The built environment is increasingly more digitized, relying heavily on large building models to hold all aspects of a building project. Thus, the need for BIM Interoperability is greater as the necessity grows for stakeholders to be able to access the information inside these complex and huge models.
ABDCE_disciplines: AECOsim Building Designer, Bentley’s multi-discipline BIM application, provides architectural, structural, electrical, and mechanical tools so you can coordinate your designs better across disciplines with a streamlined workflow.
For AEC firms, it is very common to use multiple software products within the same organization, as well as outside the organization. No single BIM software solution or integrated system can fulfill the requirements of the AEC industry. All these products throughout the design process need to be able to communicate with one another.
Standards organizations have come forward to suggest that they have the answer to interoperability in the BIM world. But currently what most vendors are able to achieve is perhaps an increase in interoperability. Does anyone offer total interoperability?
Some of our respondents define BIM interoperability in this way:
“Interoperability is about handing over the right amount of information, to the right people at the right time,” says David Lash, product manager, Trimble, Tekla Structures Division. “It’s about hitting milestones for people who want to stay up to date with the wider project, even on a daily basis.”
“Communication, communication, communication,” says Joe Eichenseer, director, Building Lifecycle Solutions, North America IMAGINiT. “Interoperability allows us to communicate better and reduce or eliminate the chance of translation errors between systems.”
The built environment is increasingly more digitized, relying heavily on large building models to hold all aspects of a building project. Thus, the need for BIM Interoperability is greater as the necessity grows for stakeholders to be able to access the information inside these complex models.
Bay Bridge East Span Seismic Safety Project To prove the project was viable, the California Department of Transportation shared detailed 3D designs with potential contracting firms.
The Architecture 2030 Challenge, adopted by the American Institute of Architects (AIA), offers a path to reducing the building sector’s negative impacts and reaches for carbon neutral design as standard practice by the year 2030. The building sector is the single largest consumer of energy and producer of greenhouse gas emissions globally. Designed to provide continuing education credits, the AIA+2030 Online Seriesprovides courses in high performance design, building a comprehensive understanding with each class in the series. The series will teach and inspire architects to meet the 2030 Challenge through design strategies, efficient technologies and systems, and the application of renewable energy resources.
Coming up is the UK BIM Alliance Roadshow 2018, a tour entitled “Facilitating the Digital Transformation Of the Built Environment.” This event will offer information about how the UK BIM Alliance is making this possible for and with the industry. The news from the Alliance will include buildingSMART news and actual examples and case studies and begins June 21s in Birmingham, with the focus on the use of BIM in Facilities Management.
According to John Eynon, Founding Board Member, UKBIMA now has projects on the go, praise and patrons, some profit, and recognition on the global stage, particularly through their recent merger with buildingSMART UK+I.
A little history: In October of 2016, buildingSMART UK launched the UK BIM Alliance, which was the UK government’s strategy for driving improvements across construction strategy, and by 2017, all public funded projects would be requiring BIM Level 2. This has been the evolution of the UK BIM Alliance.
Dr. Anne Kemp, Atkins, chair of BuildingSMART UK, Chair of ICE’s BIM Action Group, who spoke on the utility topic, “Out of Sight and Out of Mind” at the Bentley Year in Infrastructure Conference in London, asking at that time: “Did all projects transfer to BIM Level 2? Actually, we are a bit further from that in reality. Three million people must be reached. The guys who are being affected by utility strikes are those who we need to reach.”
Her focus was on knowing what’s underground in the way of utilities and using BIM and GIS tools to track outcomes.
“We need to be transforming our utilities through intelligent use of BIM, digital, long overdue collaboration, and common sense,” Kemp said.
Kemp said that the launch of the UK BIM Alliance was going to help their progress at the BuildingSMART UK for feeding data about their buried utilities.
In 2017, the GCS transition of Task Group to L3 (BIM Level) was predicted. There is a need for industry focus and stewardship of Level 2 and to achieve 2020 “Business as usual”. “We need the foundations of BIM Level 2 to be able to realize the ambitions of Level 3,” Kemp explained. “We are providing that industry focus of moving through analog into that digital transformation, through 3D modeling and integrated real time modeling. We are working at the structured controlled data in BIM Level 2. We’ve also got to control that uncontrolled dirty data, and how do we do that?”
