Between the Poles

First infrastructure standard based on a common BIM/geospatial model released

There are several initiatives underway to develop multi-disciplinary interoperability standards for the convergence of BIM, 3D and geospatial.  The first BIM standard based on a common conceptual model shared between the BIM and geospatial worlds has just been released for public comment by buildingSMART.  Simultaneously the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) has just released the OGC LandInfra Conceptual Model, the first draft of the InfraGML conceptual model for land parcels and the built environment.

Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) are the open and neutral data format standard for the exchange of building information models (BIM).  The IFC standard was developed and is supported by buildingSMART International and is  registered with ISO as ISO16739.  IFC is widely used in the construction industry in many countries and is mandated in some such as Finland.

However, the current versions of IFC are intended for buildings (vertical BIM).  buildingSMART has initiated the IFC for Infrastructure project to extend the IFC standard to support linear transportation infrastructure (horizontal BIM or BIM for Infrastructure) such as rail, road, bridges, and tunnels.

The first IFC for Infrastructure extension project is the IFC Alignment project. It is intended to provide the data model for geolocation information for 3D and 2D alignments and has been developed in concert with the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC).  The objectives of the IFC Alignment project is to enable the exchange of alignment information through the full infrastructure lifecyle from planning through design and construction to asset management. 

The IFC Alignment project will also provide a conceptual model of road alignments that will be used in both OGC and buildingSMART standards for roads, railways, tunnels and bridges. A common conceptual model (typically represented in UML) is extremely important because it is a first step in developing full lifecyle models for infrastructure from planning through design and construction to operate and maintain.  OGC standards focus on planning and operation whereas design and construction are buildingSMART’s focus area.  A common conceptual model will enable IFC alignment models to be mapped onto InfraGML (a standard being developed by the OGC) models.  The OGC has just released the OGC LandInfra Conceptual Model, the first draft of the InfraGML conceptual model for land parcels and the built environment.  (The document was submitted by Bentley Systems, Inc, Leica Geosystems, Trimble, Australian Government Department of Communications, Autodesk, Vianova Systems AS, and buildingSMART International.)

BuildingSMART International has just released drafts of the IFC Infrastructure Alignment Conceptual Model and the Candidate Standard for IFC Alignment and is asking for public comment.  Once it is finalized and becomes part of the IFC standard, it will be submitted to ISO/TC 59/SC 13 to be incorporated into ISO 16739.

Integrating BIM and GIS for full lifecycle civil construction projects

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 BIM for Infrastructure and geospatial play a central role. 

At the first GeoBIM conference in Amsterdam, Jothijs van Gaalen gave some real world examples of highway construction transformation including GIS+BIM integration including using laser scanning/LiDAR for reality capture at the beginning of a design/construction project. 

Jothijs is Manager of the (civil) BIM Programme and Head of the Structural Modelling department at the Royal BAM Group nv / BAM Infraconsult.  The Royal BAM Group nv is a large infrastructure engineering consulting firm with 23,500 employees operating in over 40 countries, primarily in Europe.  Its goal is to be among the top 10 companies in its market segment.  To achieve this is has targetted supply chain integration focused on a sustainable built environment.  One of the key areas of integration in GIS+BIM.  BAM has BIM/GIS modelling departments in Amsterdam, The Hague, Gouda, Singapore, and Jakarta.

Full lifecycle construction projects

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. 

A project at BAM starts with 2D geographic data that is visualized through a GIS web portal. The web portal gives everyone on the team an early perspective on the project site including underground utilities and aboveground structures before design begins.  During the tender process the geospatial data is combined with 3D data including 3D representations of nearby natural and man-made features as well as proposed designs to create a 3D environment for assessing alternative designs.  The 3D environment improves collaboration among the team members as well as enabling better communication with the client through 3D visualization of proposed designs. After award, the first step is conducting LiDAR scans of the site/proposed route.  At completion of construction, the data collected during design and construction is migrated to an integrated GIS + asset management system system to support maintenance activities. 

Level of development (LoD) is critical for full lifecycle construction projects at BAM because it specifies the level of detail for both graphical and non-graphical data that is required at each phase of a project's lifetime; roughly tender (LOD100), design (LOD200), construction (LOD300), and  operate and maintain (LOD400). 

