CPA and NBS - Product Information Report

This week saw the publication of the CPA and NBS Product Information Report. The report was, in part, a look at the challenges set out in Chapter 7 of the Hackett Report, which relate to communicating construction product information in a clear and unambiguous way.

CPA and NBS report

In terms of what information 'users' of construction product information require, there were some clear requirements:

• Technical product information to complete the specification
• Third party certification
• Suitability information - in particular if the product forms part of a system
• Currency/availability information
• Supporting guidance

It was also very clear that users want information digitally. The only significant requirement for 'physical' information was product samples and delivery of in-person CPD. This is a huge change in a decade where printed literature was once common place.

There was also a difference in understanding between what users wanted and what providers thought they wanted.

Focus more on:

• Making product information more accessible from search engines
• Making product information more accessible from online product directories

Focus less on:

• Brochures
• Sales reps
• Trade shows
• Promotion through social media

Clearly, the provision of well-structured, comprehensive and accurate product information is an area the industry must improve on.

However, the report also highlighted industry bad-practice around product substitution. This was found too often to be (a) badly documented and (b) not following approval mechanisms.

Certainly a few things to think about. Some screenshots from the key findings below...

The key information required from provider and user perspectives

Do product substitutions follow an agreed process and get documented

Are product substitutions always approved

How can accurate manufacturer product information be insisted on

Download the report for free below:
- https://www.constructionproducts.org.uk/news-media-events/news/2019/november/construction-industry-takes-first-steps-at-improving-product-information/

Sample specifications from NBS

When writing a specification it can be a little daunting seeing a blank screen and wondering where to start.

So, in a further improvement to our online support material there are now a number of sample specifications available to download from our website. There are a number of sample specifications for:

• Project management (roles and definitions)
• Architecture (door and window systems)
• Electrical engineering services (low voltage system)
• Mechanical engineering services (heating systems)
• Structural engineer (piling and pilcap systems)
• Landscape architecture (paving system)

Each download comes with a guide from the individual NBS Technical Author who writes and maintains the content. The specifications themselves can be opened in Adobe Reader or NBS Create.

The structure of each specification is consistent across each of the disciplines showing what can be achieved when the whole project team used NBS.

Some screen captures below:

Commentary from each NBS technical author

Samplle full specification for a doorset system

Sample performance specification for a traffic kerb system

All of the downloads are free - so please have a look at them at:

- thenbs.com/services/our-tools/nbs-create/sample-specifications

To learn more about NBS usage on a project please see:
- thenbs.com/case-studies/bim-toolkit-sample-projects/bim-toolkit-for-education/st-margarets-primary-school

The Periodic Table of BIM

One educational resource that seems to have caught the attention of the BIM community (world-wide) is the Periodic Table of BIM.

The Periodic Table of BIM

This is the work of Stefan, Richard and Robin at NBS and it's a beautifully elegant way of providing an index/table of contents into the subject matter of Building Information Modelling.

At NBS, we cover many areas of the built environment within the guidance of our specification products. For example, before specifying a lighting system an engineer may want to research the latest information on interior lighting or emergency lighting or automatic controls. Equally, an architect may want research fire, acoustic and environmental performance before specifying doors.

General guidance available within NBS Create

When providing guidance on BIM on theNBS.com, we wanted to have a more engaging way of leading construction professionals into this key topic than a (slightly dull) table of contents page such as:

Building Information Modelling

1. BIM Strategy
2. Foundations
1. Framework
2. Common methods
3. Procurement route
3. Collaboration
1. Culture and behaviour
2. Process etc...

...so instead, the Periodic Table of BIM was created. An engaging way to support construction professionals through the topic of building information modelling.

The key topics around the subject of building information modelling

If you are interested - please see the dedicated area of our website:

- thenbs.com/knowledge/periodic-table-of-bim

To jump to a key topic, click the areas that interests you below...

Strategy, Foundations, Collaboration, Process, People, Technology, Standards, Enabling Tools, Resources, Plan of Work Stages

Finally, when out and about on the road I have heard that a few people have printed the periodic table of BIM out and put it on the wall of their practice. We'd be keen to see photographs of this - if anyone wants to take part - please use the hashtag #BIMTable - I'll update this blog post if we get any pictures through ;)

- Download a PDF of this free resource - print off and stick to the wall

An introduction to NBS Create - Video

As part of the development of our new website we wanted to produce a video that introduces the NBS Create specification system in three minutes. This comes hot on the heels of the NBS BIM workflow video I blogged about in March.

