AIA Convention 2016

I spent a little time this week attending the American Institute of Architects (AIA) Convention in Philadelphia USA.

It was fascinating being a part of the 10,000 person event which had hundreds of presentations and hundreds of exhibitors in the historic city of Philadelphia.

The opening keynote was set in a huge auditorium on a circular stage with the delegates positioned on all sides. Past presidents of the AIA were thanked, the best places to visit in Philadelphia were mentioned and credit was given to a number of architects who had worked on significant projects in the last year.

The award for the firm of the year went to LMN Architects from Seattle. Their video giving an overview of their practice is below...

The opening event was very much a celebration of the architectural profession - turning the ordinary into the extraordinary. The AIA talked about their digital transformation strategy with new website and social media campaigns. Their short film below has also been showing on American TV promoting the benefits of architecture...

The opening keynote speaker is traditionally one from outside the industry. This year it was the actress Julia Louis Dreyfus who is best known for her roles on Seinfeld and Veep. As I am a huge fan of Veep it was pretty good to listen to her speak first hand.

That's like using a croissant as a...

The exhibition hall at the conference was huge. It was good to see some of the familiar business from the UK were out at the event promoting their products and services. The photo below shows the stand from the AIA's equivalent from across the Atlantic the RIBA. Many of the architects in the USA are actually members of the RIBA too. When speaking to them it was good to hear that they appreciated reading the RIBA Journal to keep updated with the activity in the UK.

The RIBA Enterprises delegation does their bit on the RIBA exhibition stand

Amongst the other presentations over the day, as always it was good to listen to Autodesk talk about their future vision. In particular, Angi Izzi talked about how technology was helping architects become more efficient and offer more to clients. The video below is from Angi presenting a few months before the AIA Convention...

Another notable presentation was from Brian Skirpac from Canon Design. I had met Brian at the European BIM Summit earlier in the year so it was good to have the chance to hear him present for an hour. Many of the things we are trying to introduce into the UK such as responding to employer's information requirements and putting together a BIM execution plan were covered by Brian.

Brian Skripac talks LOD as part of a BIM at planning process 

We also had lots of very interesting meetings with organisations like ourselves where we shared what activities we were focusing on. It was nice to see some real interest and nice compliments in the NBS BIM Toolkit and the other NBS products and services. For more information on the BIM Toolkit please watch the short video below...

It's hard to do justice to all of the things that were on in a single blog post. But it was a great few days in the USA...

Welcome to the USA

An English gents beats the Americans at their own game and wins the IPAD 2 at the convention basketball competition ;)

Newcastle Castle

I've lived near to Newcastle all of my life and I have never been the actual castle before. ...until last weekend.

Some photographs below...

Cut away sketch of how the castle originally looked

Lovely ceiling on the entrance hall

1000 year old door still looking in decent shape

Cross bow as seen on telly used by Mr T Lannister

A criss-cross of staircases and doorways

They built a railway line right through the middle of the keep and the gate house!

Looking north west you see our NBS building and also St James (click for bigger picture)

Zoomed in

Looking south east you see the Millennium Bridge, The Baltic, The Sage and the Tyne Bridge  (click for bigger picture)

The Great Hall from above

The logos of the construction companies who built the castle

Looks like 'project stair case' ran out of money before completion

A 30 meter well inside the castle

If you are interested in visiting or knowing more about the history please see the links below...

• Official Newcastle Castle tourism page
• The Wikipedia page
• A ten facts article from the Chronicle paper
• Another related blog post from me with a few photographs

RIBA Enterprises

When out and about I'm often asked about the structure of NBS as a business.

Well we've just updated the website now of our parent company RIBA Enterprises to simply explain what we do and how the company is split.

Please visit the new website - ribaenterprises.com

...and here are some screenshots below...

We are the knowledge management business of the RIBA - and we use two brands

A list of the main products and services under the NBS brand and those under the RIBA brand

More information on NBS and a RIBA services with hyperlinks through to the main websites

We started the year before I was born in 1973

We're always on the look out for great people to come and join us

...and we have colleagues in Newcastle upon Tyne, London and on the road around the country

Visit the new website at ribaenterprises.com

Introduction to the principles of BIM

A nice little cartoon video explaining the open BIM principles through the project timeline from buildingSMART international. Worth a watch...

