One of the biggest challenges facing BIM in the GCC is that governments are still focused on the initial start up costs rather than the process and benefits it could bring, a panel of experts have said. Speaking during a Big Project ME roundtable discussion, Khalid Shuhail, Council Board Member and Chairman of the Arbitration Committee for the Society of Engineers – UAE, said that governments still looked at BIM as a new idea, but that mentality needed to change. Tim Cole, the executive vice president of Strategy at Causeway, added that governments around the world were starting to mandate BIM and said that countries needed to take those initial steps for BIM to be successful.