This video may now be viewed below:
- theNBS.com/Create

As with the previous BIM video, again this video introduces the product through telling the story of our own building project and uses NBS colleagues within the movie.

At NBS, our technical authors work together to ensure the quality and structure of the NBS content

This content is then used by thousands of constructional professionals on thousands of projects across the UK

The structure of this content allows for innovative functionality where specifications can be developed from outline to full throughout the project timeline - functionality also connects the specification to relevant standards and manufacturers

The video moves through our new office building looking at specifications from the different disciplines

Where each member of the project team subscribes, the final documentation is consistent across all disciplines

Project teams can strengthen the NBS Create system by capturing their office knowledge within it

The specification must be coordinated with the drawings and schedules - the connectivity within a BIM environment give big efficiency benefits here

...and the video ends as it started with a focus on the NBS people - in this case the support that is provided to customers as part of their subscription

To find out more about NBS Create - please see:
- theNBS.com/Create

Thanks to chartered architects JDDK who have led the building project and are pictured in the video

Thanks also (again) to Soluis who partnered with us to produce the video.
- Soluis.com

The new NBS website

Our new NBS website is now live at the beta web address http://new.thenbs.com/ 

The home page is clean, crisp, easy to navigate and is designed for web and mobile. The overall design and use of the new NBS brand hopefully adds to a great user experience.

Our new website

There are three main sections to the website Services, Knowledge and Support. Within the Services section you can quickly find the right NBS products and tools for your practice. Whether you work in the architecture or engineering - whether you work on small or large projects.

NBS products and tools that can benefit you

The Knowledge area has a wide range of interesting articles. Each article is tagged by the relevant topics and also the author. By clicking on the topic or the author you can discover more articles of a similar nature.

A wide range of interesting articles in the Knowledge section

The third main area of the site is the Support area. If you are an NBS user (or want to browse the support that NBS users are provided with) you can look through the online help articles and videos - equally you can find out about training options and also engaging in our customer panels.

Get the most out of our services in the Support section

One final mention is the new 'My NBS' area of the site. If you have an NBS Account (from using NBS Create or NBS Domestic or National BIM Library or BIM Toolkit...) then you simply sign into the site and you can save useful articles, look at your history or tailor your experience and notifications based on your interests.

The new 'My NBS' section of the website

So please spend a little bit of time looking through the website and any feedback you send through our 'BETA bar' is most appreciated:
- http://new.thenbs.com/ 

Building Information Modelling for Dummies

BIM for Dummies

I received a complimentary copy of Building Information Modelling for Dummies last week. This is the latest BIM title to hit the internet bookshops in time for Christmas.

Written by NBS experts Stefan Mordue and Paul Swaddle alongside UK Government's Head of BIM Dave Philp it is fantastic to see this title published as part of the world-famous Riley 'For Dummies' series.

The book weighs in almost 400 pages and is split into six main parts. The first part looks at how to get started with BIM, in particular defining what BIM is. The authors stress the importance of the information - without which a model is simply 3D geometry. This publication has an international audience, but it is nice to see that so many of the examples used within the book come from a UK background. In the second part of the book that looks at the foundations for BIM, the levels of maturity that were originally mapped out by Bew and Richards are explained.

The authors

In part three of the book practical advice is given in terms of defining a process around BIM that works for the type of organisation that the reader may represent. One thing that is nice in terms of how the book is presented is the iconography against the paragraphs that highlight where the content is presenting a 'Tip', a 'Warning', 'Something to Remember' etc... For example in the section on standardising your BIM approach, there are a number of nicely written tips on what parameters to include in your objects.

Part four looks at some real-world benefits of the working within a BIM environment. Again, it is nice to see the UK's recent experience being used as examples with the early adopter Cookham Wood case study being presented. Part five then takes an opportunity to look at where the digitalising of the construction industry will next take us. The point is made that organisations need to invest in R&D to keep on moving forward. Organisations need to keep an eye on emerging capabilities such as big data, telemetry and the cloud. These will enable us to start measuring real-world performance enhancements and better outcomes that are tangible. In the coming years the aim will not be simply digitalising a single built-asset but how that built-asset is performing as part of a smart-city.

