Between the Poles

Crossrail's huge BIM+geospatial model targeted on operations and maintenance

The UK Government as part of its building information modeling (BIM) initiative has said repeatedly that it expects the big payoff of a digital model, estimated at more than 40% savings, will be during operations and maintenance, typically representing 80% of the total cost of a facility.  Companies such as BAM who do Design, Build, Finance and Maintain (DBFM) projects report significant benefits from full lifecycle BIM + geospatial.  But there is little if any quantitative evidence supporting this conjecture.  I have asked people from Finland familiar with the very early BIM developments in that country if there were studies of the benefits of BIM for operations and maintenance, but apparently the BIM focus there has been entirely on design and build.

 

Crossrail with a budget of £14.8 billion is the biggest engineering project in Europe.  It involves 42 km of tunnels beneath one of the most densely populated parts of Europe.  It has wider tunnels  and its 40 stations have longer station platforms than the Tube has.  Crossrail trains are expected to start running next year and the full network should be open by 2019.

 

But the most interesting aspect of the Crossrail project is a 3D digital model with associated asset data that has not only been used during design and construction, but is intended to be used for operations and maintenance.  Crossrail appears to be the first major project that may be able to provide support for the conjecture that the biggest benefits of BIM are for operations and maintenance.

 

The Crossrail model is comprised of spatial and non-spatial data with links between the two.  The spatial data is made up of more than 250,000 3D BIM models as well as as-builts, together comprising a few terabytes. As construction of each facility is completed as-builts are collected by point-cloud survey using laser scanners.  The point clouds captured in the survey are compared to the design and divergences that need resolving are recorded for fixing. The detailed asset data and documentation add an additional 5 terabytes.  This represents one of the World's largest BIM model.  A critical aspect of the spatial database is that all assets are geolocated so that workers can query a particular location of London on a map and then navigate to the Crossrail assets there.

 

The model is intended to become a crucial tool for monitoring, operating and maintaining Crossrail’s systems once the railway is running.  Sensors monitor various aspects of the railway's operation and remote-controlled devices can change operating parameters from a central control room or from a handheld device.  Managers can view this information within the 3D model and can zoom in on an area which needs attention.  Crossrail is testing low-power wireless smart sensors called Utterberries that can monitor strain, temperature, humidity, acceleration, and other aspects of a facility. Utterberries weigh 15 grams and are smart - they have an ARM processor on-board and can operate for more than a year on one charge.  One of the coolest capabilities of the digital infrastrucure is an augmented-reality interface which allows workers to hold an iPad up to a wall or floor and see a view of the infrastructure (electricity, water, and communications) under the floor or behind the wall.

Dutch create BIM Gateway to coordinate open BIM standards including geospatial

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.

RICS BIM 2016: What is BIM Level 2 compliance (for BIM novices ) ?

What is BIM Level 2 and how do I know I am compliant ?

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.

BIM Level 2 Documents

Key documents

Supporting documents

One third of Be Inspired Awards involve mapping, managing, rehabbing and replacing aging infrastructure

Worldwide there is increasing demand from building and infrastructure owners for service provision throughout the entire life cycle of a building or infrastructure. This represents a distinct break with the design/build tradition which has dominated construction for years.  At the Year in Infrastructure conference in London, a dominant theme was the growing recognition of the importance of full lifecycle management of infrastructure.  I found it symptomatic of the direction of the construction industry that fully one third of the 54 finalists for the annual Be Inspired Awards involved mapping, rehabbing, retrofitting, replacing and managing existing infrastructure.  This is my classification of these Be Inspired finalists;

Be Inspired Finalists

1 Full lifecycle workflow
2 Replacement
7 Renovation, rehab, retrofit
3 Mapping existing infrastructure
1 Historic site protection
5 Utility asset management

Full life cycle management

Patrick MacLeamy, Chairman of buildingSMART and CEO of HOK, has been pushing a very simple message about the U.S. construction industry for years.  Buildings are too expensive, are too inefficient to operate and maintain, and don't last long. As a result the U.S. construction industry is falling behind the Nordic countries, the U.K. and Singapore.  His solution is a full life cycle approach to construction.  Information has to be shared between owners, designers, contractors, operations and facilities management over the entire life cycle of the building or infrastructure.

