ThinkBIM - Summer Conference 2016

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.

To find out more about the MoJ story please see the link below:
- https://prezi.com/b73gw4x6duec/moj-bim-story-bim-prospects-2016/

Deborah also talked highly of the work being done by Andy Green from Faithful+Gould on linking SFG20 maintenance specifications with NRM and Uniclass 2015 codes to help with data flow from design and construction into operations.
- https://www.fgould.com/uk-europe/articles/new-customisable-sfg20-changing-world-building/

Jacqueline Walpole then followed with her keynote. Jacqueline reflected back on the work she was involved in a few years ago with UCL Academy, BAM and Autodesk looking at FM and BIM solutions.
- http://www.bam.co.uk/how-we-do-it/case-study/ucl-academy

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...

1. 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
   
2. 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.
   
3. 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?
   
4. 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.
   
5. 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.

This was a fascinating case study - plenty of web links below on how they are connecting many databases via an online 3D model viewer to meet the building's daily FM needs.
- http://www.bimplus.co.uk/news/aecom-and-b1im-acade4my-t5eam-create-bimfm-/
- http://www.i2c.com.au/2016/05/sydney-opera-house-bim-implementation-video/

Graham from BIM Academy - using the 3D model, via a webbrowser for the FM of a major building

So all in all - another super ThinkBIM conference. Well done to all of the team that put it together and I look forward to the next one.

To view all of my posts from the ThinkBIM series over the last five years or so click below:
- http://constructioncode.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/thinkBIM

Think BIM - Spring Conference 2016

I had the pleasure of chairing the half-day Spring Think BIM Conference in Leeds. As always it was a top event mixing great speakers with interactive round tables for discussion.

The first speaker was the UK BIM Task Group’s Dave Philp who gave an update on the activity delivering against the UK Government’s Strategy. Dave was actually overseas in Australia, so through the power of technology he presented over the web. Dave looked back at the last five years and the level-2 BIM journey developing the standard, tools and guidance.

Phil on Skype live from Perth, Australia

For Dave’s most recent presentation on this please see:
- https://www.thenbs.com/knowledge/ecobuild-2016/ecobuild-2016-digital-building-learning-hub-programme-the-slides

Next up was James Austin who was one of the original participants in the very first Think BIM in 2011. James who was an architect at the time at Space Group but has since joined Autodesk reflected back on this UK journey. Some photographs from his slide deck are below…

James looks back five years ago

Key milestones in the UK Level-2 BIM journey 

I'd strongly recommend having a flick through this presentation - so much good stuff from the last five years - this will be available soon on the Think BIM website:
- http://ckegroup.org/thinkbimblog/

For my own look back at five years of Think BIM - check out all of my blog posts with this tag...
- http://constructioncode.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/thinkBIM

The final speaker before the roundtable discussions was Adam Matthews who is the chair of the recently formed EU BIM Task Group. Adam talked about the two year programme to provide consistent guidance and a minimum level of performance across publicly funded construction work with respect to digital process and deliverables.

Where construction and built asset management is funded through tax payers money then there is a responsibility to increase productivity and get better value for the spend. Across the world, BIM is considered to be an enabler to do this – this initiative has the potential to put Europe and the UK into a position of world leadership.

Adam looks at productivity across industries and considers digital

The EU BIM Task Group - http://www.eubim.eu/

The CEN/TC 442 structure defining BIM standards across Europe - Picture left of NBS R Waterhouse

The first roundtable I attended was delivered by Adrian Malleson from NBS. Adrian was exploring the topic of persistent digital object identifiers (DOI) for physical products. This is an Innovate UK research project that involved NBS, BSI and the Construction Products Association.

The sort of opportunities explored here included (a) if each type of product in a built asset and a fixed identifier that linked to information about that product  that would be persistent over time, would this be of value in FM? and (b) what would the scope of the parameters be that could be stored against this identifier so that information about this product could be easily accessible either at the design, construction or operation stage of the project.

How could a concept such as this fit into a data structure such as COBie or IFC (or a proprietary FM format)? In the case of COBie, the object class would be determined by the classification (Category field), the location of the object would be determined by the instance relationship to parent space/location, then floor and then building/entity. The DOI would be an attribute of the object that would resolve to a hyperlink that gave persistent additional information regarding that type of object held on the web.

The simple flow of information between manufacturers and those that need this data

The second roundtable I attended was chaired by the manufacturer Bosch. They talked about their BIM journey and the challenges faced when determining how much geometric detail to model in a manufacturer object, how much information to put into the object and how much should be on the web and also what information standards should be followed.