The final part of the book looks at some nice little 'lists of 10' - perhaps designed for those who like to flick through a book from the back pages first. There are lists of the top 10 BIM questions and answers, the top 10 BIM software considerations and the top 10 BIM resources. One of these resources is social media and it's is very nice indeed to see a mention of this blog at the bottom of page 343 :)

A mention!

Reflecting back on this publication and the recent NBS publication The BIM Management Handbook, neither will give you 100% of the answers to all of the BIM questions. But what they will do is provide an excellent well-structured framework to provide a base for your detailed research and allow you to do some quality thinking time whilst reading through the topics.

To put an order for the book please check out the link below:
- http://www.ribabookshops.com/item/building-information-modeling-for-dummies/85686/

To see my blog review of The BIM Management Handbook see:
- http://constructioncode.blogspot.co.uk/2015/11/the-bim-management-handbook.html

The BIM Management Handbook

New NBS publication

Today I received a complimentary copy of the BIM Management Handbook, authored by David Shepherd and published by NBS.

The first few chapters looks at the how a professional consultant can support and respond to the client to ensure that their needs are met. Clients will have information needs to answer their business requirements through the process of designing, building and operating a facility. David looks at how through the development of employer's information requirements and BIM execution plans the project can get off to the best possible start. There is also a chance to reflect on the processes, tools and skills that need to be developed across a practice to ensure that there is a capability and support to deliver efficiently against the client's needs.

The UK BIM Task Group levels of BIM maturity are then explained with a practical guide to how to deliver Level-2 BIM projects. There is also an examination of the UK's Build Digital Britain plan on how this journey will continue.

David Shepherd

David is BIM Manager at Lend Lease and was previously BIM Manager at HOK London and this experience shows as he gives practical advice on the coordination of models and also how to collaborate effectively in a common data environment. There are lots of examples and illustrations from models and also outputs from these models taken from real projects.

Finally, there is a good section on the use of standardised information and also the key principles of levels of detail (LOD) and levels of information (LOI). It's good to see references here to the huge amount of free online support here from NBS including the NBS BIM Object Standard, the National BIM Library and also the library of 1000s of LOD and LOI definitions that are part of BIM Toolkit.

So, an essential purchase for any office to place in the library or tea room - or an ideal Xmas present for those wanting a chance to reflect on their BIM processes and capabilities over the festive period ;). Also, a final thank you to David for the nice mention in the acknowledgement - a little humbling to be mentioned in the company of the other names listed here...

Thanks for the mention!

To put in an order for this book, please follow the link below to RIBA Bookshops...
- http://www.ribabookshops.com/item/bim-management-handbook/83973/

Finally, check out my blog over the next week or two to look out for a short review of the other big BIM publication BIM for Dummies when I manage to get my hands on a copy. NBS also had a big hand in this one with Stefan Mordue and Paul Swaddle working alongside BIM Task Group's Dave Philp as the authors.

Update - find this blog review here:
- http://constructioncode.blogspot.co.uk/2015/11/building-information-modelling-for.html

Free RIBA Contract Administrator Forms for use with RIBA Building Contracts

RIBA and NBS have published free Contract Administration Forms for use with the RIBA Building Contracts.

RIBA Building Contracts can be generated using the NBS online tool or bought in paper version from RIBA Bookshops. There is a Domestic version and a Concise version that may be used for residential and small commercial projects.
- ribacontracts.com

The screenshots below explain the process...

Generate your project-specific building contract online with the help of NBS guidance and suggested values

Generate a professional-looking PDF contract for the client and the contractor

Follow the link to download free useful forms and letters

A number of essential forms may be downloaded for either contract

Professional-looking Contract Administrator form, authored to work with the corresponding building contract

These free forms are the latest offering in an effort to provide for the whole industry.

On the smallest of jobs, a construction professional may use NBS Domestic Specification and the NBS RIBA Contracts service through their web browser on a pay-per-project basis. They may use tools like the NBS BIM Toolkit, National BIM Library and free forms and templates from RIBA Job Book and these contract administration forms for free.

