Get Sust! issue 44

FEATURE

BIM: Catch this wave, or you'll be beached

When times are tough, the tough get going, so they say. But in which direction? If a panel of experts at the recent Ecobuild conference are right, you should be seriously considering a career in modelling! Not the beachwear variety, of course, but building information modelling (BIM). Catch this next big wave, and you’ll be at the forefront of a revolution that will bring about the changes the industry’s been waiting for.

Richard Saxon, former RIBA Vice-president and chair of the BIM seminar at Ecobuild in March, described BIM as an ‘intelligent system’ based on the principle of ‘one model with many uses – for concept, simulation, timing sequences, health and safety, tendering, components, CAD-CAM, through to facilities management and deconstruction’.

The idea behind BIM is simple: make sure that all the professionals involved in designing and managing a building can share and manipulate the same core information, and there will be massive efficiency savings (in time, costs and materials), the design process will be truly collaborative, and you’ll be able to prove that the end product is sustainable because all the necessary raw data will be at your fingertips.

Sounds too good to be true? In fact several of our foremost design practices have been using BIM technology for some time. BDP, for instance, used it on the award-winning Bridge Academy in Hackney; it was also put to the test by various designers and engineers involved in the Heathrow Terminal 5 mega-project.

The key to BIM is interoperability – finding a way to help all the different software tools used at different stages of a building’s development and management talk to each other. This is achieved via a digital dictionary of construction products which describes items in a way that disparate software tools can interpret. There is now an international standard (ISO) for achieving this, using the ‘industry foundation classes’ (IFC) protocol. However, not all BIM tools use this technique; some have developed proprietory exchange systems.

Nevertheless, anyone with an eye on their future in construction needs to be taking BIM very seriously. In Singapore, it has already revolutionised the entire planning system.

BIM is good news for those branches of the industry that are already making good use of digital design and simulation. Many structural engineers and buildings services engineers are familiar with the principles, especially those who use modelling to test and adapt designs, or to demonstrate and enhance sustainability. Others may have a steeper learning curve. The benefits, in terms of greater streamlining of workloads and dramatic cuts in duplication of effort, are said to be considerable. Laing O’Rouke are reported to have achieved 10% cuts in construction costs using BIM thanks to efficiency savings when projects start on site.

Adrian Dobson, RIBA Director of Practice is convinced of the benefits of BIM. RIBA has launched a knowledge community to share BIM expertise (with fund support from the government’s Department of Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, BERR). He told Ecobuild: “BIM represents a culture shift. It is a possible opportunity for architects to restate their role at the centre of the design process”.

If it’s so important, you might be wondering why you didn’t learn about it at college. Rafael Sacks, visiting professor at Reading University and author of the BIM Handbook says that, although the concept originated in Europe (mainly Finland and the UK) it has really taken off elsewhere. In Sacks’ home department in Israel, for instance, architecture students move straight from representational geometry to BIM with no difficulty. And BIM is taking off at US universities too – always eager to catch a big wave.

Surf’s up! We’d better join ‘em.

Learn more:

	•	“Efficient project delivery: how Building Information Modelling can help” is a free ‘webinar’ presented by Building magazine on 17 June. The event will explore the scope for using BIM on everyday projects, the extent it can be used by the supply chain and how best to exploit it. To join in, register now at: www.building.co.uk/bim.
	•	On 26 June BSRIA is hosting a seminar on ‘Building Information Modelling — what is it really?’. Cost: £95 (£60 to BSRIA members); BSRAI student discount rate: £20 + VAT. To book, contact Kathie Bull: 01344 465527; Kathie.bull[at]bsria.co.uk.
	•	BIM features on courses at University of Reading, Salford University Centre for Research and Innovation, Loughborough University, Robert Gordon University, Cardiff University, and Teesside University.
	•	BIM Handbook: A Guide to Building Information Modeling for Owners, Managers, Designers, Engineers and Contractors, by Chuck Eastman, Paul Teicholz, Rafael Sacks, and Kathleen Liston, is published by Wiley (ISBN: 978-0-470-18528-5).
	•	buildingSMART, promotes the use of BIM. See www.buildingSMART.org.uk.

© Melanie Thompson 2009