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Some of the topics at this year's GITA Pacific Northwest conference
When: April 18-19, 2016
Where:
Future of Flight Aviation Center
8415 Paine Field Boulevard
Mukilteo, Washington 98275
United States
I have been attending and speaking at GITA events for many years. One of the best events is the geospatial, utility and infrastructure event organized by The GITA Pacific Northwest Chapter, always in an interesting location in the Pacific North West and British Columbia.
This year Peter Batty and I will keynote as part of an agenda that includes presentations by regional experts. The reason I like regional events is that there are often better opportunities for one-on-one networking with speakers and other folks in the geospatial, utility and other sectors than at the large national events.
This year's event takes place at the Boeing Future of Flight Aviation Center near Seattle. You can register here.
When: April 18-19, 2016
Where:
Future of Flight Aviation Center
8415 Paine Field Boulevard
Mukilteo, Washington 98275
United States
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The GITA Pacific Northwest Chapter Conference returns to the Future of Flight Aviation Center,
Mukilteo, WA on April 18 and 19!
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The Netherlands has created a new BIM Loket (BIM Gateway). It is intended to be a national portal for information about and and management of open BIM standards in the Netherlands. It is to both provide a central information centre for open BIM standards including related geospatial standards and to stimulate their use.
The most important reason for building a BIM Gateway for all stakeholders is to reduce maintenance costs by bringing together the open BIM standards into one coherent system. This will ensure that the standards can be used more effectively and with greater efficiency as well as promoting their widespread use.
The Dutch Building Information Council (BIR) has been encouraging BIM for a long time. I have blogged about it previously. It will continue to focus improving the quality and competitiveness of the Dutch construction industry through initiatives such as BIM. The BIM Loket's focus will be on open standards for BIM. One of my takeways from the recent RICS BIM conference in London was that there is a desperate need for standards, especially to classify the huge amount of date in addition to the 3D model that accumulates during a construction project. Much of this would be useful to the FM folks who are responsible for operating and maintaining the building after construction.
At a Geospatial World Forum in Amsterdam several years ago, Jantien Stoter of the Delft Univeristy of Technology and an advisor to Geonovum, described work on the Dutch 3D standard which aimed at integrating CityGML and the Dutch IMGeo standard. This inclcuded an attempt GeoBIM which was to be a CityGML Application Domain Extension (ADE) intended to extend CityGML to include detailed, semantic information about the inside of buildings (IFC). Finding some way of integrating of BuildingSmart's IFC BIM standard and geospatial standards like CityGML remains a major challenge for the international construction industry.
As a practical example, I blogged previously about a firm Royal BAM Group nv / BAM Infraconsult that relies on integrated BIM and GIS because many of its projects require full life-cycle BIM. At the first GeoBIM conference in Amsterdam, Jothijs van Gaalen gave some real world examples of Design, Build, Finance and Maintain (DBFM) highway construction that included GIS+BIM integration. BAM's motivation for investing in BIM+GIS are market developments especially more complex construction assignments and an increasing demand from customers for service provision throughout the entire life cycle of a project. The other major drivers are internal business needs especially being able to control safety, quality, costs, planning, and sustainability through the lifetime of a project.
As another example, ARCADIS Netherlands has been involved in projects that integrate geospatial into the design process. On the HOV Nijmegen project it was found that integrating geospatial and engineering design in a single database resulted in a single copy of each data element which supported multiple use. It simplified communication and increased the quality of the final design. It also enabled automated analysis of the consequences of design choices with the result that the planning cycle was shorter. Based on their experience with these projects, Bram Mommers and his colleagues concluded that there are several barriers to the integration of civll engineering and geospatial; Semantics, different terms used for the me things by geospatial analysts and civil engineers and designers, different topology, geospatial uses point, lines, and polygons, CAD/BIM uses splines, nurbs, and other parametric curves and treats polygons in a different way from geospatial topology, and features which are fundamental objects in geospatial vs engineering objects with location as an attribute, and data formats, geospatial data is stored in shape files, GML, and CityCML; CAD/BIM uses DWG, DGN, RVT, and IFC.
As the UK AGI has pointed out in a recent Foresight Report integrated BIM and geospatial technology will be fundamental for BIM Level 3.
The BIM Loket is intended to be a one stop shop for BIM-related standards including geospatial, whether maintained in Holland or internationally. It is intended to involve all the stakeholders, industry, academia, and government organizations. It is considered urgent because standards are essential for the digitization of the Dutch building industry and it is essential if Dutch construction firms like Royal BAM and Arcadis Netherlands are going to remain internationally competitive. The BIM Loket plans to compile a knowledge platform based on a coherent palette of Dutch open BIM standards for industry-standard BIM products.
