Gordon Holmes on Building Information Modeling (BIM)
Gordon Holmes, from ASHRAE, gave a very important presentation this past Thursday evening on the use of BIM in the green and sustainable building effort. Gordon, by the way, will be the new head of ASHRAE. He has been involved since the earliest days of BIM, dating back to 1986.
BIM has created a powerful tool for implementing Integrated Building Design, an integral part of the sustainable building process. In the past, all renderings for building design were two dimensional paper drawings. The earliest use of CAD still gave flat data. 3-D followed with x, y and z model coordinates. Then came 4-D showing additional info. 5-D introduced cost data and automated cost take-offs. 6-D offered procurement, while a future 7-D offers to provide Operational Life Cycle. This last dimension is what will really set BIM apart from prior bundling design programs, in that it will provide a means of maintaining and managing buildings and their operations from earliest design and planning to post-occupancy. Buildings are not static, they are dynamic, and change over periods of time. What may have been designed as a high performance building may in turn, produce less than code compliance in the future, if unforeseen changes or problems develop.
BIM creates a Central Data Base for all building information that can be seen by all team members of the building team. A number of models have been produced by many different organizations. These include NIBS, FIATEC and IAI. A number of proprietary BIM programs are on the market. These include Revit Architecture 2009, Nemescheck, Graphisoft, Oracal, ANSYS CFX5 and Bently to name just some. Theo Metrics, (follow the link from the main page, which at the time of this writing is under construction) a product of Stathis Enterprises has a powerful progam that can integrate with many different appliacations
One important goal of BIM is to produce intelligent, self-maintaining and repairing as well as operational buildings. Open protocol between software technology is of importance, as it allows different users with different software programs or design systems to communicate. The integration of manufactures with the building is also provided for. Model checking and code compliance is also made very possible with BIM. Gordon showed a slide of the mechanical system of a complex building showing the chiller system. To the causal person, this would look like an animated pipe drawing with just many colors. There is MUCH more than that to this slide. Each pipe has information about its location, size, carrying capacity, operational temperature and pressure that can be accessed at any time by any team member.
At this time, the use of BIM is concentrated to 70 percent by the architectural practice, while only 30 percent of mechanical engineers use it. This is expected to change very quickly, as all building team members from architects, to owners realize its many benefits.
BIM can eliminate many of the cost over-runs associated with traditional CAD design, by its ability to keep everyone on the same page. This cuts down on change-orders, errors and omissions as well as potential law suits related to these issues. BIM can also help in the area of Value Added properties. For example, it was pointed out that current manufacturing has value added costs of 62 percent, waste of over 20 percent, and current construction has waste of around 57 percent, and value added costs of only 10 percent. In general, a cost savings of eight percent is expected when BIM design is used.
The McGraw-Hill Building Information Web site, as well as the Building Alliance Web site both have further data. (You will need to Google these sites for the correct addresses and link from there, as I was unable to get these sites to directly link from this blog site.)
To be most effective, BIM needs to be used from the ENTIRE building design, construction and occupancy process -- in other words, the the entire life cycle of the building. The benefits of BIM in the post-occupancy phase are many, and include advanced billing coordinating, performance monitoring (LEED 2009 will require this) as well as diagnostics for future problems and their repairs.
BIM can also automate bills for materials and cost estimation, commonly done in Europe, but only 12-15 percent of USA users employ this approach. Automated shop drawings can be easily created, with all information displayed and accessible via a laptop or other computer.
Energy efficiency and design really benefit from BIM, as different orientations can easily be created for solar performance, with the data that has been placed in the database automatically being used to calculate the benefits or losses for each orientation plane change.
Last, but not by any means least, there are MANY third party add-on programs that can be integrated into BIM to help with such areas as energy efficiency and day light modeling.