Design, Build, Finance and Maintain project

The N33 highway project in the Netherlands is an example of a Design, Build, Finance and Maintain (DBFM) project. In a DBFM contract, the contractor is not only fully responsible for designing and building the project, but also handles the administration and all maintenance. In a DBFM contract the government buys a service: the provision of an available national road.  BAM is responsible for design and construction,  which occurred during 2012 – 2014, and for 20 years of maintenance.

During design and construction BAM used a BIM for Infrastructure process based around a geospatially-enabled database.  At completion of construction, the data collected during design and construction was migrated to an integrated GIS + Maximo system designed to support maintenance activities during the 20 year period that BAM is responsible for highway maintenance.  Maximo is IBM's enterprise asset management (EAM) software product.

Best practices

Jothijs discussed some of the best practices that BAM has developed during the N33 and other projects.  These include integrated BIM + GIS with time (4D), and financial (5D), training of multi-disciplinary teams, standardizing LoD for graphical and non-graphical data and involving suppliers as early as possible in the project. 

The one that really struck me as potentially transformational is BAM's recommendation to collect accurate geometrical data (reality capture) at the beginning of the project, before design, using laser scanning.  Since laser scanning is not normally part of a surveyor's skill set, I was interested in who was responsible for conducting  the scans and how BAM's surveyors were involved.  Jothijs said that BAM's survey group performed the laser scanning as well as traditional surveys.  This sounds like the result of another of BAM's best practices, training multi-disciplinary teams.

Geospatial + BIM and full lifecycle building management

Over 50% of the cost of maintaining a building is what is called operations and maintenance which is comprised of administration, maintenance and repairs, and restoration projects.  In most building construction projects, even if BIM is used for design and construction, the building information (specifications, submittal information including  equipment and performance data and warranties, finished information, O&M manuals, panel schedules, and the building control system) required for operations and maintenance has to be (re)collected after completion of construction even though the designers and contractors may have already collected this information. 

At the BIM Worldwide: Solutions for Canada conference in Toronto, Birgitta Foster, VP Operations and Facility Integration, VDCO Tech, member of the bSI Standards Executive Committee, and involved in developing the buildingSMART Data Dictionary, gave her view of the flow of facility information through the full lifecycle of a building, BIM and the key role of geospatial in this process.

From Birgitta's perspective BIM is a database of building information with a 3D model interface.  It stores and links to information about the building and the equipment in the building.   BIM is essential to the project process including design and construction, but she believes (and the UK government also believes) 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.  To realize this value requires that projects be perceived as not ending with the owner, but starting with the owner, who really knows best what information is important to his/her business processes for operating and maintaining the building.

Birgitta outlined what a full lifecycle facilities information flow looks like.  It starts with a facilities information specification from the owner identifying the building information included as part of the final deliverables at the time of commissioning.  The facilities information specification should be part of the contract between the owner and the designers and contractors who will construct the building.

The facilities information required by the owner's specification are entered into BIM database during design and construction by the designers and contractors.

At the completion of construction the facilities information data collected by the designers and contractors and stored with the BIM model in digital form represents a key deliverable to the owner together with the BIM model.    The facilities information can then be used to populate the building manager's asset management/facilities management system database.

One of the challenges is orchestrating a data flow through the various players each of whom has his/her own perspective.  Architects, engineers, and contractors live in a model-centric visual world, but building owners live in an information-centric  world.  Birgitta's perspective is that most owners are not yet ready to manage “live” BIM models,  but many are ready to manage the rich data sets of building  information that can be obtained from models.

Geospatial and BIM and full lifecycle building management

Since the world has become aware of the human impact on the environment, it has become increasingly difficult to design buildings without reference to its geographic context.  Many cities have environmental, zoning and other types of by-laws that require designers to take into account neighboring buildings, infrastructure and vegetation.  States and national governments are developing building codes that require designers to assess the energy, water, emissions, and other environmental impacts of a new building.  Several countries such as the US, EU, and Japan have already mandated zero energy buildings in the near future.  This means that when designing and constructing a building, the traditional approach ( often associated with a 0,0 coordinate system ) of design in isolation is no longer adequate for sustainable design. For example, in the UK right-to-light is a legal requirement, so that when designing a a new building in London, the designer has to be able to model the shadowing of neighbouring buildings.   Energy performance modeling for buildings involves natural lighting, solar irradiation, and other  analyses which require information about neighbouring structures and vegetation.

Birgitta argues that integrated geospatial+BIM is even more critical during the operations and maintenance phase of a building.  Utilities, transportation, emergency planning, first responder access, energy performance, and evacuation management all require information about internal and external infrastructure.  A common geospatial coordinate system enables a comprehensive operational view of all infrastructure including internal and external structures.