All interesting subjects – particularly important if information from manufacturers is to be provided to the industry in a standardised format. At NBS we have spent a lot of time looking into standardising BIM object information and more can be found on this subject below:
- http://www.nationalbimlibrary.com/nbs-bim-object-standard

The conference concluded with a review of the roundtable discussions and then a final Q+A. The Q+A included the question about dominance of software providers and how competition around open standards was good for the industry. There was also discussion around whether organisations were willing to share their native models or whether they’d only share IFC and other fixed data formats to protect IPR. The feeling was that sharing is good for the industry.

So all in all – a really good day. As usual Think BIM was a super event – I look forward to the next one in the Summer.

Think BIM Leeds – Half Day Conference – BIM and FM

One of the regular BIM conferences I attend is the fantastic quarterly Think BIM event. It’s a pleasure to chair as the quality of speaker is so high and the variety in activities is always of interest.

Deborah Rowland – Ministry of Justice
The first speaker at this July event looking at BIM and FM was Deborah Rowland who is Head of Property Asset Management for the Ministry of Justice and Government Soft Landings (GSL) Lead. Deborah talked about how at an early stage in any project the operational costs should be considered and not just the capital costs. What is a client’s requirements in terms of annual cost to run the building? In terms of GSL, the key elements moving this forward are:

• A stewardship group and individual champions of the initiative
• Ensuring wider-industry adoption and supporting academic research
• Reviewing projects to demonstrate the benefits
• A continued focus on standards such as PAS 1192-3 and the incorporation of GSL in BS 8536
• To have one eye on Level-3 BIM

When considering the state of FM for BIM in July 2014 the benefits and challenges are as follows:

Benefits

• Improved tender accuracy by using collected information from previous projects
• Early engagement of FM professionals in a project provides a better outcome
• Designing for the whole life cost of the building and not just the construction
• The ability to visualise and plan operations via the model

Challenges

• Ensuring digital information is contractually delivered
• The enormous task of “what to do with existing estates?”
• Keeping a digital asset information model up to date

The strap line on Deborah’s last slide was “BIM + GSL = Better Outcomes”

Rowlands - FM will keep the BIM data alive

Jon Chown – Skanska Facilities Service
The second speaker was Jon Chown a director at Skanska. Similarly to Deborah, Jon looked at the challenges the industry faced. He listed these as:

• FM not being involved in the design process
• The quality and structure of information at handover
• A lack of digital data capture during the operation of existing buildings
• A lack of a structured post operations investigation (POI) survey data feeding back into the next design

The challenges are not a technology issue, but a quality of information issue. “Put rubbish in and get rubbish out”.

Jon’s suggestion was that the industry needs to firstly get the data right and then look at the technology. Where Skanska had seen successes over recent years were:

• Through creating standard Skanska-wide templates for information collection for all projects
• Through giving asset operational information back to the design teams
• By encouraging collaboration across all of the organisation
• By implementing standard processes

The presentation demonstrated that no Government mandate for BIM is necessarily needed for private sector work. The private sector will see the benefits and roll out a BIM process regardless. Reflecting on this personally, I think this is true, but having a common process defined centrally means that there is commonality across organisations and not one process and set of standards for organisation 1 and another for organisation 2.

Skanska is an organisation where BIM has been mandated by its board in Sweden on all projects world-wide. The biggest technology they currently see is a lack of interoperability between different software packages. However, “even with the best technology in the world, if you don’t have the information you have nothing”.

Jon’s final thoughts were:

• When an organisation adopts BIM they must accept that they are going to change their processes and information structures
• Sort out process and information first then get the technology to fit your requirements. BIM is 10% technology, 20% process and 70% people.

Chown - a familiar theme - "The most important word in BIM is Information"

Roundtable 1 – Peter Barker, BIM Academy

The roundtable discussions are a particularly engaging part of the Think BIM conferences. The first of these I attended was hosted by Peter Barker MD of BIM Academy.

Some of the notes from this roundtable included:

• A big problem, even when FM people are included early on, is that current procurement is about contractors delivering projects with clear objectives about reducing construction costs. This means the focus is all about capital expense with operational expense and client outcome suffering.
• The thoughts around the roundtable were that if some incentive was there in the procurement process to reward better design and a focus on client outcomes then this would help the “FM and BIM” issue. “The thinking behind GSL is great, but it needs some teeth”.
• The importance of structured information in a standardised format was mentioned again and again during the day. The standards and guidelines are complete, but what is missing is standard product templates, a unified classification system and the ability to use this construction language to define who is doing what and when.
• There was some interesting discussion as to how much information is needed for FM. Is it just the 20% of the federated BIM that is needed for weekly/monthly operation and maintenance? Or is it 100% of the information so that when the building is altered or refurbished then the work can happen efficiently and the existing spaces can retain their original performance?
• There was also some good discussion about how much information should be geometry? How much should live in property-sets? And how much should be in linked PDFs? Equally, when considering property-sets, how much of this should be in the design models (ArchiCAD/Revit) and how much in external databases?
  (All great debate – leave your comments at the bottom of this blog post if you have an opinion…)

Peter Barker leads the discussions

Roundtable 2 – Paul Connell, Open Data Institute

For my second roundtable I changed topic a little and sat in on a session on “Open Data” with Paul Connell and Matt Edgar.

