Computer Construction Awards 2013 - Team of the Year to NBS

Last night we won our first ever Construction Computing Award.

There was something a little bit special about this particular award as it was for our Research and Development team back at the office in Newcastle that I have been a part of since 1999.

CCA "Hammer" Team of the Year award celebrated by plenty of NBS on stage

The award ceremony last night was a fantastic evening. We didn’t invite any clients for this particular evening and just used it as a “thank you” to 10 or 11 of our colleagues for their hard work over recent years on our digital products. In the photograph above are boys and girls from our customer centre, HR, software development, QA, sales teams etc…

The NBS R+D Team itself is broken down into smaller teams of which I do my best to look after Interface Design, QA, Beta Testing and NBS Labs. Also photographed above is my colleague John Henderson who looks after the software development teams. Not at the event was our exec-director boss Richard Watson - but he monitored the good news closely on twitter as it unfolded.

The award

...and also to say, a big "well done" also to our #bimGeordie friends from kykloud (North Shields) and 4projects (Sunderland) on winning awards on the night too - great stuff. ...and thanks also to Pam for inviting me onto the Autodesk table as a guest - originally I wasn't attending the night so that was very much appreciated.

Update - thanks for all of the "likes" on linkedin!

And the official photograph...

Everyone all dressed up

Original "before the event" post below...

This evening is the Computer Computing Awards 2013 (The Hammers).

At NBS we are up for 5 awards. Fingers crossed we win at least one. If you are there - please come over and say hello.

1. One to Watch Company (NBS)
2. Team of the Year (NBS R+D Team)
3. BIM Product of the Year (NBS National BIM Library)
4. Product of the Year (NBS Create)
5. Company of the Year (NBS)

So far this year, our record at award ceremonies is:

1. Building Award - 1 nomination
2. CN Awards - 2 nominations - won both
3. Construction Excellence - award to team for BuildQatarLive
4. BE2Awards - 3 nominations - won one
5. CC Awards - 5 nominations - won team of the year!

Finchale Priory to Durham - Fantastic Cycle or Walking route

The powers that be at Durham have just re-surfaced the Brasside-to-Durham cycle path. A massive 'well-done' to whoever made this happen!

This puts the 7km from Finchale Priory to Durham Cathedral as a really top class UK walk (or short cycle).

Google Maps for Finchale Priory

View Larger Map

I'd advise parking at Finchale Priory if you have the car. If you arrive by train - then start at Durham and work your way up the opposite way. Some photographs below:

The 12th century Finchale Priory 

From the road from Finchale to Brasside you'll see the abandoned Brasside bunkers

Hidden away behind Frankland Prison a lake in the nature reserve

A little further off the beaten path is the grade 2 listed abandoned Belmont Viaduct

The majority of the route is on this fantastically re-surfaced cycle path

The view of the Wear and Cathedral from the grade 1 listed Prebends Bridge

And the 'not-too-shabby' Cathedral awaits -
compared in the same conversations as Prague and Avignon amongst Europe's finest

The NBS "What is BIM?" video being used around the world

Almost once a month I'll get an email from someone that saying they love the NBS "What is BIM?" video. This is especially nice when it is from overseas. Last week I got an email from a Ben Fox from Melbourne Australia who had embedded the video in one of his presentations to students. The original video is below and so is a video of Ben's lecture:

Original video...

And skip to 16:30 below to see the same video within Ben's lecture...

As always, a big shout out to Soluis and HOK London (Dave/Cara) for working with us on the fantastic video.

To download quality, free-to-use, BIM objects please see - http://www.nationalbimlibrary.com/

To embed our video, please credit us "This is a 'What is BIM?' video from the NBS National BIM Library" and show the video in its entirety.

NBS and Bentley AECOsim Building Designer Keynote Tools

Marc Thomas

A nice blog post below from Bentley's Marc Thomas. Marc is an Architect who has used Bentley tools since 1992. Earlier this year he joined the Bentley Technical Support Team specialising in AECOsim Building Designer.

The web link to Marc's post is below. I also pinch a few screenshots for this blog post.
http://communities.bentley.com/other/old_site_member_blogs/peer_blogs/b/marc_thomass_blog/archive/2013/10/24/aecosim-building-designer-keynote-tools.aspx

Select the keynote that is taken from the specification export

Format the annotation on the drawing generated from the model

NBS Create, NBS Building and NBS Scheduler all export to a file format suitable for keynoting in Bentley AECOsim Building Designer.

NBS Live - List of speakers now announced

The list of 80 expert speakers at our RIBA accredited double CPD points conference NBS Live is now published.