Buildings

Over 50% of the cost of maintaining a building is operations and maintenance which is comprised of administration, maintenance and repairs, and restoration projects.  In several countries BIM has become essential for design and construction.  But many including the UK government believe that the full value of BIM can only be found during the operational life of the building where the majority of the life cycle costs occur.  The UK government has said that "the 20% saving refers to CapEx cost savings however we know that the largest prize for BIM lies in the operational stages of the project life-cycle".

Road and highway infrastructure

Highway construction is being transformed, due in part to the arrival of autonomous vehicles.  I've blogged about the startling (at least to traditional construction contractors) vision of the future of highway construction of the Chief of Surveys at the Oregon Department of Transportation (DoT) which targets the full lifecycle of highway assets from planning through design and construction and operation and maintainenance.  Some large construction projects are already being designed, built and operated and maintained with a full lifecycle perspective.

Utility infrastructure

Industry surveys report that up to 80 percent of a utility's resources and budget can be spent on operating and maintaining existing utility infrastructure.   Surveys also show that aging utility infrastructure is a top priority for most utilities.

Be Inspired Awards: Mapping, Monitoring, Rehabbing, and Replacing Infrastructure

One of the projects focused specifically on full lifecycle data management for highway construction.  The project, which was submitted by the Roads Directorate, Denmark, is for the $ 580 million 39-kilometer Herning – Holstebro highway which includes eight interchanges, four railway crossings, and five bridges.  The important achievement of the project was to create a digital workflow with meaningful requirements for sharing data among disciplines and across the entire project lifecycle.  The project was a finalist for the year's Be Inspired Award for Innovation in Roads.

Seven of the finalists' submissions involved renovation, rehabbing, and retrofit.  An outstanding example of a rehab project is the Bond Street to Baker Street Tunnel Remediation Project.  This is a London Underground  project in the UK.  It involved the replacement of the existing elastoplastic concrete lining of a 215-meter tunnel segment on the Jubilee Line with a spheroidal graphite iron lining - all while the line was running at full capacity.  This achievement won this year's Be Inspired Award for Innovation in Rail and Transit at the Year in Infrastructure 2015 conference.

Two of the finalists' projects involved replacement. An example of a replacement project was the Decommissioning and Replacement of Del Rio Bridge on US 20  this was carried out by Harper-Leavitt Engineering for the Idaho Transportation Department with minimum disruption to traffic.

Five of the finalists submitted projects that involved monitoring and extracting more value from existing transportation and utility infrastructure including rail, electric substations, electric and water and waste water distribution networks.

An example is a project submitted by SA Water which won the Be Inspired Innovation in Asset Performance Management Award.  The project involved integrating a hydraulic model and an operational analytics tool with network sensors to help them optimize their network.  These tools enable them to optimize chlorine dosing for different water sources (runoff, desalinization, rivers), minimize electric power costs, and improve water quality by mapping water age across their entire network. SA Water have not only been able to reduce their power bill by A$3 million, but also have cut their network operating costs by nearly a A$ million.  It has also resulted in improved water quality.  More fundamentally it has given them much greater insight into sources of revenue and the costs of various aspects of operating a water network.

Four of the finalist projects involved mapping and historic site protection.  An example is a gas main project submitted by Utility Mapping Services Inc.  This project involved creating a 3D map of underground utilities along a stretch of highway with complex utility infrastructure woven through dense commercial and residential areas with limited right-of-way and heavy traffic congestion.  Most critically from a safety perspective, there were no utility strikes on the project.  As a result the 3D model is credited with reducing construction time from 10 to 7 weeks.  Most importantly from a budget perspective, there were no change orders and the total cost of the project came in at 10-15% less than estimated in the absence of a 3D model.

Another example is a project submitted by the Singapore Land Authority (SLA).  Singapore intends to be the world's first "smart nation".  Part of this initiative involves developing a virtual Singapore that is intended to be the source of authoritative information about Singapore for use by government agencies.  The project involves capturing large amounts of data using multiple rapid mapping technologies including oblique imagery, airborne laser scanning, mobile laser scanning, and terrestrial scanning.  The data has been compiled into 3D city model in a single database repository which includes geometry, topology, semantics and appearance.  The database relies on CityGML, a standard managed by the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC), for the database schema and for data exchange.  The total volume of data is more than 50 terabytes. The database is open and accessible to all government agencies. The most challenging part of the project has been the development of business processes and technologies for ensuring the data remains current.  At the the Year in Infrastructure conference in London the SLA the won the annual Be Inspired Award for Innovation in Government.