COBie

Birgitta learned through hard experience that custom or proprietary spreadsheets creates problems and highly recommends using an industry standard called Construction Operations Building information exchange ( COBie ) which is a free and open standard that in the U.S. is part of the National BIM Standard-US V2.  The UK government plans to include a requirement for the UK version of COBie in all national government procurements. 

Birgitta’s experience with COBie began in 2007–2009 when she ran a project in which she created a facilities information spreadsheet, which captured all the required asset information in a single place.  But she subsequently found that the time and expense of the custom mapping of this information to existing asset management software meant that her spreadsheet for sharing facilities information could not be realised in practice.  Fortuitously, at about the same time the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) had undertaken to develop a spreadsheet for exchanging facilities information for its construction projects.  This spreadsheet ultimately became COBie, which was proposed and accepted in version 2 of National BIM Standard-US in 2012.  Once COBie was recognised as an industry standard information exchange standard, vendors began integrating COBie into their software for users.

Birgitta recommends that owners use COBie as the basis for the facilities information specification that should be part of every construction contract.  During and as part of the deliverables after construction it can be used for the transfer of facility information between virtual design and construction software and owners.  Her recommendation for designers/contractors is to avoid over-stuffing the model with information the owner "might" need, for owners her recommendation is to never ask for more than you can maintain.

COBie offers huge benefits to the facilities manager.  Most importantly it enables importing digital facilities information into asset management/facilities management software systems.  Another benefit is that the widespread adoption of COBie would transform FM pricing.  Pricing an FM contract is cumbersome, with numerous stages before a price can be calculated, and with significant uncertainty in the result. With COBie information, the process is radically streamlined, with fewer stages and greater accuracy. 

National Building Modeling Standard United States V3

Version 3 of the National Building Information Modeling Standard-United States (NBIMS-US V3) is expected to be released by year’s end.  It includes a BIM Project Planning Guide for Owners and a number of new facility data exchange standards and extensions.

• Lifecycle Information Exchange for Product Data (LCie) - for products and product type data exchanges throughout the facility life-cycle
• Building Programming Information Exchange - for managing client’s (owner's) requirements
• HVAC Information Exchange - Specification and standardization for representation of HVAC systems
• Plumbing Information Exchange - Specification and standardization for representation of water systems - Extends the (industry Foundation Classes 4) IFC4 specification to cover plumbing practices in North America.
• Electrical Information Exchange - Specification and standardization for representation of Electrical systems. Extends IFC4 specification to cover wiring practices in North America

NBIMS-US V3 also includes Practical BIM Contract Requirements, the requirements used by the USACE for its contracts for construction projects.

Singapore mandates BIM e-submissions for building projects greater than 5000 square meters

Transforming Singapore's construction industry: from paper drawings to smart cities

Singapore has a compelling vision of where it wants to be by 2030.  Since about 2003 when it first introduced e-submissions, it has moved rapidly on two fronts; automating the building permitting process and improving construction productivity by transforming the construction industry. 

Building permitting 

Singapore's goal is simple, to implement the fastest building permitting in the world.  The Building and Construction Authority (BCA) led a multi-agency effort in 2007/2008 to implement the world’s first BIM electronic submission (e-submission).  The BIM e-submission system streamlines the process for regulatory submission. Project teams only need to submit one building model, which contains all of the information needed to meet the requirements of a regulatory agency.  In 2010, nine regulatory agencies accepted architectural BIM 3D models for approval through e-submission. This was followed by the acceptance of mechanical, electrical and plumbing (MEP) and structural BIM models in 2011.  In 2013 the Singapore government began mandating architectural BIM e-submissions for building projects greater than 20,000 square meters.  In 2015 BM e-submissions will be required for all projects greater than 5,000 square meters.

Improving construction productivity

A related, major initiative of the government is to improve the construction industry’s productivity through the use of BIM by 20-30%.  In 2010 the BCA implemented the BIM Roadmap with the aim that BIM would become widely used in the construction industry by 2015.  The government's long term goal is to create a highly integrated and technologically advanced construction sector led by progressive firms and supported by a skilled and competent workforce in 2020.

At the BIM Worldwide: Solutions for Canada conference in Toronto, Cheng Tai Fatt, Director, BCA and William Lau, of William Lau Architects and past-president of buildingSMART Singapore, gave a fascinating overview of this dynamic city's implementation of BIM and its BIM plans for the future.

