AU Las Vegas - Class submission

All of the submissions are now in for Autodesk University Las Vegas.

Each of the submitted classes can be vieweed in advance. It is also possible to add your votes to the classes the look of interest.

I submitted a class this year - if successful I'll be talking about the UK Level 2 BIM methodology and also (with it being a tech conference) looking at how we're using the Forge technology to view Revit/IFC files in the cloud alongside the specification.

If you think it looks interesting, then please following the link below and filter by the word 'Forging' and add your vote.
- http://au.autodesk.com/speaker-resource-center/call-for-proposals/voting

To find out more about our use of the Forge technology - watch the two minute video below:

- theNBS.com/viewer

I'm happy to list other classes submitted from the #UKBIMCrew - drop me a DM on twitter if you want yours added below... (snip)

Update 23rd June 2017
Really pleased that my class has been accepted.
Also, great to have such a fantastic co-presenter joining me. Jim Quanci from the Autodesk Forge team :)

NBS National BIM Report 2017

Our seventh annual BIM Report is now available and may be downloaded for free at the location below:

- www.thenbs.com/knowledge/nbs-national-bim-report-2017

As always, it is a mix of analysis of the results of the survey and also a number of articles looking at BIM today.

The articles include the latest updates from key UK led initiatives into BIM that the rest of the world are looking to. These include features on the UK Government's Digital Built Britain programme from Mark Bew, the standards supporting UK BIM from BSI and how the UK are working with others across Europe as part of the EU BIM Task Group.

Fig 1 - How the UK is now pushing on with the ISO 19650 standards

Fig 2 - The concept diagram for public sector BIM strategy

As always, Adrian Malleson from NBS gives insight into the results of the survey. I have taken a few screen captures from it below to highlight one or two areas of interest.

The first chart below is interesting as it shows the opinions on where BIM will deliver against the main Government objectives. It can be seen that there is confidence on reducing cost and programme time. However, there is more sceptism around whether it will enable the industry to cut its environmental impact or have a positive impact on the industry's trade gap.

As this is the seventh survey, we can do view national trends over a number of years. The key question each year is around awareness of BIM. It can be seen below that this has been a reasonably steady upward trend since 2011.

Another question asked each year is around BIM maturity. This is asked once in terms of 'what level of BIM are you working to?' and then 'which standards do you use?'. Personally, I prefer the question around the standards as this gives better insight.

As expected, the 1192 standards are the most highly adopted. However, market adoption is still well short of 50% here. This suggests that although 62% of the industry may have 'adopted BIM' in terms of utilising 3D modelling tools and performing clash detection etc... we are still a long way from saying that the UK industry is working at 'level 2 BIM'.

The chart below is particularly interesting in that more than two thirds of the industry believe that 'clients don't understand the benefits of BIM'. I think this is a real opportunities for construction professionals to educate and support their clients.

The last chart to take a look at in this blog post is how construction professionals believe that emerging technologies will influence the industry. It's no surprise to see that big data and the cloud are leading the way in terms of having the biggest likely influence. Robotics on the construction site (or offsite) and machine learning have a little more sceptism attached.

Within the report we also take an opportunity to reflect on a case study of a project where all members of the project team are using NBS BIM solutions. Check this out in the video below or at our website:
- www.thenbs.com/case-studies/

Download your copy (and sign up for our newsletter) today:

- www.thenbs.com/knowledge/nbs-national-bim-report-2017

NBS National Specification Report 2017

Our Market Research, Analysis and Forecasting regularly survey the industry to help inform our product developments. In recent years we have shared this knowledge and wrapped it up with insightful articles and opinions in the form of our reports.

In May 2017, two of these reports are being published pretty much at the same time (you wait ages for a bus and two come at once!).

The first of these is our Specification Report - the BIM Report will follow shortly.

This is completely free - but don't forget to leave your email address when you download it so you can receive our weekly e-newsletter:
- www.thenbs.com/knowledge/nbs-specification-report-2017

Some snippets from the report below...

Interesting to see that the specification may be modified, at least on some projects, at each stage of the plan of work. In the majority of cases, it is a document that develops at least through the developed design stage and the technical design stage. In a third of all projects it continues to be updated throughout the construction stage inline with any variations. So this suggests that industry attitudes to writing specifications at the last minute before to complete a tender package are perhaps changing.

The importance of writing tight performance specifications to set out the requirements for contractor-led projects or projects with elements of contractor design is clear. Also good to see (I think) that 42% disagree that specification writing is a chore :)

The main causes of difficulty are interesting. Looking at the main cause of difficulty - substitution of product decisions by the contractor is the biggest cause for concern. The article by Mark Taylor from Allies and Morrison reflects on this. Badly coordinated information in the drawings and specifications is the second biggest difficulty. I wasn't wanting to do much of a plug for NBS solutions in this blog post - but we do have plug-ins for a number of design tools that help here and are free for NBS users.

Amogst the articles and comment pieces we hear from specifiers and also manufacturers. It is worth remembering that when specifiying manufacturer products, most leading manufacturers have technical support departments who really understand their subject matter and are there to be a member of your project team.

Finally, there is a number of pages at the end of the report introducing some of the NBS Technical Team. These are the construction professionals who have spent years working as specifiers on real life project and have since joined NBS to research, author and maintain the template clauses and guidance that is in our products...

So please download the report. Share your opinions on social media. Maybe pass the report around your colleagues and discuss the topics in your office:
- www.thenbs.com/knowledge/nbs-specification-report-2017

(and watch this space for the upcoming eagerly awaited BIM report)