Thanks to Rob van de Velde for pointing me to this.
It turned out that OGC staff and the members of the SWG were open to new ways of working and the SWG achieved an OGC first by putting the GeoPackage specification out on GitHub, to make it accessible to the open source community. The traditional OGC way is wikis and Word docs. For folks without GitHub experience the SWG prepared tips on how to contribute to the GeoPackage specification without having to learn git. For the OGC putting the specification on GitHub was an experiment, which turned out positively. The resulting standard benefitted from the direct involvement of open source geospatial developers in the OGC standards specification processes. The result was an alternative standards process that focused on early implementations of the standard. The standards process itself was improved by reducing the overhead in the formal OGC process.
The OGC is now taken this one step further and is working on a "standards incubator". The goal is to make OGC processes even more nimble and responsive to rapidly evolving technology. The standards incubator is intended to provide a setting for members to build and evaluate innovative draft standards in a process that mimics the usual OGC standards development process, but does not result in an official OGC standard. It is intended to reduce overhead to zero in order to provide a minimalist formal process.
What if you are a small company with no more experience with BIM than discovering what the acronym stands for ? It turns out that one of the biggest challenges, especially for smaller firms, is just what does BIM Level 2 means in practice. What do I have to do to be compliant ?
At RICS BIM 2016 there was a sequence of presentations by a group of mostly quantity surveyors (people who do quantity takeoff), all BIM novices, who came together to try to understand and share openly what BIM Level 2 means practically. This project brought together seven knowledge transfer initiatives funded by InnovateUK. They called it KT4BIM (which you can find on Twitter at #KT4BIM and on LinkedIn). The objective of the project is to answer the questions
how do we do BIM Level 2 ?
how do we demonstrate compliance ?
The target audience is BIM novices in both the residential and commercial sectors of the construction industry. KT4BIM intends to share all the material used and developed as part of this project with the rest of the industry.
They setup a mock project so that they can work through five stages, from stage 0 through 4, of an actual construction project. The project started with Stage 0 & 1 of the RIBA Plan of Work, the definitive UK model for the building design and construction process. From there the plan is to work through Stages 2 to 4 to create a design and various outputs to test the Level 2 process. The roles included in the mock construction project are the Client (owner), Information Manager, Architect, Structural Engineer, HVAC, Fit Out Contractor, Cladding Contractor, and Virtual & Augment Reality, with professional representatives from industry and academia responsible for each role. BIM4SME is playing the role of client.
Initially it was expected that Stages 0 and 1 would require two and a half months. But Stage 0 has taken much longer than expected because right at the start they encountered a major challenge in the form of many very complex standards, which at that time were to be found on different web sites.
Question 1: What are the BIM Level 2 standards and which are required ?
There are a many BIM Level 2-related standards, BS 2007, PAS 1192-2, PAS1192-3, PAS1192-4, PAS1192-5, Government Soft Landings, ... and on several different sites, BIM Task Group website, B1M, and others.
The good news is that there is now a single web site (BIMLevel2.org) where all the documents can be accessed. But it is quite a list and it is hard to know where to start.
Question 2: With so many documents where do you start ?
There are several alternatives. PAS1192-2 is the most read, but PAS1192-3 and PAS1192-5 provide a broader perspective on the whole life cycle process. The KT4BIM team recommends starting with PAS1192-5. If you are an employer (client), it is recommended that you begin with the Built Asset Security Strategy (BASS) and Organizational Information Requirements (OIR) sections. If you are a consultant, then you should begin with the BIM Execution Plan (BEP) section.
Presumably, since BIM Level 2 is mandated by the UK Government for public projects, a company could risk legal action for noncompliance (although one speaker mentioned that there is no legal definition of BIM Level 2 compliance). The question KT4BIM intends to answer is
Question 3: How do we as contractors know when we are BIM Level 2 compliant ?
KT4BIM came up with the concept of a Success Matrix, an Excel spreadsheet that signals degree of compliance. The tool is intended to be accessible to the entire team from client through to contractors and it is designed to provide an interactive learning experience for all project managers. The Information Manager can utilize the tool to effectively police the project. It is designed so that a client (owner) with a low level of training can use the tool to make sure they are getting a fully compliant BIM maturity level 2 project. It is also expected that the Government Soft Landings Champion (see Government Soft Landings) will also benefit from the tool.