The open data initiatives are now being used every day. Weather and travel apps use open data. When someone searches for cinema listings using Yahoo, Bing or Google then results are returned using common open documented data structures.

The thinking is that many more people benefit if data is open, there is more innovation and those organisations contributing to the open data initiatives receive more back than they put in.

Two good examples were discussed:

1. The Open Street Map initiative (see video below) and how it was used during the Haiti earthquake to mark up real-time information about access routes and the location of utilities. If this information was all controlled by an private organisation in a proprietary format then this would not have been possible.
2. The Metro timetables – an organisation such as this can put their data online and then the market (big software companies or hobbyist programmers) can compete to produce the best apps for this market. The Metro organisation benefits as their services receive free promotion and free functionality.

The UK Government’s freedom of information initiatives were particularly well received. In particular the push to provide PDF, XML, information at the data.gov.uk website. The more public information that is open and well-structured then the more information that will be at the public’s finger tips to ensure that the correct top-level decisions are made and justified.

With respect to construction, it comes back to what is the user requirement? What information do people need? This all ties into the level-2 BIM strategy, structure the information in a standard digital way, then start collecting it, then query it to answer the information requirements.

Duncan Reed and Deborah Rowland share a room for their respective round tables

Final thoughts

The day then finished with an international presentation on buildingSMART, COBie and Data Dictionaries followed by Pecha Kucha presentations. One of these in particular was particularly engaging with a live demo of taking physical information to digital through laser scanning.

If I was going to take three points out of the day, they’d be:

1. A client must not select a process that focuses purely on the capital cost and project duration at the expense of outcomes and operational costs.
2. The quality and value of structured information comes as priority number 1. Technology and software is there behind this to support.
3. When designing a building, the standardised information from the operational phases of previous buildings must be utilised.

Nice to see the NBS National BIM Report getting presented back to the UK from the USA by the international speaker

From physical to digital - a live demonstration of laser scanning

The participating countries in the buildingSMART Data Dictionary Pilot

It's not all work, work, work - beer and BBQ time to finish

thinkBIM – Spring Conference 2014

There was a super line-up of speakers at the first thinkBIM conference of 2014.

First up was Richard Ogden from Build Offsite. I’d first came into contact with Richard at the RIBA Build Offsite conference in 2011 where the Leadenhall Building and Circle Private Hospital case studies were presented (read this blog post here).

A few screenshots from Richard’s presentation are below. Building offsite and then assembling on the construction site is one proven method of bringing the cost of construction down. The UK Government 2025 Construction Strategy is demanding some big efficiency and environmental impact enhancements and this was discussed. The analogy with the auto-mobile industry was given. Volkswagen have a standardised process, 80% of their cars come from the same components – yet the customer still gets 2million+ possibilities in terms of customisation. Can the same be done for buildings to achieve the efficiency and environmental impact savings?

Ogden puts up the 2025 headline goals

How big is the parallel between assembling cars and assembling buildings?

Richard also mentioned that a lot of the thinking is not new - it's just the technology is enabling better things now. Check out the History Channel documentary on Building the Empire State Building on youtube.

Jaimie Johnson from Bryden Wood then gave a web presentation from St Petersburg Russia. Jaimie started by presenting a case study from some of their work for Anglian Water. They designed and digitally built modules on the computer. They then prototyped and built them in a factory. Then when they were sure they were correct they then formed a build-offsite-kit-of-parts for numerous Anglian Water facilities.

The St Petersburg project that Jaimie is currently working on is a $1.2bn new district. The largest level-2 BIM project ever (although the Qatar world cup may have something to say about that). Brydon Wood have followed the same principles as before on this project. They built a digital kit of parts using BIM methodology. The architects on the project now know to use these components and assemblies to design their buildings.

Jaimie reflected that they had tried to do the same on the Olympic athlete’s village project, but on reflection they did not have enough time to achieve this. How this current project is progressing is an excellent example of getting things right at the strategy stage and preparation+brief stage of a large project. Get things right at the start. Learn from previous projects.

Some headline statistics where that the modular buildings were 1/3 of the mass which produced a large saving in embodied carbon and 25% cheaper in terms of materials. The delivery time was also reduced by 8 months.

