thinkBIM BIM Beyond Design: Infrastructure

Posted by thinkBIM member Tim Platts

Our truly dedicated thinkBIM members put aside the European Football tournament to meet at Old Broadcasting House for a BIM event with an Infrastructure focus. The three informative presentations gave a detailed view of BIM with a focus on the ‘I’ for integration, ‘M’ for management and less of the ‘B’ for Buildings and perhaps more of the ‘c’ for construction? Each offered their corporate and personal perspectives of the level of existing practice in the market, and like our event there was clearly a Level 2 response with still no evidence out there of any Level 3 projects.

A common thread throughout each presentation was the need to ensure proper and thorough collaboration both between design disciplines and also within internal functions of the larger constructors if the true benefits of BIM are to be realised, such that the Client can gain a clear perspective of what can be derived.

Our speakers offered perspectives from a global leader ARUP; 4D and 5D experts Rapid5D; and Bentley systems joined us with their debut for thinkBIM, introducing both Projectwise and Assestwise functions within the Bentley application suite.

Martin Simpson of ARUP gave a fresh and dynamic presentation on BIM with a series of global case study examples highlighting the key importance of process. Martin put forward an interesting statistic out of the US where they have quantified the cost of inadequate interoperability at $15bN (NIST GCR 04-867). His point that ‘someones outputs is somebody else’s inputs’ was well received by the delegates and of course a recurring theme in the seminar series. Arup are not ‘showboating’ with BIM by producing white papers of dubious value, but focus on the task of delivering BIM on projects and building their expertise and through the coal face, and concluded with ‘BIM is the tool that get’s  people in a room discuss their virtual projects’ citing that one project in the far East this had resulted in zero RFI’s (technical queries) on the project.

Steve Brunning of Rapid5D explained the importance of standard object classification and the need for everyone to ‘openup to BIM’, to realise that where there’s a clash there is risk, and noting that in Rapid5D’s increasing portfolio they have yet to deal with a single model output from the design team (see comments above).  Neville Glanville gave an excellent debut presentation on behalf of Bentley systems highlighting their commitment to interoperability and collaboration, introducing us to the Bentley white paper www.bentley.com/interoperability. Neville included some novel points in the presentation in respect of the growth of mobile technology and communications and is yet another vendor suggesting that the data itself is more important that the software platforms and through this great progress can be made as illustrated with the Crossrail case study that the delagates enjoyed.

A lively Q and A reflected upon the need to capture all the ‘good stuff’ that individual firms like Arup, the constructors and some informed clients like Crossrail are doing, and for this to be brought together and articulated sufficiently well to make the argument around the need for BIM in our industry thoroghly compelling.

With thanks to Rob Jackson of Bond Bryan for standing in as chair the evening was concluded with the usual effective networking of speakers and members providing an ever increasing relevance and importance to the work at thinkBIM.

Slides from the presentations can be found on the thinkBIM website here – ckehub.org/thinkbim