Archive for category IPD

Global BIM in Abu Dhabi : Solving the same problems

Reading a recent article in Construction Week I found it remarkable, but perhaps not surprising that the construction industry there is using the same analogies and facing the same issues we here in the US.  Within a week Gerhard Hope of Construction Week posted two articles one titled, ‘MEP Contractors Still Wary of BIM‘ and ‘Design, Build, and Maintain‘ which promotes the use of BIM to solve construction, regulatory and maintenance issues.  The jist of the first article is that the MEP contractors were giving up on BIM because generally it’s a lot of work.  However, there were some great quotes.

It means you do all the thinking and engineering before anyone starts building the structure or installing services. It has the big advantage of being able to plan ahead, and not find a major issue on the third floor, for example, that is going to stop work for a couple of months while somebody works out what to do.

One of the things about construction is that it is really a team activity, involving thousands of people on infrastructure projects, for example. A major change that has come about is the need for all professionals to work much closer together. I think BIM is certainly one of the ways that this can happen. We embraced BIM several years ago, in fact, on the Dubai Metro project, and we carried that forward on our metro work in Makkah and Calcutta, using the same methodology.

David Crowder  – Atkins MEP Head of Department – Middle East and India

If you have a fast-track project with a lot of problems to fix, ultimately it all comes back to the quality of the documentation you started out with…BIM is a major advantage to the main contractor, because they are not fiddling around hacking out the structure, or changing the finishes, or lowering ceilings – all the things we know and love in the construction industry. Instead we generate all the drawings fully coordinated in the BIM environment

Steven Anderson – Atkins: Design Systems Manager – Middle East and India

Companies who are able to respond positively to these changes are the ones who are going to survive through these difficult times, as opposed to the dinosaurs, those companies which can only operate in a traditional business model. This will lead to a healthier marketplace and an industry as a whole.

Kevin Mitchell – Buro Happold : Director

And with Abu Dhabi still on the scene it was reported that Tekla ‘Shapes Abu Dhabi’s Pairs Sorbonne University‘ Also Tekla and Autodesk had announced last month a ‘collaboration to enable better BIM workflow‘  This announcement though sounds like two kids in the principals office who agree not to fight on the playground anymore.  Obviously Autodesk want people to use Revit Structure, and anecdotally I hear most people say they use Tekla when going from design to fabrication, so what that collaboration will look like is anyone’ s guess, but the market must have been calling for something but what it’s mostly calling for is integration.

People are frustrated.  Frustrated that construction seems inefficient.  With Technology that does not talk to each other.  With doing the same thing 15 times because of the myriad of design / documentation packages out there do not talk to each other.  That more problems are not figured out digitally instead of physically in the field where it costs infinitely more.  The people want to use the best tool for the job and have that data act freely and unencumbered with other tools.  However, with BIM (Building Information Models) we are a lot closer then we used to be and its a global phenomena.

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Open Standards Across Product Lines : SPie Cookbook : BIM

Even though the initial embrace with BIM was to visually communicate with clients and initially for me was coordinated and updated documentation the real carrot is the 4D and 5D aspects of the software, and real cost estimation demands components and products that are their real world digital equivalents, not generic components.  This calls for an open standard that manufactures can write and specifiers can utilize.  Thankfully there are people who know this and working to make it a reality.  A recent meeting sponsored by NIBS / Building Smart Alliance was held this past December to discuss and come up with a road map to reality.  The Specifiers Properties Information Exchange (SPie) Meeting came up with a cookbook to address it. The fact they hope to have standards in place for all major building products by December 2010 is a great and ambitious goal.  The home page to the session is available here and has other links to good information.

Excerpt

What is driving this project?

Many project stakeholders have been asking (some demanding) that building designs contain explicit properties about the objects in the building. To ensure that individual software vendors, large owners, or large manufactures do not begin to include proprietary requirements in open standard information exchanges, the SPie project was formed.

What are the next steps?

Now that the recipe for SPie has been created, NIBS is conducting an outreach effort that will result in a spring 2010 meeting. The purpose of this meeting is to allow a wide range of trade associations to engage with the project as quickly as possible. Our goal will be to have complete templates and product property data sets be available across the majority of building products by Dec 2010.

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Indiana University Requires BIM: #BIM #Revit

I read recently on James Van’s blog that Indiana University now requires BIM on any capital project over $5 million.  More information and requirements are posted on the web site.

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AEC Edge Premiers: Industry Mag from AUGI – Focus on Revit

AEC Edge just premiered from AUGI. (Autodesk Users Group Intl.)  It’s inital focus is to provideAutodesk users crucial information to “be more productive and on top of their game.”  First issue seems to deal with all things Revit.  3D and IPD, and Revit in High School, which seems interesting that these deign/collobration tools are starting to far down the education pipeline.  The format is of electronic magazine, where you flip pages which seems fine from a user consumption model, but web share model, and maybe it’s me, but does not seem as user friendly as it could be.  For example, if I wanted to post a link to the article I just read, it is not readily apparent on how to do so, which seems counter intuitive in web dissmenation of content.  Either way worth the read for those in the INdustry.  And for AUGI, this is a crucial site and source for anyone, anybeing in the Autodesk Universe.  They have provided, at least to me, more answers and information than any other site out there.

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