Top five blog posts of 2015

First of all a very merry Christmas to anyone who has visited my blog this year. I hope everyone has a great Christmas break and returns ready to go again in 2016.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all who visit this blog!

I've now been blogging about BIM, technology and all things NBS for over six year - time flies! At the end of each year I look at the web stats to see which of my posts attracted the most web traffic. Now looking back at 2015, in reverse order the top five were...

In 5th place - BIM Management Handbook

- http://constructioncode.blogspot.co.uk/2015/11/the-bim-management-handbook.html

In 5th place was a review I wrote looking at the big RIBA Publishing BIM title of the year, David Shepherd's 'BIM Management Handbook'.

It should be noted that my review of BIM for Dummies (Mordue, Swaddle and Philp) was posted slightly later in the year so just missed out on this 5th place spot. But as books are best purchased in pairs you may also want to check that excellent publication out too...
- http://constructioncode.blogspot.co.uk/2015/11/building-information-modelling-for.html


In 4th place - The NBS BIM Object Standard

- http://constructioncode.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/nbs-bim-object-standard-and-shared.html

In February a social media/blogging debate started asking the question whether standards were needed in terms of BIM object creation.

After observing opinion, I put my two pennies worth in arguing that by standardising terminology and promoting international, and national standards, then a greater quality of BIM object is created. We have consistent data on sites like rightmove and autotrader and this allows us to make more informed decisions - so why not for BIM?

The debate started again in September. Below is a follow up post:
- http://constructioncode.blogspot.co.uk/2015/09/standardised-bim-objects-for-uk.html


In 3rd place - Ecobuild 2015 Review

- http://constructioncode.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/ecobuild-2015-bim-what-you-missed.html

In March we were fortunate enough to be chosen by UBM to curate the content for their BIM Theatre at Ecobuild. I think we put on a decent show with well over 100 delegates at each presentation.

The blog post looked back at the three days in East London at one of the construction industry's biggest annual events.

Note - watch this space for news about Ecobuild 2016!


In 2nd place - Updates to the NBS Plug-in for Autodesk Revit

- http://constructioncode.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/enhancements-to-nbs-plug-in-for.html
Moving from a document-way-of-working to a digital-way-of-working  has seen real efficiency and accuracy improvements where tools and content work together. The success of our NBS plug-in for Autodesk Revit demonstrates this.

The second most popular post of the year looked at the 2016 enhancements to our plug-in. Link to the specification, view NBS design guidance, check annotations, drag and drop objects into the model, synchronised guidance about the objects... As a free tool it really helps put the information into building information modelling.

Also check out, the recent post below looking at the personalisation enhancements with newly introduced 'My Library'.
- http://constructioncode.blogspot.co.uk/2015/12/your-nbs-national-bim-library.html


In 1st place - The BIM Toolkit in ten minutes

- http://constructioncode.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/the-bim-toolkit-in-ten-minutes.html
There was also the small matter of the release of the Innovate UK funded BIM Toolkit that was developed as a free-to-use tool for those working to UK Government Level-2 BIM.

NBS led the team that worked through a six-month funding period (and beyond) to develop this. The Toolkit in ten minutes blog post gave an overview to all of the key concepts and gave pointers on where to find out more on all of these in terms of technical articles.

So whether you are an client wanting to know more about employer's information requirements, or a design manager wanting to know about LOD or a manufacturer wanting to structure your digital product information - the BIM Toolkit is a great free resource for industry.

So that's it for another year - back in 2016!