Friday fun post - Name the films

Absolutely 0% to do with anything construction industry, but it is a Friday...

...Mrs H and I have been lumped with doing a pub quiz for the local PTA. As a picture round I remembered a fantastic film picture quiz I saw earlier in the year at the very talented www.StephenWildish.co.uk website.

Here it is below, 78 points up for grabs.

Clue: T=Taxi Driver

Clue: G=Ghostbusters

Clue: W=Wayne's World

More fantastic stuff (and most safe for work) at www.StephenWildish.co.uk

CIBSE Building Services Conference - BIM and Engineering Services

Yesterday I was part of a panel discussion at the CIBSE Building Services Conference on BIM and service engineering. At NBS we'd recently had a user focus group on the same subject so I’d put some thoughts together in advance.

London Olympia from the outside

There were all of the usual BIM discussions such as “who benefits most from BIM?”, “should the private sector clients follow in the Government’s footsteps?” and “What are the barriers to BIM adoption?”. But as this was a services event I personally thought the most interesting question was “what does BIM mean from a service engineering point of view?”. Some thoughts below:

1. Developing the level of detail
The level of detail surrounding the objects develops slowly throughout a project. Objects such as boilers, chillers, air handling units and tanks need generic place holders with approximate basic geometry. This geometry must include not only the physical space – but also the maintenance regions required around the object. As the design progresses then the generic performance properties need to be completed on the objects in the model. And then finally this information should be developed to a stage where outputs for fabrication, installation and operation are all possible.

2. Concentrate on the information
An international BIM design package is very unlikely to include all of the analysis tools required to meet the needs of a local market (this is clearly true for structural and architectural software as well as engineering software). Information must flow from one software package to the next without the need for the user to re-key data. If you have to rekey information... is it really a true BIM process? Common schemas for engineering systems and products for the UK market need agreed – and this should respect the international open data formats such as IFC and gbXML.

3. Collaboration

Speaking before the event with @IanChapmanNBS helped me prepare. Ian is Head of the NBS Technical Team and is also a CIBSE member with ten years of experience in practice. He commented that for many years architects and engineers have partnered to provide integrated services to clients. However, working digitally on shared models will bring even more efficiencies and success. At an early stage the disciplines can integrate their models to show concept designs to clients – and these concept designs can combine visual intent from the architects and an indication of the performance of the building to the occupiers. By collaborating early, this information can continue to grow to provide the best outcome to the client and the future occupiers.

London Olympia from the inside

Example performance specification in NBS Create

The screenshot above shows that across mechanical, electrical, structural, landscape and architecture - NBS Create has around 8,000 system and product schemas. We are currently integrating this information with our National BIM Library objects.

openBIM COBie Trial

A few months ago we met with the openBIM Network and they informed us that seven or eight tier-one contractors were interested in testing the UK market's ability with respect to generating COBie information. In particular, they wanted to know whether IFC could possibly help out with this process.

After agreeing the scope, the openBIM Network were happy to then let our NBS Market Research team run the trial.

An introduction to the trial is at the web article below:
- http://www.thenbs.com/topics/BIM/articles/nbsOpenBIMCOBieTrial.asp

The illustration below shows the work flow that was tested. As I tweeted earlier today - many thanks again to @davewlight and @CaraDiPierro for the original model that was used throughout the test. It has been truly fascinating to see how you can start in one design package ( in this case Autodesk Revit) and then through IFC take this information into so many other packages (ArchiCAD, Vectorworks, Solibri etc...).

From design package -> to IFC -> to COBie datasets

Keep an eye out on this blog and theNBS.com/BIM for more information. I will also be at the ICE BIM conference and will cover some of this in my presentation.

Presentation from BIM Summit Qatar

A couple of weeks since the BIM Summit Qatar now. My blog posts mainly covered what others were speaking about. My presentation is now on the international BIM Journal website in the form of a web article. Those that are interested may visit the website below:
- http://www.bimjournal.com/2012/10/the-importance-of-the-i-in-bim/

Article on BIMJournal.com

My blog posts from the conference are below:

1. Day one - Preview of the event
2. Day two - Photographs from Qatar
3. Day three - Tahir Sharif, Deke Smith and Phil Bernstein
4. Day four - Mott Macdonald, Hilson Moran and NBS

Thank you

I notice that LinkedIn now has just released a feature where once you land on someone's page you can quickly click on their skills and endorse them.

Nice to see that one or two people have clicked on my page - thank you very much :)

- http://uk.linkedin.com/in/stephenhamil

Ten Years

Today is ten years since the Construction Informatics Research Centre [2] moved from Newcastle University down to be a part of RIBA Enterprises (RIBAE). As a research centre we had worked with RIBAE to develop the software for their NBS products (most notably SpecMan, Product Selector Plus and CIS). This move however brought us into the RIBAE family.