It's interesting contrasting this vision with how far we have come on the UK BIM journey. We're definitely on the same page, just not quite as far along as these buildingSMART open BIM principles (yet).

BIM Level-2 in the UK...

• Data format = COBie not yet IFC
• Process = Digital plan of work not yet IDM
• Terminology = Data templates not yet IFD/bSDD

Maybe an in-depth look at BIM Level-2 vs buildingSMART vision is a good blog post for the future?

Thanks to my colleague Ian Chapman for the video spot.

NBS National BIM Report 2016

Way back in 2011, when the UK Government's BIM strategy was just starting to be communicated, we decided to do a BIM survey and analyse the findings. Five years later in 2016, we are proud to have just published our sixth report. Looking through all six tells the story of the journey the UK has been through so far.

This blog post contrasts some of the 2016 results with the 2011 results to see some big changes in the industry.

Five years - a long time in BIM

BIM awareness from almost half of the industry never having heard of it being the hot topic in the industry

The primary tool for drawings and schedules production - the fall of AutoCAD - the rise of Revit, ArchiCAD and Vectorworks
(click for bigger picture)

In terms of key charts from the 2016 survey - it is slightly disappointing to see relatively low figures in terms of the use of the BIM Level-2 standards. However, it is expected that these figures will now have an upwards trend in future years.

Will one in three organisations be using PAS 1192-2 this time next year?

One fantastic chart to look at was the one below which shows that two out of three construction professionals is likely to look to NBS for information about BIM. As expected, another big source of information are colleagues and contacts at other organisations.

NBS - A trusted source of information on BIM

As with previous years, in addition to the findings, there are plenty of fascinating and informative articles and comment pieces within the report. Working with Adrian who puts this report together, I source this content through bumping into some really knowledgeable people when out and about with work. Two or three of these are pictured below...

The BIM Task Group's Adam Matthews discusses the EU BIM Task Group

Andrew Moulds from Mott MacDonald discusses the challenges in creating a BIM library
(and the NBS BIM object standard)

...and an article from Stefan Mordue NBS, explaining BIM through the Periodic Table of BIM

So - another super report this year - click below to go to the NBS website and download for free...
- https://www.thenbs.com/knowledge/national-bim-report-2016

...and if you want to read the 2011 one that's there too.

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

Construction News Awards - Twenty years old

This years Construction News Awards is the 20th celebrating the best in UK construction.

As NBS has been short-listed for the BIM Excellence award and was kindly sent a birthday cake by Construction News.

A celebration cake through the post

Construction News also put down the challenge to illustrate changes in the last 20 years at your organisation...

20 years of Construction News

Lots has changed at NBS since 1996. We were digital of course back in 1996 (well at least at the start of our digital journey with floppy disks etc...). But it's fair to say that our digital journey has been pretty significant over that time period...

How NBS has changed since the first CN Awards in 1996

I hadn't quite joined NBS in 1996, I do have happy memories of this though.

Official UK BIM Level-2 Website Live

Developed by BSI for BIS

In the May 2011 UK Government Construction Strategy it was stated that 'Government will require fully collaborative 3D BIM (with all project and asset information, documentation and data being electronic) as a minimum by 2016. '

Five years on - the official BIM Level-2 web hub has now been launched. It is introduced as follows:
'Welcome to the new BIM Level 2 website where you will find the best practice standards developed to help Government and the construction industry achieve value and efficiencies throughout construction projects, from initial briefing to handover.'

BIM-Level2.org

The website is a mixture of live content and content that is coming soon...

Currently live:

• A page giving some background
• A page that allows visitors to freely download the best practice standards that have been developed to define level-2 BIM in the UK

Coming soon:
Greyed out hyperlinks give an indication to the pages that are being worked on:

• Guidance - guidance pages for those working in the UK and international visitors wanting to know more about the UK's approach. This area of the site will cover more on the background, the processes and tools, operational and capital delivery and data management.
• Tools - (presumably) tools that will help users work to BIM Level 2
• Events, Glossary of terms, FAQS and the ability to feedback

So - great to see a single portal to detail exactly what UK BIM Level-2 is all about. One for the Internet bookmarks...
- http://bim-level2.org/