Building Information Modeling (BIM) is all the rage today in the facilities industry. In fact, it is highly likely that many readers are using some form of BIM in their work. This is actually quite amazing in a traditionally slow-to-adopt industry, considering that just two years ago the industry penetration was only at about 20 to 30 percent[1]. BIM can be used successfully in nearly all disciplines and on nearly all project types, yet the industry is just in its infancy when it comes to fully taking advantage of how BIM can be applied.

Not everyone, however, is using BIM for common tasks or in similar ways. Therefore, some standards need to be put in place as soon as possible. One of the basic principles and metrics for BIM implementation is the ability to enter data one time and then use it many times throughout the life of the project. Yet there are still far too many instances where BIM is being used independently for only one or two applications on a project. We are still all too often slaves to the stovepipes that have been our industry’s tradition, where information is collected for a specific instance and then not reused by others. There are currently many reasons for this: perceived intellectual property concerns, perceived liability issues, organizations pushing their own agenda, proprietary approaches, and simply not knowing that someone already entered the information because of poor ability to collaborate.

One group taking this challenge head-on is buildingSMART International. buildingSMART International is a coalition of more than 50 countries worldwide who are focused on implementing an open-standard, BIM approach to interoperability of information for building construction and facility maintenance. The North American chapter of this group is the buildingSMART alliance. While it is our belief that the final goal will be an international, standards-based, information exchange, the primary goal of interoperability remains at the foundation of this effort, using whatever format is universally easiest to use at the time.

To understand how we got to this point in our development we need to understand that BIM started out primarily as a visualization tool that allowed building designs to be seen in three dimensions. It then moved to a collaboration tool to detect clashes between various disciplines, typically structural, mechanical, and plumbing, to catch problems before construction begins. Many of these uses were based on the geometry of the objects. Another aspect of early BIM was that it was portrayed as “lonely BIM,” [2] where only one discipline was taking advantage of its analysis capabilities. However, we are now getting to the point of truly adding the “I” to BIM, the information component.

Taking this step brings in a lot more complexity to the process; however, it also has the opportunity of exponentially increasing the benefits. A recent joint project of the buildingSMART alliance and Open Geospatial Collaborative (OGC), two giants in this industry of promoting open, standards-based BIM, demonstrated the ability in near real time to manipulate a model and see the impact on multiple aspects of the model. In this case, users manipulated the exterior skin of the facility and saw the impact on the energy usage in the facility and the initial cost of those changes in near real time.

Historically, for this example, several use cases would have been identified and then engineers would have manually worked up the impact of those use cases, often taking weeks to accomplish. In this proof-of-concept project, the testers used standard data elements called Industry Foundation Classes or IFCs, also known as ISO 16739, to pass data between software packages. A validation tool was developed so that the participants could be certain that the information generated by their package was in the standard format so that it could be accurately read by the receiving package[3].

This real time ability is only the beginning. Now we need to expand the test to look at the impact of spatial orientation on solar heat gain, day lighting studies, prevailing winds for natural ventilation, use of materials to ensure lowest carbon footprint, sustainability and ability to recycle, to name a few. Being able to evaluate multiple varied analyses at one time will be a significant enhancement to the rather incoherent approach we currently use. This next step needs your financial support in either helping to sponsor a specific project or simply to join the buildingSMART alliance so that we can leverage individual memberships into funding demonstration projects.

How do we capture all this information in a BIM? It is not very difficult, once you make the decision to do it. Mostly it involves reversing some current poor business practices. The reality is that almost all information today is available electronically at some point in its life. The industry has developed the poor practice of printing out that data to pass it along the life cycle chain, which makes it virtually unusable without costly re-entry of the information.

While we do not anticipate paper to disappear, we do expect that electronics will be the true data transfer medium. However, in order to have an orderly exchange of information, the creator and receiver need to be using the same standard. This information is created or collected by many people, from manufacturers developing product catalogues to designers, contractors, sub-contractors and fabricators. The data ultimately has a reach from planning through demolition, and includes first responders and occupants of the building.