A selection of digital library objects that were developed in preparation for the design of the buildings

How the objects come together to form a floor of a building

Check out a PDF case study on this project so far at - http://www.buildoffsite.com/pdf/Case%20studies/casestudy_BrydenWood_Gutenborg.pdf

The thinkBIM conferences always have a set of excellent roundtables that the delegates can select from and take part in. It was pleasing to see that there was a full table for the session I was hosting on BIM and LODev. (See my previous post on BIM and Level of Development for a bit of background information on this).

There was a good consensus of opinions on BIM and LODev. To summarise:

• Having a set of LODev guidelines available is the ‘construction language’ that is needed for the collaborative project team to agree *who* is responsible for *what* and *when* information is needed to be delivered through the project.
• There is a vacuum here in the UK in terms of guidelines. Those working on BIM projects are using the American guidelines. These are considered the best in the world, however, it would be really good to have a set authored for UK construction. It would be even better if this was available in a digital online database and not just a PDF.
• It was clear that there was not a ‘one-size-fits-all’ for each system and product across all of the disciplines. Specific properties are required. Certain items need designed to a greater level of development earlier in the project.
• Equally, every project is different. A ‘built-offsite’ project with standard components has a greater level of development early on. A bespoke project may go well into the design stages before as much information emerges.
• Strong consistent project leadership is advantageous. A good project lead from concept stage onwards can really help.
• Many professions were represented at the round tables (engineers, design managers, architects, manufacturers, civils…) – it was felt that a consistent approach would help all in construction.
• Consistent classification is required and this must map to rules of measurement for costing.
• If the LODev guidelines are digital, this should lead to a certain amount of digital validation. A client can request a certain amount of information. They can then automatically check this has been provided.

Two sketches are shown below that were developed as part of the discussion in terms of the design (LOD) and information (LOI) part of the levels of development.

LODev round-table one sketches

LODev round-table two sketches

The final presentation was from SKANSKA’s Rob Francis. Rob gave an insight as to what SKANSKA have been doing in partnership with Arup and Forest City to develop Brooklyn in New York.

The joint venture put in $12million in developing a factory to build modular housing to form part of high rise developments in the Brooklyn dock’s area. 80% of effort offsite in the factory and then 20% on the construction (assembly) site. Building offsite was the only feasible option here as there was very little space available on the tight building area available.

The photographs below nicely illustrate the designs progressing, the sequencing in the factory and then the assemblies being lifted onto the structure. Also fascinating was the extremely tight standards and regulations that come from building high-rise in New York. The building must be able to stand 8 on the Richter Scale – 200 mile an hour hurricanes and have a progressive collapse sequence.

The build-offsite and assemble process

The factory layout

'Made in Brooklyn' - the assemblies get lifted onto the structure

Here is a video of a factory tour I found on youtube below and link to the SKANSKA presentation.

The next thinkBIM is July. Looking forward to it already.

thinkBIM Leeds – December 2013 Conference

Today was the final thinkBIM conference of the year. Held at the fantastic WSP offices in Leeds it was a fitting way to bring 2013 to a close in terms of UK BIM events (for me at least).

The keynote presentation was from David Philp, Head of BIM at Mace. David is also part of the HM Government core BIM team and he delivered a progress report on how UK industry is performing against the Government BIM strategy.

David started by expanding on the acronym BIM and said what the Government approach is all about is essentially ‘collaborative working in a digital environment’. The 2025 construction strategy published this year was summarised in a single slide looking at the headline targets. These targets are lower costs, faster delivery, lower emissions and improved exports through the government and industry working to the digital strategy. As the construction industry is 6.7% of GDP it is something that is given focus and it offers the opportunity for further growth if the industry can deliver against the strategy.

The UK construction industry in 2025

David also delivered a clear message in terms of education and development opportunities for young people who will seek a career in construction. He gave the example of a young child now purchasing an app on a tablet, designing with digital Lego, ordering the ‘parts’ and then constructing the design. This digital generation will come through into the construction industry and we must now innovate and adapt to meet the digital revolution.

Second to present was Robert Klaschka from Studio Klaschka. Robert looked at open data and the comparison between the software environment around the internet and BIM software. Developing for the internet, pretty much anything is possible and opportunities are there for all - innovation happens at an incredible pace. Due to the open standardised data structures, a (what was) small organisation like Google can create amazing applications and grow into one of the biggest organisations in the world. This is possible due to the open platform. Robert asked if the same can be said of construction software?

Two inspirational quotes from Tim Berners-Lee were used:

• “Customers need to be given control of their own data – not being tied into a certain manufacturer so that when there are problems they are always obliged to go back to them”
• “Data is a precious thing and will last longer than the systems themselves”

Robert also talked about the pace of technology advancements. For example, who would have thought that when taking photographs on their digital camera ten years ago that ten years later there would be software that digitally arranged those photographs based on face recognition technology?