Modeling underground utilities in 3D reduces construction time and costs

The location of existing underground utility infrastructure  is more often than not poorly known which creates significant risk for infrastructure and highway construction projects.  In a gas line construction project which Utility Mapping Services (UMS) submitted for a Be Inspired Award, UMS diverged from normal construction practice by first creating a  3D model of the existing underground and above ground infrastructure.  During construction there were no utility strikes and as a result there were no change orders and the construction project was completed in 7 instead of the expected 10 weeks. 

I had a chance to chat with Donald Haines, Senior Engineer, and Cameron Greer, Project Engineer at UMS.  The project involved constructing an eight inch high pressure natural gas pipeline along a major highway SR510. The customer was Puget Sound Energy which is responsible for electricity and gas in the Puget Sound area.  The Washington DOT was also involved in the project because the new pipeline runs within the SR510 right of way.

A major risk was that the project corridor includes complex utility infrastructure woven through dense commercial and residential areas with limited right-of-way and heavy traffic congestion.  Because of the complexity of the underground utility infrastructure it was decided at the beginning of the project to develop a 3D model of the existing underground infrastructure.  The model enabled the design team to adjust the pipe elevation and horizontal alignment to avoid potential utility conflicts during the design phase.  The 3d model of existing utility infrastructure avoided unnecessary utility relocations and the associated construction delays and contractor change orders. It also allowed for tighter contractor bid estimates by providing a more accurate design to the contractors. 

UMS' subsurface utility engineering (SUE) services group were familiar with new remote sensing technology such as ground penetrating radar (GPR) and electromagnetic detection (SPAR300) which allowed them to acquire 3-D location data for  underground utility infrastructure.  Application of new SUE technology created much greater value for the customer because UMS can now clearly convey to the client the issues presented by existing infrastructure and work with their design and construction teams and the utility infrastructure owners to minimize utility relocations and avoid surprises from buried unknowns.

Starting with a 2D basemap, the underground survey was conducting using several technologies, including SPAR300 and GPR, and potholing for validation.  In addition to the expected utility infrastructure, the survey detected undocumented abandoned utility lines which highlights an important advantage of the new remote sensing technologies.  The data was captured and integrated to create a 3D model using Trimble software.  The 3D model formed the basis for the design for the new gas pipeline.    The 3D model detected 170 conflicts, points of intersection of the design for the new pipeline with other utilities.  Several alternative routes were assessed and the costs and benefits of each were computed and compared in order to determine the optimal routing for the new pipeline.  3D visualization of the alternative routes helped the designers show Puget Sound Energy and the Washington DOT the advantages of alternative routes and allowed changes to be made to the design live in front of the customer.  One interesting wrinkle is that the design had to avoid conflicting with new sewer line which had not been built yet.  One of the  existing sewer lines was scheduled to be replaced by a significantly larger one in the near future.

A major advantage of the 3D model is that it reduces the risk of utility strikes during construction.  On projects where automated construction is used, exclusion zones can be created from the underground 3D model that prevent the machinery from striking utility infrastructure.

The 3D model helped in other ways.  The project required two variances from the Washington DOT which were granted in record time because the 3D model showed so clearly why and where they were required.  The 3D model helped to minimize highway disruptions to the public.  Most critically from a safety as well as cost perspective, there were no utility strikes on the project.  As a result the 3D model is credited with reducing construction time from 10 to 7 weeks.  Most importantly from a budget perspective, there were no change orders and the total cost of the project came in at 10-15% less than estimated in the absence of a 3D model.

PG&E's distributed substation design solution wins Be Inspired Award at YII2015

Smart substations are an essential component of the next generation of the electric power grid.  But for many utilities they have become a severe bottleneck because of limited substation design resources.  Enabling external contractors to participate efficiently in substation design is becoming an important strategy for alleviating this problem.  After a year in which Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) had failed to complete 60% of its substation design projects, PG&E embarked on an innovative project to enable external contractors to participate efficiently in the substation design process.  This achievement won this year's Be Inspired Award for Innovation in Utilities at the Year in Infrastructure 2015 conference in London.

PG&Es Substation Engineering Services had deployed a new substation design system that integrated electric and physical design to approximately 80 internal design employees.  The new system halved the average time required per drawing from 24 to 12 hours.  This resulted in efficiency gains of about $ 5 million in savings per year on contracted projects. 