In 2013 an industry adoption survey found that 76% of firms surveyed had begun BIM adoption.  It also estimated that 96% will have started BIM adoption by the end of 2015.  The survey also found that in 2013, 15% of the firms surveyed used BIM on more than 50% of their projects, a significant increase compared to 2012 when only 4% of firms did.

The primary applications of BIM in Singapore are

• Design visualization
• Clash detection
• Construction coordination modeling
• Construction phasing and scheduling
• Quantity take-off
• Documentation/specification management
• Design analysis including energy, solar and wind analyses

The government's BIM development strategy is based on the public sector leading the way.   But it is designed to encourage the private sector by  promoting industry success stories and removing impediments.  The latter includes developing a series of industry-wide BIM guides, defining a legal and contractual framework for BIM-based projects, and studying the BIM workflow including the interaction between consultants and contractors to identify alternative ways of collaborating such as early contractor involvement and integrated project development (IPD). 

The government has put a lot of effort into building BIM capability and capacity through outreach, handholding and mentoring, and training programs (the government subsidizes BIM training by up to 50%). Many of Singapore's universities and polytechnics are involved with BIM training and education in some way.

The government also encourages and supportes the development of BIM standards such as buildingSMART's Industry Foundation Classes (IFC).  For example, BCA and buildingSMART Singapore developed a library of building and design objects as well as project collaboration guidelines. 

Finally the government has implemented  programs for incentivizing BIM adopters. BCA
introduced a S$6-million BIM Fund under the Construction Productivity and Capability Fund in June 2010. The BIM Fund covers the costs of training, consultancy, software and hardware.

Singapore's Second BIM Roadmap

Singapore is working on developing a second BIM roadmap with a focus on process transformation, BIM research and development, BIM for contractors, and BIM for facilities management.  There are similarities in this roadmap to the UK Government's BIM Level 3 strategy.

BIM market in tornado of demand in Finland

Finland has been among the earliest adopters of Building Information Modeling (BIM).  A startup software company named Tekla Oy was formed in 1966 and got heavily into BIM in the 1970s.  Tekla was acquired by Trimble in 2012 for about half a billion dollars and has become the centerpin of Trimble's BIM business since then. The Finnish state property services agency, Senate Properties, has required the use of BIM for its projects since 2007.

At the BIM Worldwide: Solutions for Canada conference in Toronto, Tomi Henttinen, Chair buildingSMART Finland and Founder and  Director of R&D at Gravicon Oy, presented a current overview of the status of BIM in Finland.

Vertical BIM

According to Henttinen BIM in Finland crossed the adoption chasm around 2009/2010 and is currently in the tornado phase (late pragmatists adopt en masses - from Geoffrey Moore's Crossing the Chasm) of the evolution of the Finnish BIM market.  BIM has become an everyday tool in projects. Common guidelines have improved the quality of BIM and software tools are getting better all the time. Knowledge and skills are improving rapidly.  All big cities and all big construction firms use BIM.  The overall market adoption is estimated to be 20-30%, mostly design firms (67%) and construction firms (50%).  BIM is used routinely from planning through design to construction for buildings.

BIM adoption is much greater in the public than in the private sector, but the public sector is a much greater part of the Finnish construction industry than in the U.S., for example.

Interestingly there is little penetration of BIM in the operations and maintenance (O&M) phase including facilities management (FM).  This is surprising.  In the U.K. the national government's strategy is based on the expectation that the biggest payoff from BIM adoption is over the full lifecycle of a building, 80-85% of which is O&M.

Open standards

Unlike some other countries like the U.S., BIM in Finland is based on standards.  In Finland BIM is synonymous with the Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) standard.  According to Henttinen, open standards have accelerated BIM adoption in Finland.

BIM for Infrastructure

According to Henttinen BIM for infrastructure is developing rapidly in Finland. Dozens of pilot projects are underway.  BIM for Infrastructure is also intended to be standards-based.  Inframodel3 (the Finnish subset of LandXML) has has been required by large clients since May 2014.

Penetration by type of firm

Among architects and engineers BIM knowledge and skills is already good.  Companies in this category want to be more competitive in BIM. 

Construction companies understand the benefits of BIM and adoption is accelerating.  The biggest challenge is project management.

Civil Engineers and city planners are just starting to adopt BIM for infrastructure projects.  But there is a limited number of players in this sector so implementation is happening faster than in vertical BIM.

