Today I completed the 14th of the 14 parkrun's that surround Durham. A quick blog post to say what an absolutely amazing initiative I think parkrun is.
- http://www.parkrun.org.uk/
It's completely free, it's run by volunteers in beautiful open spaces around the country and it has a great sense of community whether you are a top club athlete or a six year old wanting to jog/walk around a 5km route with their grandparent.
All fourteen of the parkruns surrounding Durham - Done
After completing the 14th of these local runs, I though I'd look back at my phone for photographs...
Whitley Bay in the rain - keeping pace with my little boy
Christmas Eve - 9am - Chester le Street
The National Trust owned Gibside Hall near Rowlands Gill
The hottest of June mornings in Costa-del-Hartlepool
Almost as hot in South Shields the following week
Newcastle Town Moor and the iconic Wylam Brewery
Sunny Waaaaalllllsend
Saltwell Park Gateshead
My hometown course in Durham running just behind my little girl
...and putting a bit back through volunteering once or twice
The volunteers get ready on at Durham for the junior parkrun
34 runs now across 18 different locations
In the rain at Prudhoe
So what is next? I think I may now need to spread the net and try out the runs at Druridge Bay further north and the likes of Northallerton further south.
So, if you like sport or just want to keep fit - I strongly recommend you try out a parkrun near you:
One of the most debated topics at BIM conferences and on social media is around what building product manufacturers need to do to take advantage of digital opportunities.
Much of this debate is around 'do manufacturers need objects?' or 'do they just need information feeds?'.
I contributed an opinion piece on this topic for our 'What specifiers want' report that looks at how manufacturer information used to be delivered to specifiers by librarians and through physical product directories and what has changed in the last 4-5 years.
The article looks at manufacturer content within models, but also the value of streaming well structured data straight into specifications (screenshot below), linked technical literature and the value of marketing through delivering knowledge to support construction professionals with their CPD. The value of face-to-face and relationship building is still there in a digital world!
I've just been at Autodesk University London for two days. Almost 1,400 delegates at the fantastic (but *slightly* warm) Tobacco Docks venue.
A collection of the best bits from the two days below (told mainly through photographs and video) ;)
Starting with the keynote session on Day One, I think Martha Tsigkari from Foster and Partners stole the show. A fantastic passionate presentation on how cutting edge technology and inspirational design come together to produce an amazing built environment. The story from the Gherkin to Mexico Airport was told and it was a really good one.
Martha F+P
If you have the time, it's worth spending ten minutes watching the story behind the airport design...
Machine learning, the cloud and big data was maybe the theme of day one. And every AI presentation needs the Terminator (it's the rules!)...
The machines are coming!
Less scary than the Terminator (I think) is this machine-learning-paintball-machine that can er... paint the Mona Lisa in 80 milliseconds :)
Back to reality (and more relevant to AEC) is the functionality that nobody knows about on your iPhone that categorises you photographs by recognising the objects in them! Try searching for 'dog' or 'football' or 'beer' or 'skyscraper' or 'bridge' or 'sun' on your phone now...
Automatic image recognition
What are practical applications of this? There was a presentation showing how health and safety issues can be captured in real time through video recognition - 'no hard hat' - 'no high vis jacket'. How machines can design the strongest structure with the least material through cloud iterations. How machines could potentially help predict the most likely specification decisions based on the parameters that are entered... some mind blowing things.
Back to the here and now, we had the pleasure to launch the public beta of our new NBS Online Viewer. This has been a collaboration between ourselves and Autodesk that allows model and specifications to be viewed in the cloud. It was fantastic to be on Stage One presenting to a big crowd and also to have Brian Roepke from Autodesk and Don Kelman from BDP as part of the same joint presentation.
Always great to present to a big audience
Fantastic to have Don from BDP Glasgow on stage giving the customer story
Please check out our BDP case study video below...
For the NBS Online Viewer we used components from the Autodesk Forge toolset. Later in the day Adam Nagy from the Forge team presented showing some sample code and demonstrating live prototypes on the stage.
Live software demos
I wonder what these guys thought would happen over the next 35 years?
Throughout both days we had two stands within the Exhibition Hall. We demonstrated the viewer at the Forge Stand and also had a main NBS stand to showcase the full NBS BIM workflow.
Live software demonstrations
Discussions around the NBS stand
The day two keynote looked at the latest developments in the Autodesk product range from all of their sectors. The themes that go across the industry include the need to
Change from a paper world to a digital world
Connect data from different software solutions together
Utilise the power of the cloud and big data to be able to design, build and monitor use more effectively.
A simpler plan of work - design it, make it, use it
Sarah Hodges looking at an industry that relies on paper
There were also sessions on the creative software used to produce the special effects in movies.
- http://www.ilm.com/vfx/rogue-one/
I'm one with the Force and the Force is with me
Then moving back to the AEC sector I learnt a little more about Smart Motorways and how CH2M are managing and delivering information models on these projects.
I was on again on day two (last session of the conference) where I looked at some example BIM projects where information coordination was being seen. In our NBS National BIM Survey we ask the question about BIM adoption, but how do people judge whether they actually are? Is modelling in 3D to generate drawings, schedules and detect clashes enough?
#bimemojis
A smaller project (when compared to a railway station!) case study below:
Fantastic to see so many people staying right to the very end to listen to my second talk
So an intense, inspiring, very worthwhile couple of days. Really fantastic to meet up with so many people. For more information on how NBS can help with your BIM adoptions please check out the website below:
- theNBS.com/services/bim-projects
A little cooler, quieter and with some very beautiful spaces down on the lower floor
I've known for sometime that it is possible to book a free visit slot at the Sky Garden at the top of 20 Fenchurch Street (The Walkie Talkie) London.