But  PG&E found that it still had a substation design backlog.  PG&E's strategy for accelerating substation design relied on the expanded use of external contractors to augment its stretched internal resources.  However, as its use of external contractors grew, PG&E found that efficiency decreased because the overhead associated with external resources was very high compared to internal resources.  PG&E's solution was to develop a distributed engineering design system that allowed engineers anywhere in the world to collaborate efficiently on substation design.  PG&E’s distributed substation design environment reduced the average time required per drawing for external contractors by a third, making external contractors nearly as efficient as internal designers.  Altogether the distributed engineering design system saved $7.3 million in costs annually.  Also since less travel was required, a side effect of the project was a reduced carbon footprint.

Be Inspired Awards at Year in Infrastructure 2015: Data management across the full infrastructure lifecycle

Construction is being transformed.  I've blogged about the startling (at least to traditional construction contractors) vision of the future of highway construction of the Chief of Surveys at the Oregon Department of Transportation (DoT) in which full lifecycle data management,  BIM for Infrastructure and geospatial play a central role. 

At a GeoBIM conference in Amsterdam, Jothijs van Gaalen of BAM gave real world examples of how construction is being transformed including full lifecycle data management and GIS and BIM integration. BAM's motivation for investing in this new approach to highway construction is the growing demand for Design, Build, Finance and Maintain (DBFM) projects.  In a DBFM contract, the contractor is not only responsible for designing and building the project, but also for all maintenance.  Being able at the completion of construction, to migrate the data collected during design and construction to an integrated GIS + asset management system system to support highway maintenance activities can dramatically reduce costs during the operate and maintain phase of a highway project.

At the Year in Infrastructure conference in London the Danish Road Directorate is one of the finalists for the annual Be Inspired Innovation in Roads Awards.  The Danish Road Directorate submission involves a US$ 580 million design-build contract for the 39-kilometer Herning – Holstebro project that included eight interchanges, four railway crossings, and five bridges.

The unique aspect of this project that makes it so interesting is the requirement for a digital workflow for sharing data across disciplines, among both internal project team members and external partners, with meaningful data sharing requirements across the project’s entire lifecycle.  CAD and engineering standards were enforced for all submitted drawings and engineering files which were inspected for divergences from the standards.  As a result of defining data requirements for each stage of the lifecycle, the Danish Road Directorate and its external partners have been able to achieve significant efficiency gains.

First online course for BIM-integrated energy modeling for buildings

Energy performance modeling for buildings is a new field, but one that is getting a lot of interest under the impetus of government mandates and incentives.  It's so new that there is no set of standard best practices.  Energy modelers are having to make it up as they go.   But this is beginning to change.  Trailloop has just released an online course for BIM-Integrated Energy Modeling for buildings.  The course was created by Jean Carriere who is one of the early pioneers in applied energy performance modeling.  Jean has been working commercially in this very new field for about 5 years.  Jean also teaches BIM modeling at a local community college.

In the United States according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), buildings are responsible for 65 % of electricity consumption.  An important motivation for energy efficient buildings in many jurisdictions are aggressive building codes that push energy efficiency.   For example, the 2013 California Green Building Standards Code (Title 24) is one of the first “green” building codes.   Other motivations are customer driven certification such as LEED and other "green" certification - LEED v4 incorporates up to 18 credits for demand response -  and financial incentives from local governments and power utilities to reduce energy consumption, peak load or both. Government mandates for zero energy buildings (ZEB) have been introduced in E.U., the U.S. and Japan.   According to Navigant Research, global ZEB revenue is expected to grow from $629.3 million in 2014 to $1.4 trillion by 2035.

Energy performance modeling is an essential tool for estimating the energy requirements of a new or existing building.  An energy performance analysis allows you to determine how much energy your building will consume in a year, assess the most cost effective insulation and glazing, and assess other things that you can do as part of the building design to optimize energy usage.  An energy analysis requires a lot of data - geometry of the building, performance characteristics of materials, geolocation and orientation of the building, and so on.  Simulation applications allow you to include local environmental conditions and conduct thermal modeling, daylight and airflow simulations.  Thermal modeling includes energy consumption, thermal comfort, CO₂ emissions, renewable energy integration, and electric power load. Natural lighting includes visual comfort (glare) and the reduction of energy use through natural lighting.  Airflow simulation includes external wind simulation, internal airflow simulation, clean room ventilation, and reduction in electrical load as a result of using natural ventilation.