Clients (owners) still remain the weakest link. Only a few understand the potential and are requiring BIM.

Education and training

A major challenge is that in Finland BIM training is not well organized nor certified.  There are signs of improvement.  Universities are getting more active in teaching BIM.

Extending BIM to the full life-cycle of buildings including operations and maintenance

The UK Government's goal for construction industry is to reduce the CAPEX for public construction (design and build) projects.  To reach its goal for the construction industry the UK Government has undertaken several initiatives, one of which is a commitment to embrace Building Information Modelling (BIM) in Government projects.  For public projects BIM has been mandated starting in 2016.  The main motivation for this incredible effort to transform the UK public construction industry over a 5-year time frame is intended to reduce costs.  When the current government took over the reins, the UK Government was broke and desperately needed to find a way to do more with less.   Other goals include reducing the UK's carbon intensity in line with its EU carbon commitments and making the UK a leader in the international BIM construction market.

The UK Government has explicitly targeted Level 2 BIM in the maturity ramp, defined as “file based collaboration and library management.”  Level 2 BIM is a series of domain specific models (e.g. architectural, structural, services etc)  where structured data can be shared based on COBie UK 2012.  The mandate is quite far reaching.  The projects that are covered are defined on the BIM Task Force's site,

The Government Construction Strategy (GCS) requires that: Government will require fully collaborative 3D BIM (with all project and asset information, documentation and data being electronic) as a minimum by 2016. This refers to all centrally procured Government projects as outlined in the GCS including new build and retained estate, vertical and linear.  The Government Construction Strategy and it’s BIM intervention is far reaching (there is no minimum value (£) on a BIM enabled project).

The initial focus is on the design/build part of the lifecycle, but the 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".

BIM Standards in the UK

At the BIM Worldwide: Solutions for Canada conference in Toronto, Nick Tune Director at BRE and buildingSMART, outlined the next step for BIM in the UK which is BIM Level 3, an integrated BIM process characterized by a fully open process and data integration enabled by Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) and International Framework for Dictionaries (IFD).   Whereas BIM Level 2 was essentially a homegrown UK-only effort that only now has begun to reach out to international standards organizations such as ISO to get British BIM standards adopted as ISO standards, BIM Level 3 will rely on collaboration with international standards organizations such as buildingSMART and ISO from the beginning. 

Full lifecycle integrated BIM

As an example of what is possible with BIM Level 3 Nick outlined a full lifecycle integrated BIM process that begins with requirements and constraints and ends with the delivery to the owner of a 3D model containing details of as-installed equipment, plant and furniture.

• Data Drop 1 - Model represents requirements and constraints including functional requirements, environmental and finishes requirements.  3D model is a simple space model with boxes representing rooms.
• Data drop 2 - Model represents outline solution.  3D model included generic mechanical, electrical and plumbing (MEP) and furniture, fixtures and equipment (FF&E) items such as sinks and desks.
• Data drop 3 - Model represents construction information.  3D model shows actual products, plant , equipment and furniture for MEP and FF&E items and includes local drawings. 
• Data drop 4 - Model represents operations and maintenance information.  3D model shows as-installed products, plant and equipment for MEP and FF&E items.

In response to a question about documented examples for the business benefits of a full lifecycle BIM process culminating in a BIM model for O&M, he said there is not yet information on the savings or ROI that can be expected with this process, but the government expects it to exceed the savings on design/build because its benefits extend over the 80-85% of a building's total lifetime costs.

Owners driving transformation in the construction industry

At the BIM Worldwide: Solutions for Canada conference in Toronto, Patrick MacLeamy, Chairman of buildingSMART and CEO of HOK delivered the keynote.  His message was very simple.  In the U.S. buildings are too expensive, are too inefficient to operate and maintain, and don't last long. The problem is that the construction industry is too fragmented.  The process of orchestrating many disciplines in an adversarial, litigation-prone environment is too complex and leads to frequent budget and schedule overruns.   Internationally the U.S. construction industry is falling behind the Nordic countries, the U.K. and Singapore.

The way to solve the problem is for people in the construction industry to practice their profession in a cooperative way.  Information has to be shared between owners, designers, contractors, operations and facilities management.  Patrick is convinced that the word is getting out among owners that a collaborative process built around shared information will save money and time.  Owners are beginning to demand BIM.  According to Patrick even insurance companies and attorneys recognize that the adversarial process is wasteful and has to change.

