What if?
What if?
What if there were a better way to build? What if there were an easy way for owners, architects, engineers and contactors to access all the information they need when they need it? What if needless time losses were eliminated, and both competitiveness and profitability were enhanced?
All this is part of the promise of BIM — building information modelling. It’s here now, but has barely begun to spread through the construction industry. But it will.
In the United States, the General Services Administration, the agency that purchases huge amounts of construction for the U.S. federal government, has decided that all new federal building projects from now on must use BIM, and it already has one large job — a federal courthouse in Jackson, Miss., under way.
The ripple effect from the GSA administration will be immense. If a company isn’t conversant with BIM, it won’t be competing for work on GSA jobs, for example. Other large purchasers of construction will be watching for advantages that become evident using BIM. Design firms, having become familiar with BIM, will integrate it into projects they are pitching to prospective clients.
BIM is such a powerful design and building tool that the larger design firms in the U.S. are all moving aggressively in that direction. So are many of the smaller firms.
Ray Messer heads up the Houston-based Walter P. Moore, the consulting engineer on the Jackson courthouse job. In a recent interview, he gave a couple of examples of how BIM can speed a task and save money, as well.
“It allows us . . . to integrate our structural model with the mechanical duct-work to find out where there are clashes and interferences,” he said.
And for building owners:
“If a pump goes out, instead of going down into the maintenance room and rummaging through a stack of drawings, the owner can open up the BIM and, with a few clicks, determine the capacity of the pump, the serial number and the manufacturer.”
There are savings to be had in that kind of ready access to information, and it is those savings that will drive the adoption of BIM. It is, after all, owners and operators of buildings that bear the continuing long-term costs of maintenance and repair — where BIM can be at least as important as it is during the design and construction phases of a building’s life.
This is not futuristic, pie-in-the-sky stuff. It’s here now. Last week, I outlined in broad terms some of the things that a building information model can do. And if your company is an AutoDesk customer, using its AutoCAD, you’ve already had calls from your dealer advising you of the new version of AutoCAD Revit which was released last month. Revit is AutoDesk’s BIM tool.
You might want to visit the AutoDesk Web site. Among other things, you’ll find an excellent series of short videos explaining what BIM is and how it works, and demonstrating how stacks of construction documents are automatically updated whenever a design change is made.
When it’s time for the designer to detail a set of stairs, simply clicking a button when he’s finished instantly and automatically updates all the pertinent drawings.
For many in the construction industry, instituting BIM is no doubt going to be an upsetting experience. But it’s coming to a jobsite near you, so doing some reading might be a good spare-time project.
There are many places to get information:
National Institute of Building Sciences: www.nibs.org
Bentley Systems: www.be.org
AutoDesk: www.autodesk.com
Graphisoft: www.graphisoft.com
Trelligence: www.trelligence.com
And take a look at Builder 3D, from IMAGINiT Technologies. This product could be a starting point for small- and medium-sized firms interested in working in 3D, but on a smaller scale. IMAGINiT: www.rand.com/imaginit
Korky Koroluk is an Ottawa-based freelance writer. Send comments to editor@dailycommercialnews.com
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