Big data

Following Robert, there were a number of round-table discussion sessions that the delegates could choose to participate in.  These were:

• Ben Wallbank – ‘The responsible client’
• Me – ‘The new RIBA Plan of Work 2013 Toolbox’
• Adrian Malone – ‘Putting BIM to work – lessons learned from live projects’
• Gillian Smith – ‘Developing intelligent objects for the market’
• David Philp – ‘Digital collaborative working aids better supply chain efficiency and added client value’
• Robert Klaschka – ‘How data management is key to any design organisation’

An overview of the subject behind my round-table is at the link below:
- http://www.thenbs.com/topics/DesignSpecification/articles/the-riba-plan-of-work-2013-toolbox.asp
The associated RIBA Plan of Work guidance publication is at:
- http://www.ribabookshops.com/item/assembling-a-collaborative-project-team-practical-tools-including-multidisciplinary-schedules-of-services/80461/

When talking about the RIBA Plan of Work 2013 Toolbox there were many ideas as to how this could be taken onto the web as a digital application working off structured databases. The sort of questions and suggestions asked where as follows:

• Could the project roles and schedules of services feed into professional agreement documents?
• Could the design responsibility matrix also note those team members that were to be consulted in addition to those being given responsibility? (Sort of a RACI matrix for construction)
• Where aspects of the templates are not required on a project, could they strike out to see that an active decision had been taken?
• Could a permissions model be provided so that the project team members could write to and read from their relevant areas?
• Could the design items be grouped into work packages for projects where the contractor design manager comes on board?
• Could worked examples and suggested templates be provided for different sectors?

However, most of the discussion was around the level of detail/development/information for the design items and how this should be agreed and delivered. This was no surprise as it seems to be the hot topic of conversation at the moment in the BIM world. The UK seems to be a little behind the likes of USA and Australia on this (see my BIM and LOD blog post). So in preparation for this I had prepared some sketch proposals as to how LOD definitions and associated guidance could work together to provide the industry with a robust template.

Do we need LOD reference guidance for the UK?

The sketch above would have a definition that could be placed in the design responsibility matrix against an item at a particular stage. Then the project team could refer to the associated guidance to see precisely what this definition meant in terms of level of geometric information and specification information.
National BIM Library objects could potentially be used to develop the geometry guidelines and the NBS Create specification system could be the template for the key property sets and information.
This idea seemed to be warmly received, but at NBS we’ll have to do further user testing before progressing further.

The final part of the conference was the Pecha Kucha sessions and we had Rob Jackson, Paul Coates, Paul Wilkinson, Mark Stodgell and Peter Morton presenting. Pecha Kucha is exactly twenty Powerpoint Slides each progressing after twenty seconds.

First up was Rob Jackson from Bond Bryan Sheffield presenting from Las Vegas Nevada via Skype. Rob was at the Autodesk University conference – which admittedly  is (probably) not as glamorous as Leeds, but he didn’t seem overly sad not to be at thinkBIM.

Some pictures below from the Pecha Kuchas…

It's work, work, work for the guys in Las Vegas

Paul from InfraProject looks at the BIM ROI

Paul looks back at 1987

Mark from BIM Academy and the 'Information Manager' hat

BIMCampus - have placed 13 out of their first set of 15 students in jobs

Finally, the Leeds Brewery had provided a keg of beer again – so it was nice to finish the day with a couple of beers before getting on the train back to Durham again.

Well done to Claire and all of the thinkBIM team for another set of superb events throughout the year.

I recognise this WSP project

R Klaschka, not only a fan of the 'internet guy', but also the RIBA Plan of Work 2013 publications

thinkBIM - RIBA Plan of Work 2013 Toolbox

I'm looking forward to chairing another thinkBIM half-day conference in Leeds on Wednesday (4th December).

- http://ckehub.org/events/94 (there may be some remaining tickets left)

The line-up is tremendous as usual with contributors including Dave Philp from UK Government, Robert Klaschka from Studio Klaschka, Ben Wallbank openBIM, Adrian Malone Faithful+Gould amongst others.

I am running one of the round tables too - the overview of this is below. If anyone would like to comment on the questions that cannot attend the event - please feel free to comment below.

Overview for Round Table:
The new RIBA Plan of Work 2013 is now aligned with the unified UK construction industry stages agreed through the CIC. It also has a framework for the agreed information exchanges that are required on collaborative BIM projects.

This round table looks at the key tasks required to prepare for a successful BIM project including defining Project Roles, Design Responsibility and Schedule of Services.