There are many energy analysis tools available (lighting, thermal, emissions, water usage, etc) , many are very complex, and the volume of data that are required is increasing exponentially.  Many energy modelers follow a best-of-breed approach so interoperablity is a major challenge in improving productivity in energy performance analysis.

Increasingly for energy modelers the natural place to start is with a Building Information Model (BIM).  There are several reasons for this.  First of all it is what many of the energy performance analysis packages expect and it is supported by the gbXML standard.  Secondly it allows all the information required by the architect, engineers and construction contractors to be accessed in one place.  And thirdly it helps in communicating the results of the energy performance analysis to the people who need it including heating and cooling, lighting and other types of engineers, all  of whom may require the same  information but communicated in different ways.

In most projects the energy modeler is brought in after the building has been designed.  If the building was designed using BIM,  the starting point is the architect's BIM model and an associated database containing information about elements of the building.  Otherwise it is necessary to start with paper drawings and generate the BIM model from scratch.  In addition the geolocation and orientation of the building and local environmental conditions are required.  The first thing the energy modeler does is to create a parallel BIM model, which is a simplified model derived from the architect's BIM model that contains the key elements that are required for the energy analysis such as simplified walls and floors, room bounding elements, complete volumes, and window frames and curtain walls.  The simplified model is exported as a gbXML file and imported into an energy analysis package.   The energy performance application is used to run a simulation or several simulations if the energy modeler is asked to consider alternative designs.  Finally, a visualization showing energy consumption using the BIM model is used to communicate the results of the analyses.

The Trailloop course covers the energy performance modeling workflow in detail including creating the BIM model, exporting it as a gbXML file,  importing the gbXML file into an energy performance package which performs the analysis, and then exporting the results back to the BIM model.  In the Trailloop course industry standard tools are used: Revit for BIM modeling (a free version is available for students) and IES VE for building energy modeling (a special low price is available for students).

In his commercial practice, Jean has focused on optimizing the energy modeling workflow so that starting from paper architectural drawings, he can develop the BIM model, compile energy performance parameters, generate a gbXML file, and conduct a complete energy analysis (daylighting, thermal analysis, etc) for the proposed building in as little as two weeks, and then provide weekly performance feedback from design changes​.

Course description

BIM-Integrated Energy Modeling

The BIM-Integrated Energy Modeling Online Course is the most competitive and time-efficient workflow because it avoids rework through integration during the design process, providing an early feedback of LEED credits.

Students learn about the foundations of Integrated Modeling for a seamless integration into the Virtual Environment’s energy modeling application by using a Revit model, and then gain practical experience in solving complex design integration problems. Model elements are precisely placed using a standard set of modeling rules to ensure a predictable quality. Input data is associated with spaces and zone for thermal template data integration through schedules. Techniques are given to troubleshoot and mitigate all errors from the building geometry in order to apply an accurate building envelope.

Once the building geometry is integrated, students learn how to perform early-stage energy simulations to generate preliminary results on energy performance for various systems. They will be able to edit the building geometry and add new forms to the energy model in order measure the impacts of the added building elements. After producing a building loads report, techniques are given to reduce the load to right-size mechanical equipment.

Learning objectives

1. Construct building geometries in Revit for a seamless integration into IES VE for energy modeling.
2. Update the building geometry from design changes and re-integrate it back into the energy model.
3. Select appropriate energy modeling input data for building constructions, space types and HVAC systems.
4. Describe the differences observed between a baseline run and an energy efficient case for peak heating and cooling load reductions.
5. Display the energy/load difference between the baseline run and the energy efficient case using charts, graphics and tabular data.

Convergence of BIM and geospatial contributes to better management of information

Dr Anne Kemp, Director and Fellow, Atkins, Vice-Chair of BuildingSmart, UK, Chair of ICE BIM Action Group, and Chair of BIM4Infrastructure UK, has published very thought-provoking insights into how the convergence of BIM and geospatial can contribute to the better management of information to help generate the understanding to make better decisions.

Her first assertion “So, let’s put paid to the hang-ups of what is and is not GIS and BIM, and discover what really deserves our focus” is a very good place for all of us to start if we are going to tear down the discipline boundaries that are inhibiting us from moving to a more holistic approach to problem solving in the era of smart cities.