- https://skygarden.london/plan-your-visit
So I used the opportunity before the the Autodesk University London set up afternoon to do a bit of lunchtime work there.
Photographs below...
The Walkie Talkie
The initial view
The writing on the glass indicates the view points
The contrast of old vs new
The fantastic space at the top
Natural ventillation combined with artificial watering provides the environment for the garden
Quiet at the back for those wanting a view of the Shard and the Gherkin
A couple of new case studies have been published on our website that feature aspects of how NBS can be used on BIM projects.
Videos are embedded below, please click the links to go to the full case study.
1. Primary School
This is one of a number of school projects from Manchester City Council following their move as a client to standardise their BIM process. This looks at the design stages of the project following the production of a standardised digital plan of work.
All members of the project team used NBS to produce a standardised set of design information.
2. Historic building refurbishment
This is the story of our very own building project in city centre Newcastle. This looks at the information flow through the project timeline from the original laser scan of the existing historic building.
Each of the submitted classes can be vieweed in advance. It is also possible to add your votes to the classes the look of interest.
I submitted a class this year - if successful I'll be talking about the UK Level 2 BIM methodology and also (with it being a tech conference) looking at how we're using the Forge technology to view Revit/IFC files in the cloud alongside the specification.
I'm happy to list other classes submitted from the #UKBIMCrew - drop me a DM on twitter if you want yours added below... (snip)
Update 23rd June 2017 Really pleased that my class has been accepted. Also, great to have such a fantastic co-presenter joining me. Jim Quanci from the Autodesk Forge team :)
As always, it is a mix of analysis of the results of the survey and also a number of articles looking at BIM today.
The articles include the latest updates from key UK led initiatives into BIM that the rest of the world are looking to. These include features on the UK Government's Digital Built Britain programme from Mark Bew, the standards supporting UK BIM from BSI and how the UK are working with others across Europe as part of the EU BIM Task Group.
Fig 1 - How the UK is now pushing on with the ISO 19650 standards
Fig 2 - The concept diagram for public sector BIM strategy
As always, Adrian Malleson from NBS gives insight into the results of the survey. I have taken a few screen captures from it below to highlight one or two areas of interest.
The first chart below is interesting as it shows the opinions on where BIM will deliver against the main Government objectives. It can be seen that there is confidence on reducing cost and programme time. However, there is more sceptism around whether it will enable the industry to cut its environmental impact or have a positive impact on the industry's trade gap.
As this is the seventh survey, we can do view national trends over a number of years. The key question each year is around awareness of BIM. It can be seen below that this has been a reasonably steady upward trend since 2011.
Another question asked each year is around BIM maturity. This is asked once in terms of 'what level of BIM are you working to?' and then 'which standards do you use?'. Personally, I prefer the question around the standards as this gives better insight.
As expected, the 1192 standards are the most highly adopted. However, market adoption is still well short of 50% here. This suggests that although 62% of the industry may have 'adopted BIM' in terms of utilising 3D modelling tools and performing clash detection etc... we are still a long way from saying that the UK industry is working at 'level 2 BIM'.
The chart below is particularly interesting in that more than two thirds of the industry believe that 'clients don't understand the benefits of BIM'. I think this is a real opportunities for construction professionals to educate and support their clients.
The last chart to take a look at in this blog post is how construction professionals believe that emerging technologies will influence the industry. It's no surprise to see that big data and the cloud are leading the way in terms of having the biggest likely influence. Robotics on the construction site (or offsite) and machine learning have a little more sceptism attached.
Within the report we also take an opportunity to reflect on a case study of a project where all members of the project team are using NBS BIM solutions. Check this out in the video below or at our website:
- www.thenbs.com/case-studies/
Download your copy (and sign up for our newsletter) today:
Our Market Research, Analysis and Forecasting regularly survey the industry to help inform our product developments. In recent years we have shared this knowledge and wrapped it up with insightful articles and opinions in the form of our reports.
In May 2017, two of these reports are being published pretty much at the same time (you wait ages for a bus and two come at once!).
The first of these is our Specification Report - the BIM Report will follow shortly.
Interesting to see that the specification may be modified, at least on some projects, at each stage of the plan of work. In the majority of cases, it is a document that develops at least through the developed design stage and the technical design stage. In a third of all projects it continues to be updated throughout the construction stage inline with any variations. So this suggests that industry attitudes to writing specifications at the last minute before to complete a tender package are perhaps changing.
The importance of writing tight performance specifications to set out the requirements for contractor-led projects or projects with elements of contractor design is clear. Also good to see (I think) that 42% disagree that specification writing is a chore :)
The main causes of difficulty are interesting. Looking at the main cause of difficulty - substitution of product decisions by the contractor is the biggest cause for concern. The article by Mark Taylor from Allies and Morrison reflects on this. Badly coordinated information in the drawings and specifications is the second biggest difficulty. I wasn't wanting to do much of a plug for NBS solutions in this blog post - but we do have plug-ins for a number of design tools that help here and are free for NBS users.
Amogst the articles and comment pieces we hear from specifiers and also manufacturers. It is worth remembering that when specifiying manufacturer products, most leading manufacturers have technical support departments who really understand their subject matter and are there to be a member of your project team.
Finally, there is a number of pages at the end of the report introducing some of the NBS Technical Team. These are the construction professionals who have spent years working as specifiers on real life project and have since joined NBS to research, author and maintain the template clauses and guidance that is in our products...