In summary, BIM can:
BIM has created a powerful tool for implementing Integrated Building Design, an integral part of the sustainable building process. In the past, all renderings for building design were two dimensional paper drawings. The earliest use of CAD still gave flat data. 3-D followed with x, y and z model coordinates. Then came 4-D showing additional info. 5-D introduced cost data and automated cost take-offs. 6-D offered procurement, while a future 7-D offers to provide Operational Life Cycle. This last dimension is what will really set BIM apart from prior bundling design programs, in that it will provide a means of maintaining and managing buildings and their operations from earliest design and planning to post-occupancy. Buildings are not static, they are dynamic, and change over periods of time. What may have been designed as a high performance building may in turn, produce less than code compliance in the future, if unforeseen changes or problems develop.
BIM creates a Central Data Base for all building information that can be seen by all team members of the building team. A number of models have been produced by many different organizations. These include NIBS, FIATEC and IAI. A number of proprietary BIM programs are on the market. These include Revit Architecture 2009, Nemescheck, Graphisoft, Oracal, ANSYS CFX5 and Bently to name just some. Theo Metrics, (follow the link from the main page, which at the time of this writing is under construction) a product of Stathis Enterprises has a powerful progam that can integrate with many different appliacations
One important goal of BIM is to produce intelligent, self-maintaining and repairing as well as operational buildings. Open protocol between software technology is of importance, as it allows different users with different software programs or design systems to communicate. The integration of manufactures with the building is also provided for. Model checking and code compliance is also made very possible with BIM. Gordon showed a slide of the mechanical system of a complex building showing the chiller system. To the causal person, this would look like an animated pipe drawing with just many colors. There is MUCH more than that to this slide. Each pipe has information about its location, size, carrying capacity, operational temperature and pressure that can be accessed at any time by any team member.
At this time, the use of BIM is concentrated to 70 percent by the architectural practice, while only 30 percent of mechanical engineers use it. This is expected to change very quickly, as all building team members from architects, to owners realize its many benefits.
BIM can eliminate many of the cost over-runs associated with traditional CAD design, by its ability to keep everyone on the same page. This cuts down on change-orders, errors and omissions as well as potential law suits related to these issues. BIM can also help in the area of Value Added properties. For example, it was pointed out that current manufacturing has value added costs of 62 percent, waste of over 20 percent, and current construction has waste of around 57 percent, and value added costs of only 10 percent. In general, a cost savings of eight percent is expected when BIM design is used.
The McGraw-Hill Building Information Web site, as well as the Building Alliance Web site both have further data. (You will need to Google these sites for the correct addresses and link from there, as I was unable to get these sites to directly link from this blog site.)
To be most effective, BIM needs to be used from the ENTIRE building design, construction and occupancy process -- in other words, the the entire life cycle of the building. The benefits of BIM in the post-occupancy phase are many, and include advanced billing coordinating, performance monitoring (LEED 2009 will require this) as well as diagnostics for future problems and their repairs.
BIM can also automate bills for materials and cost estimation, commonly done in Europe, but only 12-15 percent of USA users employ this approach. Automated shop drawings can be easily created, with all information displayed and accessible via a laptop or other computer.
Energy efficiency and design really benefit from BIM, as different orientations can easily be created for solar performance, with the data that has been placed in the database automatically being used to calculate the benefits or losses for each orientation plane change.
Last, but not by any means least, there are MANY third party add-on programs that can be integrated into BIM to help with such areas as energy efficiency and day light modeling.
In summary, BIM can:
- Provide visualization of the building
- Fundamental intelligence
- Project management
- Issue tracking
- Seamless information flow
- Improved field coordination
- Reduced change-orders
- Potential errors and omissions and the attendant legal issues
Posted by Alan L. Englander at 2/14/2009 1:00 PM 
Categories: BIM, Energy Efficiency, Cost Control, Building Information Modeling, Integrated Building Design, Green and Sustainable Design
Categories: BIM, Energy Efficiency, Cost Control, Building Information Modeling, Integrated Building Design, Green and Sustainable Design
Comments