Delegate spaces can be booked for this event now at the URL http://www.thenbs.com/NBS-Live/

Peter Hansford

The conference's keynote speaker is Peter Hansford, Chief Construction Advisor to UK Government. This is an excellent opportunity to hear Peter's thoughts on where the construction industry stands today and the key challenges facing it.

The conference then splits into four main streams, delegates can choose a single stream or jump between seminars to get a flavour of many different topics. I am involved in running the BIM Room, more on that later - but first the other rooms.

1. The Design Room
The opening session looks at design, but beyond buildings, and in particular public space and interconnected communities. This session has speakers from Accenture, Argent and Farrells.

Brendan Kilpatrick

Following this there is a session on balancing cost management and design - how to get maximum value without compromising quality. Senior members of Gleeds, Faithful and Gould and Pascal and Watson will all present.

After lunch there are sessions on Housing with speakers from PRP Architects and Levitt Bernstein and then modern methods of construction and contemporary procurement with Edge Structures.

2. The Business and Practice Room
A chance to look at your practice from a business point of view. The first session is on winning work and

Rob Manning

communicating to clients. Speakers are from MarketingWorks and 3D Reid. This is followed by looking further than just the UK with a session on how to operate overseas. Speakers from Jones Lang LaSalle and AECOM discuss these opportunities.

In the afternoon BIS, BAM, Hoare Lea and Dyer take a practical look at the new RIBA Plan of Work 2013. Dale Sinclair the author of the new plan of work and associated documentation leads this session.

3. The Technical Room
The first session looks at what Part L means for design. We are delighted to have Ken Yeang, the founder of

Ken Yeang

Ken Yeang Design International as one of the main speakers for this session. Following this speakers from Bauman Lyons and Argent LLP will discuss the four "r's" Reuse, Refurb, Recycle and Retrofit.

Mott MacDonald and Aedas will then look at post-occupancy evaluation studies and evidence based design before the future of green buildings will be analysed by bere, John Robertson Architects and the Technology Strategy Board.

4. The BIM Room
...and last, but not least is the "BIM Room" - I've been going to many BIM conferences over the last 4-5 years, and I am confident to say that we have an amazing line up of speakers here from the world of BIM...

Session 1 - BIM for beginners

Casey Rutland

A selection of industry experts who know how to explain BIM to those new to the process...

• Steve Race - BIM regional ambassador for CIC and author of BIM Demystified
• Paul Woddy - White Frog and also one of the original Revit team from before Autodesk
• Casey Rutland - Associate Director Arup Associates
• Sarah Davidson - R+D Director at Gleeds and chair of East Midlands BIM Hub

Session 2 - BIM and sustainability

Elrond Burell

When it comes to BIM and Passivhaus, I have seen Elrond and James both present over the last couple of years and they have some excellent case studies to support their knowledge...

• Elrond Burrell - Associate at Architype
• James Anwyl - Director at Eurobuild

Session 3 - BIM in action

Malcolm Taylor

Case studies from notable projects - a chance to listen and question those involved...

• Matt Blackwell - Head of BIM, Costain
• Malcolm Taylor - Head of Technical Info, Crossrail
• Tahir Ahmad - BIM Specialist, Crossrail
• Chris Brown - Digital Engineer, Laing O'Rourke

Session 4 - BIM and the Government

Mervyn Richards

A fantastic selection from the people delivering the current Government and defining the plan to 2025.

• Dave Philp - Head of BIM at Mace Group and Head of Government BIM Implementation
• Neil Thompson - Principle BIM Integrator Balfour Beatty
• Nick Nisbet - buildingSMART international expert - one of the team that defined COBie
• Rachael Park - Cost Consultant Mace and BIM 2050 group member
• Tom Loader - BIM Director Balfour Beatty
• Mervyn Richards - Main author of BS 1192:2007 and PAS 1192-2 - the standards that define the BIM process

...and in addition to all of this, NBS experts from key topic areas such as sustainability, contracts and law, building regulations and BIM will all be present to facilitate with the discussions and help run the sessions.

So if you want a fantastic day of learning and a chance to network with a number of though-leaders in UK construction then book your ticket at the website below:
- http://www.thenbs.com/NBS-Live/

NBS plug-in for Vectorworks 2014

We are absolutely delighted to have another plug-in for a leading international BIM design tool now released.

At the Vectorworks 2014 road shows over recent weeks the NBS Annotator Link tool has been getting some great feedback. We now have free tools available for three of the leading BIM design tools (ArchiCAD, Revit and Vectorworks) and this is super news for users of the NBS Domestic, NBS Scheduler, NBS Building and NBS Create specification systems.