One example of the current information disconnect is the simple act of printing out blueprints. A tremendous amount of information is lost when the only deliverable is a hard copy set of drawings and a list of specifications. The problem is also seen in cost estimating. It was recently calculated, that on average, more than 300 estimates are made on each project throughout its design and construction. When you think about it that estimate might not be far from the truth. Each estimate involves someone doing a quantity take-off of at least some portion of the project. By the time you look at the estimates created during the design phase in budget and final cost evaluations, coupled with all the contractors that bid on the project, the sub-contractors that submit bids to the contractors, and the change order estimates that are created during construction, the estimates really add up. If everyone simply used the same quantities, there would be a significant savings. In addition, accuracy would improve if those quantities came from one shared building information model where measurement standards were also incorporated.

As you read this article, a collaborative group of cost engineering experts is working on just such an approach. Another buildingSMART alliance project that is working on this problem is called Specifiers Property information exchange or SPie. This project builds templates, coordinated by the industry associations who represent constituents from the various market sectors, and posts them on the Whole Building Design Guide[4]. This allows manufacturers to load their data into a common data format geared toward their product lines, which can be used by software tools in analysis or stored for future reference and information. This concept is a capability expansion based on the popular Construction Operations Building information exchange or COBie[5].

Industry Foundation Classes (IFCs)[6] have been in development for more than ten years. Recently, they have been extensively exercised by a half dozen significant projects, which demonstrate their capability and flexibility, as well as offer a way to continuously improve them. Initially IFCs were a Publicly Available Standard registered with the International Standards Organization (ISO). They are now being taken through the formal process of making them a full ISO standard, known as ISO 16739.

As in the case of COBie, IFCs can be used at whatever level the user feels comfortable. For example, COBie has a version that uses simple Microsoft Excel spreadsheets, it has an ifcXML version,  and it fully supports integrated IFCs. The IFC version is the ultimate goal because it provides the best integration of information and provides the best approach to long term access to the information.

While BIMs should be used and sustained as part of the way you do business, there are some times that archiving is required. It is felt that storage of data in an ISO format has the greatest longevity potential. For example, we can still retrieve ASCII data today, which was one of the first information technology standards. This would be also true of using IFCs for information storage. However, we also recommend using PDF, another international standard (ISO 19005), for the storage of geometry. The last remaining aspect of good archiving is media, and the solution there is to store it in an offsite repository responsible for ensuring the media remains current. Several such products are now available which encrypt data for security.

From this overview, I hope you can see that BIM, while green, is truly a complete solution to information handling issues within a facility. It needs to support all aspects of a facility in order to ensure that the environmental aspects are met and cooperate with all the other needs, including human comfort and productivity. We must be able to optimize the entire solution. We are at the beginning of a journey that will take our industry many years to complete. While we need solutions today to meet short-term needs, we also need to work continuously toward a goal where all aspects of a facility are working in complete harmony.

[1] McGraw-Hill Construction, “BIM for Business Smart Market Report” published in 2009 is available at: http://www.nibs.org/client/assets/files/bsa/mhc_bim_smartmarket1109.pdf

[2] John Tocchi, Tocchi Construction, reference made during AGC BIM Forum May 2009 held in Dallas Texas.

[3] For a complete copy of the project report please go to: http://projects.buildingsmartalliance.org/files/?artifact_id=2754

[4] The National Institute of Building Sciences, Whole Building Design Guide (WBDG) which has over 2.5 million unique document downloads a month can be accessed at http://www.wbdg.org

[5] For complete information on COBie either visit the WBDG, the project listing on the buildingSMART alliance web site or simply Google “COBie”

[6] For more complete information on Industry Foundation Class (IFC) visit: http://www.buildingsmart.com/bim

About the Author
Dana K. “Deke” Smith is the Executive Director of buildingSMART alliance and serves a member of the buildingSMART International Executive Committee. He is an employee of the National Institute of Building Sciences, an organization with which he has been associated for more than twenty-five years. He can be contacted at dsmith@nibs.org.