Connecting information

By - , Build 154

While BIM has gained traction, the focus must now be on developing an international standard and consistent structured data.

Source: McGraw-Hill Construction, 2009.

THE 2016 INTERNATIONAL CONSTRUCTION Information Society’s (ICIS) annual conference was held in New Zealand recently, hosted by Masterspec, with the theme Connecting construction information.

ICIS members represent construction information domain providers, such as specifications, costings and building information modelling (BIM) libraries in their respective countries.

The conference focus was on increasing accuracy and efficiency throughout all phases of the construction process – from project brief through to facilities management.

BIM going forward

Keynote speakers were Professor Robert Amor, head of the Computer Sciences Department at Auckland University, and John Mitchell, architect and Chairman of BuildingSmart Australasia.

The central message from all the presenters was that significant progress has been made with BIM, and the focus must now shift to the development and delivery of consistently structured, usable data.

Key factors to achieve this will be:

  • adopting the recently developed BuildingSMART data dictionary
  • ongoing development of an international BIM Object Standard
  • completion of current work on the ISO IFC standard version 5, due in 2020
  • a commitment by governments to encouraging and supporting the advantages of digital design to the construction industry and the broader economy.

Not yet truly interoperable

In his presentation on interoperability and its challenges, Robert Amor said that 4,500 construction software tools are currently used, but less than 2% are truly interoperable – that is, IFC enabled and certified.

In the future, interoperability should be invisible, as with the seamless effectiveness of mobile phones and email where the system automatically understands the rules without requiring user intervention.

Robert sees BIM as the core underpinning technology for interoperability. The next challenge for organisations such as BuildingSmart and the ICIS member organisations is the development of rich, structured data to underlie and support a building model’s geometry.

Source: McGraw-Hill Construction, 2009.

Several challenges

Future challenges include incorporating other domains such as fire design, roads and bridges, not yet covered within work on international standards.

Longer term, the design and construction industry needs to address concerns about the growing reliance on cloud-based storage, where the trust models are still being developed.

Advances in the construction industry’s use of 3D printing technology and robotics, which have quite different data needs, are other challenges in a rapidly changing building environment.

Aiming for open international standards

John Mitchell’s presentation covered the work undertaken by BuildingSMART International. This is a not-for-profit organisation with the vision of ‘driving transformation of the built asset economy through creation and adoption of open, international standards’.

John looked at two key Australian projects:

  • The Pyrmont Bridge project, where an analysis was carried out on the parts of this heritage timber structure needing to be replaced. With the use of a tablet computer and BIM, surveying time was reduced from 3 months to 10 days.
  • Sydney’s Central Park Precinct project, where environmental sustainability will be embedded into all aspects of the development and the aim is to achieve a 5 Star Green Star rating.

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Source: McGraw-Hill Construction, 2009.

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