The software development was a joint effort from the R+D team at NBS that developed the NBS API and then the Vectorworks UK team that did "the magic" at their end to join both packages together. Some screenshots below...

Launched at the Vectorworks 2014 road shows

The Annotator window allows the user to pick from clauses in the project specification

An integrated NBS toolbar within Vectorworks

The specification may be launched from within Vectorworks and then modified

The user is then notified of any modified or removed annotations

The annotations on the drawings are then updated from the modified specification without the need for manual typing

NBS subscribers can access the technical guidance and links to standards and regulations

Technical information from over 20,000 construction products may be browsed from within Vectorworks

Many thanks to Martyn from Vectorworks for all of his support with both our NBS National BIM Library developments and also now for making this plug-in happen. Vectorworks users that would like this plug-in should go through their normal Vectorworks support channels.

The original NBS Specification Manager promotional video

Rewind back to Autumn 1990...

...the first bit of construction software written for the UK market on Microsoft Windows 3.0* was released. BDS Software part of Newcastle University and owned by Professor Steve Lockley wrote NBS Specification Manager for NBS Services... and that is the reason the NBS Research and Development team is here today. Some screenshots and a retro video below...

The famous Specification Manager juggler splash screen

A drawing board - not a computer in sight!

Who needs t'interweb when you can have thousands of books on book shelves across the office?

Good old "F30" used for years in NBS demo videos

Accompanied by a suitably futuristic purple light is... a computer!

Write your spec to the left - guidance and standards to the right - what's changed?

Manufacturer information from Celotex
(23 years later, still a valued customer of ours and now taking National BIM Library)

Export the data to COBie? I don't think so - printer paper with holes in will do

Watch the video below...

For more memories on our dedicated '40 years of NBS' page see:
- http://www.thenbs.com/NBS40/

Also, anyone want to guess the architectural practice? Add your comments below.

* Prof Lockley promises me that this was the case.

Specifying sanitaryware with Twyford Bathrooms SpecMaster

At NBS we have just finished delivering the SpecMaster on-line specification system for Twyford Bathrooms:

- https://www.SpecMasterOnline.com

I include a few screenshots below to introduce what we believe is probably one of the most advanced specification systems in the world that works entirely through a web browser.
(Click on the images below to see them a little larger).

Fig 1 shows that the web browser is split into three areas. The left hand-side is a library of content from Twyford Bathrooms. The user may search or browse through the items - it possible to see previews of the products, indication of price and also filter results to quickly find the assembly that will be specified. The central area of the screen is the project specification. To the right is a list of the spaces in the building. The specified assemblies are associated with the spaces.

Fig 1 - Select your sanitaryware from the Twyford Bathrooms library

When a user specifies an assembly they are led through the product specification decisions in a simple wizard. Only compatible products are offered as options - this results in a robust specification where the correct products are specified to work with the parent assembly. For example, only the compatible brassware is shown for a specific bath assembly in Fig 2 below.

Fig 2 - Configure the specification linking child products to the parent assembly

Fig 3 shows how easy it is to associate the assemblies with a space. This can be done through the context sensitive options or by simply dragging and dropping.

Fig 3 - Associate the assemblies to the spaces within your building

Fig 4 below shows that it is not just the specification that is built into the data model, but also quantities. Against each item specified in a room type, the user may add the quantity. This allows a quantified list of products to be generated, either for pricing by the contractor or to work directly with Twyford Bathrooms.

Fig 4 - Specify the quantities in each type of space

In terms of publishing information from the data model, the user may choose to publish to PDF, Word or Excel. They may classify the information by traditional CAWS or Uniclass 2. In terms of the information structure a number of options are available including "traditional NBS specification" and "room based specifications with quantities".

Fig 5 - Many different publishing options for the specification, space and quantity information

Fig 6 shows an example PDF output with table of contents, page numbers and headers + footers.

Fig 6 - A professional looking PDF "print out"

...and finally, our R+D team at NBS have aligned the database structure so that output from the Twyford Bathrooms specification system can be imported into NBS Create should it be desired. Fig 7 below shows the flow of data from one system to another.

Fig 7 - It's even possible to import the content into NBS Create

It is a completely free system to use and it's very easy to register and sign up - please take the time to check it out at:
- https://www.SpecMasterOnline.com

For a case study on the story behind this development please see our website:
- http://www.thenbs.com/topics/DesignSpecification/articles/twyford-bathrooms-specmaster-case-study.asp