buildingSMART Singapore - Day Two

Day 2 in Singapore was a series of buildingSMART group sessions. I attended the International User Group (IUG) sessions. It is the aim of the IUG to promote and stimulate the use of buildingSMART deliverables in order to improve interoperability in the construction industry, and to share experiences among its members so as to achieve a balance between giving and taking. The IUG activities are documented on a public URL and those from Singapore are at the website below:
http://iug.buildingsmart.com/iug-meeting-2011-singapore

The 2020 roadmap was discussed. It is interesting to look at vision, mission, goals and values. Extracts as follows…

• buildingSMART is the world authority on open BIM, plays a major part in standards-setting and its ISO standards are embedded in vendor software.
• It is an organisation that is neutral and independent, open and transparent and not-for-profit.
• Its products and services add value to, compliment or enhance but do not compete head-on with products and services provided by its members.

One topic discussed at length was the increase in activity around the support of users who want to adopt BIM around the world. Many of the chapters of buildingSMART are developing guidelines on how users should use BIM. For example, National BIM Standards USA - http://www.wbdg.org/bim/nbims.php and NATSPEC National BIM guide http://www.bim.natspec.org/. Equally, many of the chapters are developing consultancy services. The aim is for these activities should be coordinated under buildingSMART international so that each chapter can be strengthened by the work of all.
IDM is the buildingSMART “product” that defines what information from BIM is issued at defined times of a project. A good example of this would be with the IDM COBie definitions that define that different parts of the spreadsheet are required at defined stages. These can be seen at http://idm.buildingsmart.no/confluence/display/IDM/COBIE+Project

Example defined stages of completion include “Project Wrapper, ”Space layout”, “Asset Location”, “Asset Installation”, “Job Plans”.
Interestingly IDM is mentioned in the UK Government BIM Strategy. It is a potential method of defining the data that is required to be issued at the four defined data drops (green circles) in the diagram below:

In terms of buildingSMART opportunities there appear to be two clear avenues that need to be defined at further working group sessions. The first of these is the opportunity for each chapter to develop guides, training and consultancy services that could help fund activities. The second was to put more focus on marketing and share success stories across the chapters. The clear benefits of open BIM that were considered are (a) reducing costs, (b) improving efficiency, (3) achieving sustainability and (4) increasing profits.
The final session of the day was when the IUG and the technical group (ITM) come together and agree the conclusions of the meetings. The good news from the technical group is that it appears that the majority of the snags in IFC2x4 are almost sorted. So the newest version of IFC is not too far away.
What is IFC2x4? http://www.buildingsmart.org.uk/buildingSMART/IFC2X4

Finally, why are NBS members of buildingSMART and IFD? It's because the project specification that you generate is not a standalone document. It's a document that describes the same real-world objects that the CAD model describes. In addition, not every member of a project team may be using NBS to write their specifications and this information must all come together to form part of a tender package or an as-built record.

buildingSMART and IFC are pretty much the only show in town when it comes to inter-operable data for the construction industry.

It rains all of the time - just like Durham

Some car race this weekend?