On the largest of jobs, in addition to free resources, subscription services such as NBS Create and NBS Contract Administrator may be used to create efficiencies and reduce risks.

New mini-website launched for the NBS BIM Object Standard

At BIM Show Live this week, Drew Wiggett, Chris Vickers and Ian Chapman from NBS all presented the latest developments around the NBS BIM Object Standard. This resource for all has been short-listed in the BIM category at the upcoming Building Awards. 

This is a standard that may be used for free by any organisation that authors BIM objects with the aim of setting a level of quality across the industry. The new mini-website went live last week and this now includes pages and pages of useful technical guidance. 

This blog post looks at some of the clauses in the standard and their associated guidance. Early feedback from the industry on the standard are good. In addition, we are starting to see more and more design and construction organisations using it and also manufacturers either adopting it when authoring their own objects or asking others to author for them.

nationalbimlibrary.com/nbs-bim-object-standard

The standard contains five main sections.

1. General requirements
2. Information requirements
3. Geometry requirements
4. Functional requirements
5. Metadata requirements

Each section has numbered clauses and uses consistent terminology. When the user hovers over a term a definition pops up in a tooltip. There is also a "G" icon which can be clicked on to display the guidance. Examples of these from each section are below...

Example of the definitions of each term (highlighted with dotted underline)

Technical guidance giving commentary and examples of what to do and what not to do

Suggestions on how to model space data associated with an object

Practical recommendations on file sizes and host objects

Sensible rules on file naming - without trying to duplicate information that exists within the property values

 A very well researched piece of work that references international and national standards

Terms and definitions that are consistently used throughout

It will be great to see the whole industry get behind this standard and allow a level-of-quality to be set for all those creating or asking for BIM objects.

Check out the mini-website now...

- nationalbimlibrary.com/nbs-bim-object-standard

NBS Create - Finding the correct content

We have recently been releasing more enhancements to NBS Create. It’s been a pretty busy year at NBS and as an R+D Team we have been splitting our time looking at fixes, performance enhancements and also new functionality. I've got a series of five blog posts that look at some of these enhancements. This is the second of the five posts.

One consistent bit of feedback we have received from customers throughout this year is that working with systems is fantastic. It allows specifications to be started earlier in the project timeline and the choice of performance and full specification is of great help with different procurement routes. However, sometimes a designer thinks of a product first and not necessarily its parent system. Prior to the version 1.3 software it was sometimes hard to find the parent system for a particular product in order to add it to a job.

In Figure 1 below it can seen that the user has used the “quick search” feature in the Resources window to find where to specify “floor boards” *. They have then selected the “Add to Job With” feature. Figure 2 shows that the user then is provided with a list of potential system clauses that invoke this product clause. In this example a number of options are presented such as “Battened timber board floating floor system” and “Direct-fixed wood floor system”.

Figure 1 - Find a product within the NBS Resources window

Figure 2 - Quickly add the product to the job as part of its parent system

This same process is shown below by searching the technical guidance to the right of the screen. The search engine within the guidance is more advanced than the “quick search” in the Resources window. Figure 3 shows that the user has searched for “solar collectors” and the results include both “Evacuated tube collectors” and “Flat plate collectors”. Figure 4 shows that once the guidance page has loaded there is now an option to add the clause to the job through the “Add to job” hyper-link  Figure 5 shows the reuse of the window from the previous example that lists the potential parent systems “Indirect hot water storage supply system” and “Solar heating system”.

Figure 3 - Search for the product to specify in the guidance window

Figure 4 - Select the "Add to job" option

Figure 5 - Select which parent system the product is part of

In both of these examples it can be seen that the child product is now within the specification and is referenced correctly by their respective parent system. This is demonstrated in Figure 6. Within the context of the parent system, potential sibling products are offered to the user. In the example of the timber boards the user may now specify insulation, underlay, fasteners and seals. In the example of the solar collectores the user may now specify pumps, water treatment, pipelines and valves.

Figure 6 - Both products are in the job as part of the correct systems

* One bit of functionality that may be missed is the ability to filter what sort of clauses you are searching for. Right clicking anywhere in the Resources window when looking at search results allows this as shown in Figure 7 below:

Figure 7 - Filter the content you are searching for