Questions for Round Table:

• Is the new RIBA Plan of Work 2013 and the associated guidance and tools a good framework for collaborative BIM projects?
• How could the existing ‘Toolbox’ be enhanced with respect to BIM?
• What existing tools and processes do the members of the round table have in place within their practices?
• What additional guidance and tools are required to give the industry the support it needs with respect to BIM?

thinkBIM Conference – Operation and Maintenance

Today I chaired the thinkBIM half-day conference looking into BIM with respect to operation and maintenance. The blog post below is a little rough and ready - but just wanted to get it out this evening as I'm out and about for the rest of the week.

thinkBIM at WSP Leeds HQ

The WSP 10 truths about BIM publication

The keynote speakers were Deborah Rowland from UK Cabinet office who spoke from a Government point of view and also Reid Cunningham from BAM FM who gave an angle from the private sector.
Key points from Deborah included…

What a “hard landing” and a “soft landing” looks like

• GSL (Government Soft Landings) champion for Olympic Veldrome – Sir Chris Hoy. To make sure those that use the building are involved in the design.
• GSL is mandated along with BIM for 2016
• Maybe only 20% technology, 80% people and process.
• Essential, desirable and useful – vital statistics about the use of the building
• BIM Task Group website – all documentation on GSL at
  http://www.bimtaskgroup.org/gsl/
• BIM + GSL = The best outcome – need them both together
• Please take part in the survey:
  https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/GSL_GCS_Survey

Super PAM prioritising soft landing requirements

Reid then presented from a private sector practitioner…

• During a traditional project – the data does not flow through the timeline – from construction to FM and then survey after re-survey during a building’s use. Through BIM we can have a much smoother data transfer.
• Myth 1 – BIM is only for new facilities – at point of refurb/alteration the building can be surveyed and brought into 3D information environment.
• Myth 2 – COBie will solve all problems – however the data is out of date as soon as the data is created – and the software is not yet there to pull it into FM systems. But COBie as a principle is a very good principle.
• Myth 3 – design team can provide all COBie data – however, the sub-contractors on D+B jobs many times specify the product as installed and are in charge of the final COBie data
• Myth 4 – job is finished at handover “the BIM cliff” – no, the information must be kept up to date and this can ultimately replace O+M manuals
• Design model to be updated through construction process – then transfer to CAFM system and be kept up to date – this is the dream.
• Myth 5 – BIM is an IT project – The majority of BIM is in the people and process side and the IT enables us to do this better.
• “Project Robin” – a BAM project across design, construct and FM. They went from Revit to XML to FM system.
• Geometrics not necessarily critical to FM – we know where the window is – what about the information.
• FM information should be accessible on portable devices when standing next to the physical asset in the building.

Design, construction and FM from BAM

Following the keynote addresses the delegates split across five roundtables. These discussion break-outs looked at:

1. Government Soft Landings with Deborah
2. BIM for FM with Reid’s colleague from BAM Steve Wheller
3. BIM for Asset Management with the Amtech Group’s Gary Ross
4. BIM Legal with Philip Morrison from Shumans
5. "BIM future gazing" with Martin Brown from Fairsnape

The first session I attended was the BIM for Asset Management session with Gary Ross from Amtech.

• Imagine the drops as footballs – the data gets lost at every stage – visually how this should be is the football getting bigger then passed back to the start.
• Two challenges – getting humans involved with expertise early on and also agreeing the rules on data structures.
• What is important to FM? The design as a whole maybe not so much, but the specification linked with location data and quantities and expected life.
• The only way to transfer data from what software to another is through agreed open data schemas. This is the only way to transfer data now and to build importers so the tools of the future can read the legacy data.
• Does the industry have the skills? Will they naturally adapt? Compare a PA from the 1950s using typewriter and post letters compared with one of today using MS Office for meetings, tasks and mail merge. User friendly software is essential and well-structured information.
• Using FM data from in-use to find out what products work best and feed that information back into future jobs.

NBS Sarah to the left has the gentlemen furiously making notes during the round table session

The second session was a focus group that Paul Wilkinson and Martin Brown were running about new BIM technology ideas.

• Next generation of BIM thinking
• Drew Wiggett from NBS, Richard Vertigan 4projects, Kevin Lloyd Balfour Beatty contractor side, Chris Witte Knauf Insulation from manufacturer side
• The benefits to open well-documented data – allowing smaller players in the global industry to innovate and really work with the data – present at the conference that may fall into this category include kykloud, NBS, 4projects…
• What about big data? Not yet in the construction industry.
• How is performance verified? If a manufacturer claims a certain performance in a BIM object… then who verifies this?
• The biggest challenge is the state of the construction industry – client wanting drawings for planning at lowest fee, then these drawings being used for tender – then being novated to contractor and watching the costs getting squeezed and squeezed and arguments throughout.
• Has the technology level now gone above everyone’s head? The old guys know their construction stuff, the young ones can produce amazing 3d models – but we cannot afford to have a huge amount of staff on a project.
• Can information be shared over the cloud between practices?
• National BIM Library concept is that well-structured information can be made available for free for all of the industry – so that each individual practice does not to have to invest in content creation, protocol development and chasing manufacturers for information. If this is done centrally, a huge amount of money and time can be saved across the industry.
• Where money is to be made – this is where innovation will happen the fastest. Example quoted was the ability for Facebook to maximise advertising click-throughs through the algorithms around big-data on the cloud.
• “Open Buildings” and BREEAM project. OpenBuildings.com