Multi-disciplinary interoperability standards for the convergence of BIM, 3D and geospatial

At the ISO/TC 59 Plenary Week in Toronto this week, a day long collaboration session was organized by ISO/TC 59, buildingSMART, and the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC).  This is a major milestone for the development of standards as a foundation for the convergence of building and civil engineering design and geospatial technology. 

ISO (International Organization for Standardization) is an independent, non-governmental membership organization and the world’s largest developer of voluntary International Standards. ISO, which is made up of 165 member countries with a Central Secretariat in Geneva, has published more than 19 500 International Standards covering almost every industry, from technology, to food safety, to agriculture and health care.

BuildingSMART International (bSi) cooperates with ISO.  Specifically it has liaisons with two ISO committees; ISO/TC 59 (Buildings and civil engineering works) and ISO/TC 59/SC 13 (Organization of information about construction works).  BuildingSMART's main standard Industry Foundation Classes (IFC), which is a standard for sharing BIM in the construction and facility management industries, was adopted as an official ISO standard in 2013 as ISO 16739:2013.

The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) develops publicly available geospatial interface standards. OGC Standards enable interoperable location-aware solutions for the Web, wireless and location-based services and mainstream IT.  Over the years, the OGC has been building a network of alliance partner organisations, many of whom are standards development organizations in market domains related to the built environment.  One of these alliances is with buildingSMART which has an official memorandum of understanding (MOU) with OGC to co-operate. Recently the joint effort has focused on using BIM for Infrastructure and requirements for interoperability between BIM and Geospatial domains.

In 2008/2009 the AECOO-1 Testbed, which was led by the Open Geospatial Consortium  and the buildingSMART alliance, looked at streamlining interoperable communications between parties in the conceptual design phase to get an early understanding of the tradeoffs between construction cost and energy efficiency. Major achievements from the AECOO Testbed include delivery of BIM through open web services (OWS) for multi-disciplinary interative design analysis in real time. [George Percivall personal communication]

In 2012 the OGC, BuildingSMART International, ISO TC 211 and ISOTC 59/SC 13 began discussing ways of cooperating to support harmonization. A Civil Summit held in Waltham, Massachusetts (USA) and Abu Dhabi was organised cooperatively by bSi and OGC.  Since then several domain working groups (DWGs) have been formed to identify gaps and work toward cross-disciplinary standards.  For example, The OGC 3DIM Domain Working Group (DWG) works jointly with ISO TC 59 and buildingSMART to facilitate the definition and development of interface and encoding standards that enable software solutions that allow infrastructure owners, builders, emergency responders, community planners, and the traveling public to better manage and navigate complex built environments.

Geospatial domain working groups (DWGs)

At the ISO/TC 59 Plenary Week Leif Granholm of Trimble gave a quick but comprehensive overview of the work of the three geospatial domain working groups (DWG) in which all three standards groups are involved.  

3D Information Management (3DIM) DWG

3DIM, which used to be called CAD/GIS DWG, is involved in some areas of 3D interoperability that are creating the foundation for moving forward in the direction of modeling entire cities.  These include CityGML, which with extensions can model most of the above ground features of cities excluding inside buildings, augmented reality markup language (ARML), 3D  portrayal, and a first start at a successor to LandXML (which is an orphan right now) called InfraGML, and Indoor Geographic Markup Language (IndoorGML).

IndoorGML

One of the most important initiatives is IndoorGML.  Leif Granholm and others foresee that this may be the "the next big thing", as important for navigating indoor spaces as GPS was for outdoors.  Anyone with a mobile phone with a GPS or a GPS in their car is familiar with how easy it is to navigate anywhere on the planet - as long as it's not in a building.

There are two dimensions to this challenge.  The first is finding a technology analogous to GPS for assigning an XYZ location to people and things in buildings.  For example, in a hospital it is often urgent to be able to determine instantly where Dr Morgan is and where the nearest "crash cart" is.  In a mall it is important for a shopper to know where he or she is at any given instant, where whatever they are looking for is, and how to navigate between the two.  Determining where you are in a building is a technical challenge that is still getting a lot of attention from researchers.
 