There is a need to think about outcomes rather than just output, said Kemp, and not just discussing 2D drawings or data (or 3D). How does data need to be delivered in order for us to do our jobs?
“We have a convergence of what is needed with BIM, and that’s where the UK BIM Alliance comes in,” said Kemp. “BIM for rail, water, survey, hospitals, has a lot of interest around this area. The UK BIM Alliance grew out of government initiatives, and we are moving to BIM level 3. We need industry to step up and demonstrate BIM Level 2.”
The initiative really had to embrace the entire industry. By setting the mandate that they must achieve BIM Level 2 by 2020, they are challenging themselves. They are being innovative and inclusive and transparent.
“We target people who need to know about this stuff,” said Kemp. “BIM Level 2 has been defined. Bimlevel2.org is available and we’re here to help industry implement.”
There is BIM for infrastructure and there needs to be BIM for utilities.
What can we do from a buried utilities point of view?
What is complementary for ISOs and smart cities is working on an evolving landscape. The UK BIM Alliance is developing a taskforce on convergence with smart cities.
“Disruptive technology changes the face of industries, but we are also in an age of disruptive data,” Kemp concluded. “You have to have your people work through, understand and tailor themselves to the new processes.”
COBie to IFC processes
The BuildingSMART chair UK chapter is supporting the BIM Level 2
BIM enabled through to operations and maintenance
Not just about design and construction
TOTEX and total expenditure instead of operational expenditure.
The government is looking at procurement methods. The background to BIM is asset management.
Key decisions have to be made through the life of a project. You also have projects running simultaneously at different stages, so you need to be sure you have the right information, and data fed into a system users can trust.
She is looking forward to better information and management through BIM.
Autodesk BIM 360 Docs is designed to help government clients comply with the BIM Level 2 mandate in the UK. Process described here:
The Product Data Working Group Alliance Product Data Working Group which is consulting on the state of the nation on product data has published two interim reports. Meeting 1 Interim Report
Meeting 2 Interim Report
Join the conversation on the dedicated #product_data slack channel or email us.
BIMovation – Faro are hosting an event on June 5th where Anne Kemp, UKBIMAlliance Chair will be speaking – register here
Facilitating the digital transformation of the Built Environment– The first of our roadshow events takes place in Birmingham on June 21st where John Eynon will be presenting the latest news alongside other guest speakers. Register here
CSIC Distinguished Lecture – Anne Kemp is delivering the distinguished lecture on June 29 where she takes A glimpse into the future….By considering the past. The challenges, the opportunities – and our consciences. Register here
GDPR
The UK BIM Alliance has updated their privacy policy inline with the new GDPR regulations. Please visit this page for more information.
When everyone on a team uses a different BIM software, it can be painful to maintain accurate model versions, control user access, compare versions and analyze different models. On big projects, there are many teams coming together, all using whatever BIM technologies they have been tasked with and making all those interoperate, multiplying the challenge several fold.
Or so it would seem from the recent announcements made by Bentley Systems at their 2017 Year in Infrastructure Conference held in Singapore this past week. The event drew record numbers, primarily from Southeast Asia, China and India. 130 journalists also were in attendance.
When everyone on a team uses a different BIM software, it can be painful to maintain accurate model versions, control user access, compare versions and analyze different models. On big projects, there are many teams coming together, all using whatever BIM technologies they have been tasked with and making all those interoperate, multiplying the challenge severalfold.
Senior industry strategist, Civil Infrastructure of Autodesk, Terry Bennett, spoke to AECCafe Voice this past week about the Blueprint 2025 Leadership Forum held in Washington D. C., earlier this year.
An interesting new product, Konstru, is a central interoperability platform that automates the exchange of BIM data between analysis & modeling software tools, due for launch in July. Konstru supports all your favorite and most popular design and analysis tools and allows them to communicate with one another.