A very good and readable (for BIM novices) overview of Stage 0 of the KT4BIM project can be found here. It is intended that the project will continue through to Stage 4 and I expect that many, especially folks for whom BIM is new, will be following the progress of KT4BIM with a lot of interest.
At this year's RICS BIM conference the elephant in the room was April 4th 2016, the deadline for all public construction projects to be BIM Level 2 compliant. This is the culmination of a five year process starting in 2011 focussed on developing a set of documents defining BIM Level 2 and providing best practices for achieving compliance.
This year's conference suggests that for many in the industry they are now wrestling with implementation issues and are reporting a shortage of BIM skills. They are finding that BIM is really about data and are realizing that data management and analytics are essential to handling and interpreting the huge volume of data that is being generated. A shortage of data scientists to help them to do this has become an acute problem.
The government's focus from the beginning has been on full life cycle BIM. Back in 2010/2011, the Government's BIM roadmap was perceived to be very aggressive, mandating BIM Level 2 compliance for all national government projects after just five years. In the UK public projects comprise about 50% of the construction industry so this amounted to radically transforming the UK construction industry in half a decade. Put another way the construction industry had to move from thinking analog to thinking digital in just five years.
The utility industry has been going through a similar transition in moving to what is called a smart grid and distributed generation. Some think that this process will take 20 years. But new technology and a younger generation steeped in digital is stepping in to make this happen much sooner than that. Energy is going digital more rapidly than expected. I think it likely that something similar will happen in the construction industry because digital enables all sorts of efficiencies that we often cannot even imagine. Uber and Airbnb are classic examples. Both are the largest or second largest companies in their respective industries. Gartner has forecasted a similar type of company will emerge for managing energy flows in the electric power industry by 2020.
For 2012 the Government's strategy focussed on discovery through pilot projects, notably the Ministry of Justice Cookham Wood project, a £20 mllion project where it is estimated that BIM saved hundreds of thousands of pounds in CAPEX costs.
At the 2013 conference David Philp,Head of BIM Implementation, Cabinet Office, UK Government, announced PAS 1192-2 a key document supporting the Construction BIM Strategy to achieve Level 2 compliance. It specified requirements for achieving BIM Level 2, sets set out the framework for collaborative working on BIM enabled projects and provided specific guidance for the information management requirements associated with projects delivered using BIM. David Philp made it clear that although the initial focus is on the design/build part of the lifecycle with the goal of saving 20% of Capex and reducing the 30% waste in most construction projects, the "largest prize for BIM lies in the operational stages of the project life-cycle".
At the 2014 conference Peter Hansford, Government Chief Construction Advisor, made a link between the overwhelming interest in BIM as represented by the sold-out RICS BIM conference and the industry’s enhanced interest and appetite for BIM. He saw a shift in emphasis from asking ‘’should we do BIM?’’ to ‘’how do we do BIM?’’ This was happengin inspite of the fact that as, Rich Saxon, the UK Government's BIM Ambassador for Growth, pointed out In a panel discussion on the future of BIM that some aspects of BIM Level 2 were still incomplete.
Deborah Rowland, Head of Facilities Management, Government Property Unit, Cabinet Office in the UK Government outlined the Government's motivation and plans for a program to improve the post construction handover and operation of newly constructed buildings. She described the Government Soft Landings (GSL) program which was intended to rectify this and was designed to put in place a legal, contractual, and technical framework (based on the BSRIA Soft Landings Framework) incorporating building information modeling (BIM) to fix the problem by ensuring continuity thoughout the buiiding lifecycle from inception, though design, construction, commissioning, training and handover through to operations and maintenance for 1-3 years after handover.
At the 2015 conference seven key BIM Level 2 documents (PAS 1192:2, PAS 1192:3, BS 1192-4, CIC BIM Protocol, Classification (Uniclass), Digital Plan of Works / Levels of Detail (LoD), Government Soft Landings) which collectively represented the current repository of BIM best practices were announced. Every speaker at the conference referenced these documents.
Seven major government projects using BIM, worth about £ 10 billion, have maintained records of the savings they have seen from using BIM. The measured benefits of BIM and factors associated with BIM range between15-20 %. By 2014 the government estimated that it had achieved savings of £ 1.4 billion through BIM and related improvements in the 2013/2014 fiscal year. But with full lifecyle BIM, the government saw an upside potential of 40%+ with the biggest benefits being realized in the operations phase of the building lifecycle.