It's been a busy ten years. A few nostalgic bits and bobs below:

We did a little Flash movie to mark our exit

The newly formed "NBS Informatics" team - 12 still here - 4 up at BIM Academy

"When I grow up I want to be NBS Create"

Good old "F10" - in every design

How the CDs of the software releases were packaged up

A pool table in the office for good behaviour 

It has been known for a duck to make it into a product or two as an Easter Egg

The old building

BIM Summit Qatar - Day Four

The conference started today with Mott Macdonald's Derek Murray chairing. Derek's introduced two case studies from the UK of really complex projects where BIM was being used to demonstrate real day-to-day gains. The first was from Mott Macdonald with Andy Smith and Rob Dickson really giving the inside story on the London Victoria Underground Station project. One thing they stressed as being of critical importance was the importance of a strong BIM execution plan. The picture below summarises what is in a typical MM plan...

Fig 1 - What is covered in the BIM Execution Plan

The slide below shows the size of the task in keeping the stakeholders happy on a project. As the construction is beneath existing buildings - there is a lot that needs done to ensure everything goes smoothly.

Fig 2 - Don't disrupt the Victoria Palace Theatre where Billy Elliott plays each evening!

One interesting concept that was discussed was the "Corridor of BIM potential". This was a number of tasks that had to be agreed at the start. The complexity grew with the further along the "Corridor of BIM potential" you walked. The first item was 3D CAD and then it developed through to delivering a digital model to manage the asset.

Nigel Clark from Hilson Moran was next up. This case study was 20 Fenchurch Street which had been designed to be BREEAM Excellent and to significantly exceed the UK Building Codes and Regulations. Some great slides below - also very interesting to hear it reinforced that BIM in the UK is not just about the UK Gov Strategy, the private big private clients are now insisting on BIM - Great Portland Estates, Land Securities and Canary Wharf Group.

Fig 3 - I love seeing the original pen-and-paper sketch design alongside the detail design

Fig 4 - Some of the engineering to maintain this roof top garden was extremely impressive

Fig 5 - BIM = a single model - not in the real world it ain't - federated models

The day wasn't all a promotion of UK excellence. There were also some case studies from the Middle East. Dar Al Riyadh from Saudi were involved in some particularly impressive projects. There were plenty of beautiful tall buildings - but the screenshot below is of interest for a different reason. Classed as a "MEGAPROJECT" - it appears to be worthy of the name with 500,000 housing units being built from BIM designs. When building on that scale a tiny percentage saving is clearly multiplied to be huge.

Fig 6 - Mega Projects - Middle East Style

After the break then the design consultants were invited up on stage to take questions from the floor. There was a lot of discussion about what status the BIM holds contractually and again the importance of BIM execution plans were reinforced. One bit of advice handed to the Qatar delegates was that if a Government mandated BIM, it is not a simple task of writing a document and then walking away. It needs the full strategy executed. And not least of these is the communication of the strategy and the sharing of knowledge and resources. Again, everyone from the UK spoke extremely highly about the UK BIM movement.

Fig 7 - Expert panel discuss

I had the job of presenting to conclude the speakers' section of the conference. As this blog post is going on a bit I'll not say much about my message (I'll cover this in a separate article). But the general message was that where BIM is currently delivering is (a) drawing production, (b) visualisation and (c) eliminating clashes - where it needs to now deliver is in well-structured information behind the objects. Localised standard generic objects with corresponding manufacturer objects that can help the information part of BIM really fly.

"Make it quick Hamil, lunch is in 20 minutes"

Throughout these sessions credit must be given to Mott Macdonald's Derek Murray who did a great job with excellent commentary, good time keeping and humour. He summarised the conference well with two quotes from yesterday:
"Play well together and enjoy the new team sport that is BIM"

And finally...
Derek also introduced himself to me by commenting on my 1000th tweet blog post on the seven slides to include in every BIM presentation. He had carefully scored up the presentations in terms of the ones that managed to squash the slides in. You can see from the pic below that there was a loss of count for "BIM Models" on day one and then the magenta clash detection slides and confusing ROI chart tied for first place with six presentations each. I feel that BIM Bingo Infographic PDFs need to be produced for future conferences.

BIM Bingo with @DerekMurray1975

Contract clauses in the olden days

Here is a genuine construction contract clause from the olden days.

From presentation given at the BIM Summit Qatar that I attended.

I'd say there is quite a strong incentive to over-engineer the design to ensure that the risk documented below is fully managed!

One way of ensuring design quality