Speaking to one of the judges at the event yesterday, they were heavily praised for the way they have adopted BIM through their organisation and the support structure they have put in place. An overview of their entry is below...
The notes from the winners booklet
At NBS, we were very pleased to be shortlisted - having our name side by side with the likes of Interserve, BDP, Carillion, GBE, Mouchel, SES and Skanska is an achievement in itself.
Some more photographs from the night and a little bit more on our entry below...
The NBS Table
Kevin Bridges was an excellent host - pictured with NBS imagery as his back drop
The shortlist of eight
In terms of the NBS entry, I include some slides below from the pitch that myself and Stefan delivered a few months back...
Helping define BIM Level-2
Collaborating across industry to produce the free-to-use BIM Toolkit
A tool that clearly defines who will do what and when following the PAS1192 process
A focus on information requirements
How the wider NBS BIM ecosystem allows design, specification and library information to come together
The powerful connections between the NBS premium offerings
Not just BIM success on an exemplar project - but helping professionals succeed with BIM around the world
But unfortunately, not successful this year... maybe next year?
When Stefan from NBS got a mug printed featuring the Periodic Table of BIM he didn't expect to receive 40+ likes on Twitter and many requests for us to send out mugs in the post.
So if you want an exclusive limited edition collectors' BIM mug of your own - let's see your tweet with a photo or screenshot of how NBS is helping your organisation digitally.
An example screenshot for inspiration is below. This is just a collection of images showing NBS content on a real life project helping designer, contractor and contract administrator...
(A tweet with an image like this would definitely win a mug)
Yesterday I chaired the ThinkBIM Summer Conference - Soft data, hard landings and asset management.
The theme was looking at stages 7, 0 and 1 of a project. How the needs of the 'in use' stage of a project could be considered at the 'strategy' and 'briefing' stage.
The venue for the ThinkBIM conferences is now the fantastic Squire Paton Boggs offices in Leeds City Centre. The photograph below shows the lovely new setting that mixes the old with the new in terms of architecture...
A new setting for ThinkBIM
Deborah Rowland was the first speaker. Deborah has experience in facility management in the private sector for Barclays and also as one of the leaders in the public sector through her work with Ministry of Justice.
It was interesting listening to Jacqueline's expertise and seeing how digitised the FM industry already is. The challenge, as always, is to try and get digital information to flow and not to have to start from scratch at certain phases of the project.
A to-scale version of the plan of work that nicely illustrates the importance of the 'in use' phase
Following the opening two keynotes, it was time for the roundtables. For this event, I hosted a session looking at how lessons learned from the operation stages of previous projects can feed into an EIR template for future projects.
A digital technical structure to supplement the EIR process
ThinkBIM Duncan asked for five take-home points from the roundtable. So here we go...
A few years on now since the publication of PAS1192:2 and 3 the participants are still not seeing many good examples of EIRs on projects. This includes projects where teams are working for extremely large clients who do many repeat similar buildings. The sample content on the BIM Task Group website and the documents made public from MofJ seem to be the best examples currently: - BIM Task Group sample EIR - MoJ sample documents
Lessons learned on successes and failures can feed into the EIRs. A specific example given was repeated mistakes on wall covering solutions on multiple retail projects for the same client from different teams - could be easily avoidable if this information was captured digitally and fed into a single template.
Big clients could make big savings by employing one person to standardised their processes and concentrate on good data kicking off a project. If you are building 12 offices/superstore/schools per year - could you save at least £5K per project by employing someone to get the digital process right?
A solution that allowed information to flow digitally from strategy to brief into the information production phases of a project would be well received. I presented some concepts as to how this could maybe be done through a template plan of work that considered space types and system types and it was well received. For example, a high school will have an assembly hall and washrooms and piling systems and heating systems etc... - having lessons learned captured in a template which then fed into design to ensure a better outcome when the school is used is something that would provide value.
Could the various sector specific BIM4 groups contribute to sample templates that help their sectors? Sharing knowledge and making the industry more efficient? Many of the BIM groups have been receiving information from the central BIM Task Group over the last five years - is it now time for everyone to show how it can be done?
The final session was from Dr Graham Kelly from BIM Academy. He presented the work they have been doing in Australia with the Sydney Opera House.