The conference being beamed out for free over t'Interweb

Conference appreciation tweets coming from Mexico from BIM Girl

Following the roundtables the next speaker was Carol Hagen from Hagen Business Systems. Carol gave a US perspective on barriers and innovations related to construction digital and web-based applications related to BIM.
 https://twitter.com/carolhagen

Carol discussed…

• Augmented reality – taking daily site photos and having software that overlays this progress against the BIM used for planning.
• When are visuals too visual?  - If all you need is the paint spec, do you need it modelled. You want the information you need and not having obstacles put in your way.
• Interestingly Carol then introduced the BlueBeam product – this is one I blogged about a month or so ago… it’s a tidy project that integrates with BIM design tools and helps generate PDFs with embedded BIM data – RFI or AIs in particular would be improved with this technology
  http://constructioncode.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/specification-and-model-in-single-pdf.html
• 4 out of 60 delegates raised their hand to indicate they were using this product.

Carol presents from Arizona via web linkup

…and to finish off the day we had five short-sharp-20-slide-20-seconds. The brave presenters were:

• Graham Kelly from BIM Academy. Gave an overview of the 48 hours BIM challenges that they have worked on, Qatar, Singapore and Walker… a nice focus on some of the software development advances around COBie and IFC.
• Jacqueline Walpole from FSI (FM Solutions) Ltd. Talked about it so important to pull information from BIM platforms into FM systems. Working with Deborah at the Cabinet Office and big contractors like BAM is really exciting at the moment. Great FM tools already map data from HR and SAP systems – we can do this with BIM too as long as designs and contractors let us know the data format.
• Ed Bartlett from kykloud. Ed looked at how almost as much money is spent on repair and maintenance in the UK as in construction. This is why we need to take FM seriously. Where we are today is 2D documents getting rekeyed into FM systems. We need the IFC and COBie data to suck into FM systems – and this needs to be linked to costs and spec and manuals. Then Ed showed real life examples of it in action – not “can this happen?” but “this is happening”. “FM keeps BIM data alive”.
• James Austin from Autodesk – James looked at the social media, technology and big data trends. Is Minority Report technology now becoming a reality. When does something become intrusive?
• Rob Jackson from Bond Bryan – Rob reflected back on BIMShowLive looking at the conference with lots of great pictures. A little bit off me from my blog.
• Duncan Reed + Matt Owen from 4projects. Matt showed off the 4BIM innovations that shows the BIM via open standards IFC through a web browser. Then how this technology would be used for ThinkBIM members who will be able to logon to 4projects to see example models and data and training materials on BIM.

Always worth the wait - the Pecha Kucha's

Running slightly over time, it was then to nip out to the thinkBIM BBQ (sponsored by 4projects) for a quick drink and a burger before heading off home.

Think BIM 2012 - Video Clips

I've just noticed on Twitter that the video clips from the recent Think BIM 2012 half-day conference are now on YouTube.
- http://www.youtube.com/user/Be2camp

Not *fantastic* quality - but the audio can be heard OK. My two little bits embedded below...

1. Build Qatar Live 2012
A seven or eight minute summary of what we did through the 48 hours of Build Qatar Live:

2. Uniclass 2
I gave myself the 'fun' task of trying to do a Pecha Kucha 20 slides/20 seconds a slide presentation into why Uniclass 2 is necessary and the benefits it brings:

Also, @EEPaul's Flickr page has a few decent pictures from the day:
- http://www.flickr.com/photos/eepaul

Think BIM 2012 – Design and pre-construction

Throughout 2012  I have chaired the Think BIM half-day conferences at Leeds Met Uni. Today was another good one.

Old and new - Leeds Met ThinkBIM

RIBA Plan of Work 2013

First up was John Orrell from DLA Design Group who presented the changes to the RIBA Plan of Work. The new plan of work will be published at the end of the first quarter of 2013 after consultations with members earlier this year. John explained:

• The previously published green and BIM overlays to the plan of work will be incorporated into the new publication.
• There will be variable work streams for procurement, programme and planning to allow for the differing needs of members (from domestic extension to multi-million pound development).
• The stages will change from letters (Stage A, Stage B…) to numbers (Stage 0, Stage 1…) to align with the CIC and other institute plans.
• An interactive web version will accompany the hard copy publications [Note – our NBS R+D team are developing this currently – but I don’t think I can say too much about it yet].