The other dimension is context, typically represented by a 3D model of the interior spaces of buildings.  This can show context for shoppers to direct them to whatever they are looking for.  For a maintenance person, it is also necessary to be able to dissolve walls, ceilings, and floors to expose the building's infrastructure, electrical, fire, water, HVAC, and so on.  IndoorGML is intended the provide a standard for modeling indoor spaces.  But it is a more complicated problem.  Compared to outdoors there is a hundred times more data indoors.  Outdoors there are a relatively small number of data providers; national mapping agencies, national space agencies, commercial data providers like Digital Globe, Microsoft, Google, Nokia, TomTom and volunteered data like OpenStreetMap, and so on.  Indoors there are likely to be hundreds of thousands of data providers.  Just as every firm nowadays develops its own web site, many foresee that every firm will develop its own 3D presence and map of its space, for example, to enhance its attractiveness to customers navigating their way around the mall using a 3D map.  IndoorGML provides a standard that will enable this to happen.

The first version of IndoorGML was approved a week ago.

CityGML 3

Development of the next version of CityGML is just ramping up.  But unlike the standards development process used in the past which relied on sharing Microsoft Word documents and wikis, CityGML3 will be developed using a novel approach that was successfuly used for developing the GeoPackage standard.  One of the major innovations from an OGC perspective of the GeoPackage standard development process was achieved by putting the GeoPackage specification out on GitHub, which made it much more accessible to the developer community than if it had been made available in the traditional OGC way. 

The other innovation that CityGML3 will benefit from is a modular approach to standards development. CityGML 3 is actually comprised of 10 sub projects rather than one mega project.

Urban Planning DWG

This is a brand new DWG.  Its objective is to identify the gaps and to facilitate the development of standards to enable interoperability between smart city applications.  Technologies and trends such as Augmented Reality (AR), Smart Cities, Smart Grids, Sensor Webs, the Internet of Things (IoT), LBS (Location Based Services), Facilities Management, navigation (indoor and outdoor) and “Big Data” Analytics all can play important roles in informing urban planners.  In these technology domains, open standards can facilitate the development, publication, discovery, and use of information. The OGC Urban Planning DWG intends to discover requirements for open geospatial standards in information systems involved in the planning, design, use, maintenance and governance of publicly accessible spaces. The DWG already has plans for an OGC Smart City Testbed focused on urban resilience and in 2015 an OGC Smart City pilot.

Land and Infrastructure DWG

A major project for this DWG is to develop a standard called InfraGML for exchanging information relating to highways and roads.  By way of background, LandXML is a widely used standard supported by almost 800 members in the roads and highway transportation sector.  A number of years ago an unsuccessful attempt had been made to make LandXML compliant with the Open Geospatial Consortium's (OGC) Geography Markup Language (GML) standard for geospatial data.

The immediate issue is that LandXML, which is not associated with a recognized international standards organization, has been unsupported for over five years.  To address this issue the Land and Infrastructure DWG chartered a LandInfraSWG (Standards Working Group) for LandXML. Its first activity was to reverse-engineer a UML model and documentation (which were lacking) for LandXML 1.2 as a basis for assessing the viability of supporting LandXML as an OGC interoperability standard. A number of deficiencies relative to the OGC baseline were identified.  The LandInfraSWG has proposed developing a new standard, dubbed InfraGML, that will encompass a subset of LandXML functionality, be defined by a UML conceptual model, would incorporate GML and most importantly for the future, would be supported by the OGC.

CityGML and IFC common data model

Another very interesting project with important implication for the future of geospatial-BIM convergence is creating a conceptual model of road alignments that will be used in both OGC and buildingSMART standards for roads, railways, tunnels and bridges. This is particularly challenging, but extremely important because it is a first step in developing full lifecyle models for infrastructure from planning through design and construction to operate and maintain.  OGC focuses on planning and operation whereas design and construction are buildingSMART’s focus area.

Increasing penetration of open source geospatial software in the global utility GIS market

Improving process efficiency (also here, here, here and here) is a major challenge for the utility industry.  Geospatial technology is a key technology that helps utilities improve the efficiency of their business processes (such as designing-constructing-maintaining and operating their network infrastructure) and the productivity of their staff.

An analysis a couple of years ago by Research and Markets entitled Global GIS market in the Utility industry 2012 - 2016  identified the key factors driving this market growth.  These  include  the growing need for knowledge infrastructure, data quality, managing the mobile workforce, and changing the organizational structure of utilities. .

A Navigant report identified a history of poor GIS data quality as a major problem in the utility industry and reported that poor GIS data quality is an area of significant concern for smart grid planners who plan to use GIS as a foundational data layer for interoperable grid operational processes.  I have blogged about the challenge of data quality in the utility industry on a number of occasions.