Better outcomes, not BIM or geospatial

Her goal is not to support BIM or geospatial per se, but to use these technologies to improve outcomes.  From Anne's perspective the key outcomes we should be aiming at are

• CLARITY - Clarity of delivery
• TECHNICAL JUDGEMENT - Converging information production with sound engineering judgment and design
• ACCESS - Wider, faster access to comprehensible and integrated information
• LATERAL THINKING - Enabling reflective, adaptive thinking to incorporate whole life and integrated systems approach within the wider geographic context
• INNOVATION - Harnessing innovative technologies and harvesting intelligence from big data
• DECISIONS - Fostering instinctive, but rigorous collaboration and better decision making

Data, not documents

The construction industry is based on documents such as drawings. Documents lock data up within a discipline and prevents the wider access that can be used to build up an integrated view of an asset. In contrast digital data can be used, many times, for different purposes, by different disciplines.  This requires interoperability and the ability to map semantics across different disciplines.

Assets, not projects

The full lifecycle view of a building, road or airport requires thinking of assets not projects. Anne's perspective is that this is where the convergence of BIM with geospatial provides the biggest benefits. The UK government would agree. The short term objective of the UK Government BIM mandate is to reduce the cost of construction (design, tender, build) by 20%.  The longer term objective is by 2025 to reduce the costs associated with designing, building, operating and maintaining buildings and infrastructure by a third.  ‘In-use’ data from facilities management (FM) systems, building management  systems, and sensors including smart phones provides information on how an asset is actually serving the needs of people, and the patterns of behaviour of people using the infrastructure.  This information can be used to optimize building or infrastructure design. A geospatial perspective enables this data to be used not only with individual buildings or infrastructure, but for a whole neighbourhood, town or city.

Data ethics

Ensuring that data is not manipulated to distort decision making is critical to enabling the true data-driven organization of the future. Anne's perspective is that the industry is becoming increasingly dependent on data management professionals. This will require standards and a code of ethics to address challenges of privacy, distortion, and manipulation so as to ensure that data is made available in a way that aids rather than confuses decision making. In the future chief data officers and other information professionals will have even much greater responsibilities - they will be responsible for specifying, collecting, and analyzing the information for decision making that will be critical to the organization's success, even its existence.

Information is not understanding

Malcolm Gladwell in "Blink" points out that “We live in a world saturated with information. We have virtually unlimited amounts of data at our fingertips at all times, and we’re well versed in the arguments about the dangers of not knowing enough and not doing our homework. But what I have sensed is an enormous frustration with the unexpected costs of knowing too much, of being inundated with information. We have come to confuse information with understanding.”

At a recent BIM conference the term “infobesity” came up more than once. A decade ago people were concerned about not having enough data to make informed decisions. Now that we have more data being collected by sensors such as smart meters and smart phones, the problem is how do we make sense from the huge volumes of data that all these smart devices are collecting.

Anne makes the point that when managed correctly, “instant” decisions based on a small amount of data are not just as good, but can be better than those made after analyzing all available data. The "less is more" challenge is to distill the data to just the right subset to enable you can make better decisions faster with less data. Anne believes that this will require more sophisticated visualization techniques to enable insights from patterns in large amounts of data and better collaboration technology to enable a large number of individuals from different disciplines to understand each other (even when using different terms for the same piece of equipment or construction material) and to collaborate fruitfully.

This means that we will be asking our human or computer information  engineers to deliver that essential subset of information to the right people at the right time, and in an intuitively understandable way.  Anne suggests that our cartographic and GIS heritage of creating, analyzing and visualizing a view of the physical world as maps may provide a model for future data managers.  But, as Anne points out, this will have to be transformed for a virtual environment.

Unintended consequences

Anne's final point is often overlooked. BIM, geospatial, augmented reality and other technologies are transforming how we view "reality".  There are very real consequences for people working in a virtual world. Anne mentions the first case of internet addition disorder (IAD) involving Google Glasses on October 14, 2014 and asks how many of us are already there with our smartphones and tablets ?

State of BIM delivery in the UK one year before government mandate

One of the highlights of this this year's RICS BIM Conference in London was the keynote presentation Delivery of Level 2 BIM by Terry Stocks, Deputy Head of Estates Department, Ministry of Justice and  Delivery Director for Level 2 BIM, UK BIM Task Force.  