There was also a presentation on the new plan of work at the recent RIBA guerrilla tactics event – see link below:

http://constructioncode.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/riba-guerrilla-tactics-bim-cpd.html

Round-table sessions
The room was then split into four round-table discussion sessions. These looked at the level of detail/development that would be expected at various stages along the plan of work. I decided to go to the two sessions that were most closely linked to NBS.

1. BIM level of detail at “developed design”
“Developed design” was interpreted as roughly RIBA Stage D or E. Twitter-er Rob Jackson from Bond Bryan Architects hosted the session. Some notes below:

• At this stage there would ideally be certainty about the spaces in the building and also the usage. From this the room dimensions, key performance data (heat/light) and important finishes would be developed.
• Lots of polygons would not be needed in the model. The layered objects would be made from concept materials and have a notional thickness. Any doors would be box like without the need for vision panels or any other geometric data.
• Where the rooms are fixed then work could be done in terms of designing the performance of the concept objects – maybe fire and acoustic performance.

Rob Jackson Bond Bryan demonstrates level of detail through beautiful sketches of walls

However, everyone accepted that clients do change their minds, so a balance had to be struck in terms of how much design work was done at this stage.

I then did a quick 10 minutes presentation on Build Qatar Live - but maybe this is a subject for a future blog post.

2. BIM level of detail at “technical design”

Duncan Reed from Balfour Beatty (also a twitter-chap) hosted the second session I attended. This was one stage short of “specialist design” so the general feeling was that pretty much everything was in place. The client and main contractor would probably want certainty on cost, quality and schedule. So enough information to accurately build and price the job would be necessary. A lot of “prelims” information would be complete – temporary work, health and safety reports, CDM. The building user guide (soft landings) would be well developed. I suggested to the group that by the stage there would be clarity on the products specified:

• Which had been specified by brand
• Which had been specified by performance and were to be “contractor’s choice” or “submittals”
• Which systems were performance specified and would get specialist design

Duncan Reed from Balfour Beatty runs the next session

Keynote speaker – Rob Charlton _Space Group

Rob Charlton Chief Exec of _Space Group was the keynote speaker. He explained how a changes in technologies had allowed them to diversify as an organisation to offer more services using an entrepreneurial spirit. Within _Space Group they are now involved in BIM consultancy, BIM object creation services, software development, off-site construction – all in addition to the more traditional architectural services.

_Space Group Rob Charlton - Keynote Speaker

The need for organisations to reinvent themselves has come from both the technological opportunities as a pull force and the push from the tough economic conditions. This has forced many practices to adapt and in some cases practices to disappear. And who is driving this change? Clearly there is the top down push from UK Government. But equally there is the “young professionals” coming through hungry for new more efficient ways of working.

There is a bubble in London at the moment that is forcing practices in the regions to look for work there more often. In terms of improved UK skills, this is also presenting opportunities overseas. Rob also mused how there is a lack of really talented BIM people around and this was creating a market for those with the skills – especially in and around London.

Looking at a construction project timeline and how digital information develops. A V-diagram was shown in which questions could analysed – “has the building been built as designed?” – “does the building operate as intended?”. Rob spoke of how buildings loosely could be split into two categories 1. A building with a clear function and shelf life (build it operate it no value at end-of-life) – maybe a supermarket or a petrol station, and 2. A high profile beautiful building that would be an investment and would actually increase in value in x numbers of years. This is the sort of business discussion that is essential at the outset of any project.

As a final note, Rob commented that the industry had now accepted that the “good old days” of BSF were not going to return. As an organisation you had to be leaner and had to work harder to be a success. And those that were adopting BIM were the ones that would succeed.

Pecha Kucha

Quick fire Pecha Kucha presentations finished off the day. I didn’t take many notes:

Beers donated by Leeds Brewery
- celebrating a great 2013 set of sessions

• Paul Coates talked about the Infra project and how structured standardised data was essential
• Paul Wilkinson and Martin Brown who work so hard through each event doing the social media promotion then had separate sessions on technology changes wider than just construction and how our world was changing because of it.

And finally, I did 20 slides on the changes to Uniclass – see the blog post below:

- http://constructioncode.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/uniclass-2.html

And then finally, (finally), it was time for some free beer kindly donated by Leeds Brewery. I did my best to help those attending to empty the keg of 76 pints – but I then had to make my excuses and get the train over to Manchester for the BSI event. (Blog post still to upload at time of writing).

Quick comment to finish to say a massive “well done” to Claire and Darryl for organising these events. Martin, Paul, Duncan and Rob also need a mention for helping making them so successful.