A major challenge for small to medium utilities is the increasing penetration of IT in the utility sector driven by the industry transformation associated with the smart grid.  Small to medium utilities often don't have the in-house IT skills or the budget to implement GIS and other applications required by the industry move to smart grid.

Research and Markets has just released a report that covers the present global utility GIS market and its projected growth prospects for the period 2014-2018. The report covers the Americas, and the EMEA and APAC regions. To estimate market size and vendor share, analysts lookd at revenue generated from sales of software, data, and services in several segments including traditional GIS, GPS, photogrammetry and remote sensing, geospatial engineering, and other GIS applications. 

The report was  prepared based on an in-depth market analysis with inputs from industry experts.   Vendors included in the study are Bentley Systems Inc., GE Energy, Hexagon AB, Autodesk Inc., AvisMap GIS Technologies, Beijing SuperMap Software Co. Ltd., China Information Technology, Esri Inc., Google Map, Hitachi Zosen Corp., MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates Ltd., Pitney Bowes Inc. and the US Geological Survey.

The report forecasts that the global utility GIS market will grow at a CAGR of 9.27 % over the period 2014-2018 with improving process efficiency a key market driver.

A key market challenge for existing vendors is the increasing penetration of open-source geospatial software into the utility market.  According to the report many small and medium-sized organizations that cannot invest heavily in GIS solutions choose open-source software. 

The report also expects growing demand in the utility market for 3D GIS software.  The analysis foresees that 3D GIS software is expected to play a major role in the increased adoption of GIS solutions in the utility industry.   According to the report large vendors are developing 3D GIS software, which is expected to drive the growth of the Global GIS market in the Utility industry during the forecast period.

Standards for the convergence of BIM, 3D and geospatial

At Geospatial World Forum 2014 in Geneva this year Leif Granhom, Senior Vice President at Tekla Finland gave an insightful presentation about the integration of building information modeling (BIM) and geospatial information.  An important part of his presentation summarized the efforts currently underway to develop standards for integrating BIM and geospatial information.

What is BIM ?

Leif Granholm has been involved with BIM and geospatial from the beginning, joining a startup software company named Tekla Oy In 1979.  He has spent 30 years at Tekla doing everything from programming to sales to BIM ambassador.  Construction and BIM became the focus of his work a little over 10 years ago. Prior to that, geographic information systems was his focus, so he is familiar with both BIM and geospatial.

Leif first asked the perennial question what is BIM, is it software, process, technology or what ?  In his view there is no practical consensus on what BIM is - everyone to speaks about BIM feels impelled to include a section on what is BIM.  Probably the most common perception of people in the industry is that BIM is software.  Others descriibe it as a process, model, or a populated database describing a facility.  Leif's favourite is that BIM is a Technology.

BIM includes graphics, because appearance is important.  BIM incorporates building objects containing geometry and properties in the form of structured information.  There are different types of objects describing buildings including functional (doors and windows), physical (beams), logical (90 degree angles), and abstract objects (rooms).  BIM also includes objects describing process including schedules, resources,  costs, quality assurance, tasks, work, approvals, RFI's and submittals.  Perhaps the simplest way to summarize BIM is that it is about sharing.  BIM is open, structured, semantic, and standard information.

BIM + geospatial

But other semantic information is also required and this is where the geospatial dimension comes in.  Examples are terrain models, cadastral (parcel) information, zoning information and utilities.

The geospatial community is becoming increasingly aware of 3D technology. It is used for 3D cadasters, digital terrain models, architectural and engineering design and modeling entire cities in 3D.  To support this trend new standards are being developed by the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) such as CityGML and IndoorGML, InfraGML, KML and 3D services in collaboration with web3D (webGL, X3D).  And at the last OGC Technical Committee meeting, the Charter Meeting for a new Urban Planning Domain Working Group (DWG) was held.

BIM-Geospatial integration is a very hot topic. Several standardization initiatives are ongoing including ISO BIM-GIS Ad Hoc Group, the OGC-building SMART alliance partnership, the InfraBIM project to extend Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) for infrastructure (roads, railways, bridges, tunnels, and dams).  There is a joint project to develop conceptual schema of alignments of InfraGML and IFC.  There is also an initiative to generate CityGML and IndoorGML from IFC. The V-Con project is designed to enable Dutch and Swedish traffic authorities to use BIM for the whole life cycle of roads and railways.