I was pleased to see your article about BIM inhttp://www.upfrontezine.com/2016/02/the-tao-of-bim-being-data.html. BIM[building information management] is the natural development of CAD for the construction industry, and so is worthy of discussion.
I agree with much that Allan Partridge of CanBIM said, especially his comment that the information part of the BIM mnemonic is data, not documents. It is also commendable that awareness among the Canadian players is established. I have observed projects in Canada going to international organisations that can talk the talk, even if they are no more capable than local ones. Allan is also correct in pointing out that some government initiatives build awareness and create an export opportunity, and that CanBIM developing that local awareness is worthwhile.
Over the past few years, it has been interesting to see where the leading BIM usage has occurred. In the 1990s, the procurement process in the UK resulted in all disciplines working together and coordinating their design decisions, although technology lagged. With CAD and relational databases we were attempting BIM before it was known as "BIM." Today with programs, like Revit, better databases and the cloud all contribute to what can be achieved.
Back in the USA
Back in the 1990s I visited the US to show them my CodeBook software. At that time, there was little interest in BIM, because design teams worked in isolation. Builders coordinated the documents of the various parties before they could begin construction. Autodesk contributed greatly to the advancement of BIM, partly with Revit [which they acquired in 2002], but more importantly they spent a large amount of their marketing budget on educating the industry as to the benefits of coordination and what BIM can be.
The result was greater awareness of BIM in the USA. It was embraced by some USA government organisations, and some design teams took the lead as they experienced the benefits. I am not sure, however, that since then it has been adequately mandated by government organisations in the USA or proactively encouraged. Although organisations are implementing BIM, it is to achieve benefits within their remit, rather than to the overall project’s outcome.
Meanwhile in England
In the UK, government laid out a timetable with deadlines for which data should available and what deliverables should be provided. This stimulated design teams through the reality of needing to comply with and understand the BIM framework. However, too much discussion is on the technical rather than the conceptual implementation of why-BIM.
As a result, we have deliberations over the choice of Cobie, IFC, or other standards. While these debates are necessary, they distract from the central issue, which should be about the Why and the How. The current situation appears to be that the required outputs can be rather onerous project deliverables, rather than a beneficial contribution to the process of creating and running a successful facility.
Usually, the data created by design and construction teams is what each party needs to merely fulfil their roles in the process. This often is just a placeholder for the data the facility owner needs, rather than the actual data with its high-value benefits, such as asset details, serial numbers, and commissioning dates.
Improvement Needed For BIM
It’s easy for the BIM evangelist community to focus on developing standards that move data from one piece of software to another, but I believe a strong educational voice is still needed for building and facility managers. This should develop the understanding by client and facility owners of the benefits of what BIM data should contain, so they can specify what information they need and then budget for the cost of collecting the data.
The misconception about BIM is that it includes the entirety of the project as constructed. In reality, this is not the case, because the only information in BIM models is the data that the contributors need to carry out their role -- whether architect, mechanical and electrical engineers, or contractors. The data contained is generic, even that provided by the contractor, such as procurement and cost data, and may not actually reflect what was installed, and where.
It is less common that we have seen the concept of BIM taken through to provide a fully operational BIM that contains the information needed to feed into asset management programs that produces maintenance work orders and cost effective management of the facility. Yet it costs so much more to collect model and serial numbers, warranty dates, and so on at a future date.
Another use of the information part of BIM for complex projects is to prove compliance. For each room in the project there needs to be a check and record kept that the constructed room meets the performance requirements of the program.
(A brief mention of my software: The design team collects and coordinates production information among them, and then links the information with Revit and AutoCAD. CodeBook provides contractors access to useful data directly, which they link to their procurement and estimating systems. This has been especially useful for PPP [private-public partnership] projects, where the construction team is involved early and so knows that they need to ask for the data they require upfront.)
[Peter L Mann heads up CodeBook Solutions at www.CodeBookSolutions.com] |
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