This year it was announced that Government statistics show that in 2015 Her Majesty's Government saved GBP 3 billion on these demonstration projects as a result of gains in construction productivity related to BIM.
But BIM Level 3 is where the gold is. Level 3 will enable the interconnected digital design of different elements in a built environment and will extend BIM into the operation of assets over their lifetime. It will support the accelerated delivery of smart cities, services and grids. As the AGI has pointed out in a recent Foresight Report integrated BIM and geospatial technology will be fundamental for BIM Level 3.
An industry survey in the UK in 2013 reported that 54% of respondents said that they were using BIM on projects. Most of those not yet using BIM said that they would be within one to two years. 70 % of the respondents reporting using BIM said that BIM has given them a competitive advantage. But this year's conference suggests that most in the industry are doing BIM although for some it is not really clear what BIM Level 2 is and how one demonstrates compliance.
This year's RICS BIM conference was quite different from previous conferences. The focus was heavily on implementation, not on progress in completing specifications or developing and working with 3D models as in previous RICS BIM conferences.
The event was led off by a panel discussion that set the tone for the rest of the conference - the focus was on data and people rather than 3D BIM models. The industry people on the panel were patently up to their elbows in real world BIM projects including data, the analytics to make sense of it, and the shortage of the required skills (data scientists and people with BIM skills).
Alex Jones, Interserve, said that within the construction industry there is now a focus on data and how data is used downstream. He said that clients (owners) are now aware of BIM and that both private and public procurements are asking for BIM. But he qualified this - they are not so much asking for BIM (as in 3D models) as asking for data that can be used downstream. David Throssel, Skanska, added that deliverables now means data.
In the context of data, Simon Rawlinson, Arcadis UK, gave an example of utilities where smart devices and automated capture has resulted in a database of asset conditions, and which also includes geospatial data for geolocating those assets. This information allows utilities to move forward to condition-based maintenance where prioritizing maintenance and replacement depends on asset condition not the calendar. Real-time monitoring is being adopted by virtually all industries. For example, devices are being implanted in structures such as bridges to monitor distortions. He added that the leadership has not yet recognized that sensors and analytics enable a major change that will revolutionize asset maintenance.
Also the new digital economy is disintermediating certain skills. For example, digitalized construction requires fewer layers. Simon cited a KPMG study of disintermediation by technology. As an example, he mentioned data such as that collected by utilities from smart devices that allows owners/clients/utilities to do condition-based maintenance, which can lower field staff requirements significantly.
In the construction industry as a whole one of the major issues that emerged is a shortage of BIM related skills.Simon emphasized that now that we have lots of data, what we need urgently are data scientists to help make sense of it. He identified this as a major problem because in his experience data scientists are as rare as “hens teeth”.
David Hancock, UK Government Construction, said that construction industry still thinks analog. Nowadays we can all produce data, but analyzing it is the challenge. We need people who can analyze to produce actionable items. He also identified BIM skills shortage as a major problem, and repeated that data scientists people are “as rare as hens' teeth. He suggested that one solution is upskilling – training existing construction/bldg maintenance/utility folks in BIM and data science. Another may be raiding the U.S. baseball industry where teams such as the Oakland Atheletics starting using analytics several years ago. "Moneyball" analytics has been recommended as a strategy for the utility sector in the U.S.
In the question period a speaker argued that the 3D BIM model has been "massively overplayed". BIM is really about data and collaboration, not about 3D. To maximize the benefits of BIM clients (owners) have to be clear about what the model, and much more importantly the data associated with the model, are going to be used for. For example, if for facilities management (FM) then clients (owners) have to be specific about what data is required for maintaining and operating the building as part of defining deliverables.
What if you are a small company with no more experience with BIM than discovering what the acronym stands for ? At RICS BIM 2016 there was a sequence of presentations by a group of mostly quantity surveyors (people who do quantity takeoff), all BIM novices, who came together to try to understand and share openly what BIM Level 2 means practically. (As one speaker pointed out, there is no legal definition of BIM Level 2 compliance. They called their project KT4BIM, which you can find on LinkeIn. The objective is to answer the questions
how do we do BIM Level 2
how do we demonstrate compliance.
The target audience is BIM novices and for both the residential and commercial sectors. The objective is to share all the material used and developed as part of this project with the industry. More information about this very important project will be provided in my next blog post.
I've included this list just to show how comprehensive this set of BIM and BIM-related documents is.
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