger firms, "BIM Manager" refers to a specific job description that one (or more!) persons fulfill.

Most small to medium size firms won't have (or need) a full-time employee dedicated purely to BIM Management, but they'll still need their BIM infrastructure to be managed. The responsibilities and roles of BIM Management typically fall to one or more "power users" - designers or engineers who've taken an interest in Revit and demonstrated an aptitude for it. 

The specific roles that fall to these individuals varies by firm and how projects are managed and tasks assigned. Some firms have each engineer do almost everything for their project, from load calcs to drafting. Other firms spread the tasks around - one person does all the load calcs, another person is the drafter, another person is the design engineer, etc. 

Additionally, the level of BIM sophistication any given BIM Manager needs to deploy on a regular basis will depend on their market and the sophistication of their clients. Are the design deliverables just PDF drawings? Or do their projects have specific clash coordination minimum targets, modeled asset attribute requirements, cloudhosted workflow demands, and intricate handoff-to-contractor deliverables with LOD matrices?  

The world of BIM is full of jargon and hype. I'm going to try to avoid those words as much as possible and talk about the specific actions and knowledge required on a day to day basis. 

A non-exhaustive list of BIM Management activities that need to be executed include:

Updating and managing the Revit Template

Updating and Managing the Family Libraries (Warehouses, in RevX parlance).

New Model Setups, in particular involving tricky model setups involving campuses, complex positioning, bespoke phasing, cloudhosting (internal and external), tall buildings, split discipline models, etc. 

Model QA/QC. Some projects can last a long time and be worked on by many hands of varying levels of expertise. It's best practice to build a model QA/QC process into your project schedules. (Note that this is not the same thing as a design QA/QC).

Coordination. Run coordination exercises, either within Revit or using other Coordination tools like ACC or Navisworks. 

Revit training, standards documentation, and onboarding. At some point "how we do what we do in Revit around here" needs to get written down, and the BIM Manager is responsible for these documents.

Fixer. When things go sideways or a unique need arises, people call you and expect you to figure it out, and fast. From corrupted central models to "why can't I find ___??!!" to the dreaded "why is it saying I need to open this model in a more recent version of Revit? It's always been a 202x model" to "I need a Family for ____ piece of equipment."

Help parse BIM language in contracts and proposals. Very few people use BIM jargon correctly, including the people writing contracts and proposals. (I once saw an RFP listing a requirement of LOD 500 from the design consultants at 65% CD. That was fun.) The BIM Manager not only needs to know the correct meaning of terms and concepts, they need to know the ways in which most people misunderstand them, and how to communicate and navigate that level of confusion in a way that protects their firm. They also need to be able to communicate to their own firm's fee writers what the RFP is actually asking for, so the job can be bid accurately.