Episode 15: Initiating a Collaborative BIM Project

A collaborative BIM project is not a simple undertaking. This is especially true if the project in question is a large facility (e.g. a high-rise building or a major hospital), the project participants lack the necessary experience, or the BIM requirements are not clearly defined. This episode will discuss three main criteria for the primary consultant, the project manager or the independent facilitator to consider when initiating a collaborative, model-based process.

Episode 12: BIM performance measurement

If BIM implementations by teams and organizations are to achieve the much touted increase in productivity, these implementations need to be measured, compared against some sort of industry benchmarks and – most importantly – independently certified. Without measurement, organizations offering design, construction or operations’ services have no basis on which to improve their processes and deliverables. Without benchmarks and certificates, clients aiming to employ these organizations have no consistent way of understanding their BIM competencies.

The BIM Framework: an Academic Perspective

Many of ThinkSpace’s readers are academically-oriented and may be interested to know that the BIM Framework has now been published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Automation in Construction (Volume 18, Issue 3).  The Framework is the basis of most BIM episodes published so far and has allowed the generation of many BIM implementation and evaluation tools (more about that in …

BIM News Bits – Interesting Developments

I try not to to blog industry news but sometimes it feels ‘irresponsible’ not to do so. However, I’ll follow the three BIM Nodes logic in my reporting: On the Technology front: the emergent Microsoft Live Mesh technology deserves some attention… Would an enterprise version enable a different approach to BIM Integration (Stage 3) alongside Model Servers and what I …

Episode 6: A systematic understanding of BIM

Building information Modelling can be a very difficult topic to define. Just try to discuss it with a colleague and – more probably than not – you'll end up discussing endlessly overlapping topics. For example, you start to discuss BIM's effcts on industry and you end up comparing software solutions. Or, the topic starts with how to collaborate around the …

Episode 4: BIM vs. Partial BIM

Adopting the graphical language of Figure 3.1 (Episode 3), a Building Information Model is sprung into digital existence whenever the object-based model includes different data colours; inter-disciplinary information generated in two or more disciplines or domains. That lacking, the model can only be labelled as a partial BIM.   This episode is available in other languages. For a list of all …

Episode 3: Focus on Information

"Architecture does not create buildings but creates information that creates buildings" An elaboration on a quote by Robert Sheil, Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London [1] BIModellers do not depict nor encode the full scope of industry knowledge even within individual sectors (Architecture, Engineering or Construction). To express the matter differently, we first need to decipher what is really …