As people in the construction industry are aware, next year all central government construction projects (which represents about half of the construction industry in the UK) will require building information modeling (BIM) Level 2.  The short term objective is to reduce the cost of construction (design, tender, build) by 20%.  The longer term objective is by 2025 to reduce the costs associated with designing, building, operating and maintaining buildings and infrastructure by a third.

An industry survey in the UK last year reported that 54% of respondents in 2013 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.  Terry's perspective is that BIM is fast becoming the standard way of working for designers and contractors on most construction projects - public and private.

Goal: Avoiding waste

Terry pointed to a recent Economist article which included statistics that explain the primary driving force - avoiding waste - behind BIM adoption around the world.    According to the Economist 30% of the construction process is rework, 50% of the labour effort is wasted, and there is a further 10% loss due to wasted materials.  Even more critically for the operations and maintenance phase of the lifecyle, 3-5% of the construction turnover is lost at the discipline interface (design, tender, construct, and operate).  The discipline interface data loss  resembles a sawtooth diagram with the result that the construction information required to maintain and operate the building is often inaccurate and incomplete.  

An important objective of the full lifecycle BIM initiative is to smooth delivery and avoid data loss at the discipline interfaces.  Some of the key ways to enable this to happen are collaborative early engagement including clients (owners), designers, contractors, and facilities managers (FM) from the beginning and improving inter-discipline interoperability to improve the transfer of information between the  client, designers, the main contractor, sub contractors, and facilities managers. For example, all handover data will be provided in a structured format “COBie UK 2012”.

One of the challenges relating to data that several speakers mentioned is "infobesity" - attempting to collect and maintain  too much data.  The simple guideline suggested to avoid this problem is to only collect data that you have the resources to maintain (keep up-to-date) and that contributes significantly to operational efficiency.   This requires close collaboration between the owner, facilities managers, designers and contractors from the beginning of a project.

Delivery of BIM Level 2

BIM Level 2 is a set of discipline-specific models (architectural, structural, HVAC, services, etc) with a single environment to store shared data and information.  The delivery of BIM Level 2 in the UK is the responsibility of the UK BIM Task Force supported by  key government departments.  It involves building knowledge and capability in government departments, building capability in the supply chain, and encouraging BIM capacity development in the private sector through initiatives such as BIM4SME and other BIM4 community development efforts. One of the most important initiatives is the development and publication of seven key documents which collectively represent an impressive repository of BIM best practices.  Just about every speaker at the RICS BIM conference referenced these documents.

• PAS 1192:2  - Specification for information management for the capital/delivery phase of construction projects using BIM
• PAS 1192:3 - Framework for an asset owning or operating organization to identify its information requirements and to create an asset information model with a governance method.
• BS 1192-4 - Collaborative production of information: Fulfilling employers information exchange requirements using COBie.  All handover data will be provided in a structured format “COBie UK 2012”.
  
• CIC BIM Protocol - The BIM Protocol is a supplementary legal agreement that is incorporated into professional services appointments and construction contracts by means of a simple amendment.  The Protocol creates additional obligations and rights for the employer and the contracted party.
• Classification - A series of tables which classify all aspects of the life cycle of a project to structure data in order to support the BIM process and facilitate collaboration. Expected to be based on CPIC Uniclass 2. (Under development)
• Digital Plan of Works / Levels of Detail (LoD) - Documents the concepts and detail of the management of built asset data derived from the process of building and managing  building information models including how this data is defined, tested and effectively used by both the supply chain and the public client. Level of Detail specifies the level of geometric information a model should exhibit. (Under development)
• Government Soft Landings - "Design for operation" to encourage better outcomes using BIM for built assets during the design and construction stages to ensure value is achieved in the operational lifecycle of an asset.  For example, early engagement of the end user (owner) during design and construction through to operational handover using BIM to provide a fully populated asset data set into the end user's facilities management system.

Savings attributed to BIM

Seven major government projects worth about £ 10 billion which are currently using BIM maintain records of the savings they have seen from using BIM. The measured benefits of BIM and factors associated with BIM range between15-20%, and are primarily realized during design, pre-construction, and construction.   The government estimates that it has achieved savings of £ 1.4 billion through BIM and related improvements in the 2013/2014 fiscal year.

Full lifecyle cost savings

With full lifecyle BIM, the government sees an upside potential of 40%+ with the biggest benefits being realized in the operations phase of the building lifecycle.