Harnessing BIM Technology and Integrated Project Delivery for Sustainable Design
May 14 - Track D - 'Adopting BIM' [IP44]
( this session was also listed in the catalog as 'Deciding when and how to implement BIM in your firm and on your projects' )
The three speakers at this session all came from different company backgrounds to provide unique perspecitves about BIM.
The first speaker was Mark Dietrick with Burt Hill, a multidisciplinary firm focusing on sustainable design, technology integration, and energy management.
Mark offered yet another definition of BIM: 'A digital model of a building system'.
He further described 'levels' of BIM based on added value:
BIM 1.0 -- (improved) 2D and 3D drawing production
BIM 2.0 -- a 'process enabler' that improves and informs our design choices, our ability to integrate with other design professionals, and ourlevel of service
BIM 3.0 -- is a situation where design and construction are fully integrated via the model(s)
Mark noted that there is a significant change involved with investing in IPD along with BIM, but also was able to rattle off several advantages. Here are a few:
Parametric Planning (seen in the Onuma software 'BIM Storm' demonstration at this conference)
Communication with builders (via Jetstream)
Discipline Integration (seeing everyone's work together in a model -- a prerequisite for the Jetstream clash detection)
Building Performance Analysis (measuring light, wind, other factors in designing a system)
Logistical Planning (working within the IPD)
Of all of these, the parametric planning is the newest and most enticing. I could just imagine feeding programmatic requirements into a logical filter, then watching the computer create a block plan. I could decide I don't like it and have a new scheme in seconds, repeating until I find one worth exploring. The amount of time saved here, at the very beginning of a project, could propagate through an entire design phase, resulting in further savings of time and effort, not to mention the fact that one could be confident about the initial step, having just reviewed oh ... maybe 100 alternatives?
Theres also 'generative form' creation, where a script or set of parameters leads to a computer generated shape or shapes, but this is still in it's infancy as a useful tool.
There was a question from the audience -- given all the various software platforms in use to get these benefits, how many people at Burt Hill are competent in all the applications? The answer: we focus on providing 'just in time' training to our staff.
Dan Brodkin with ARUP spoke next. He was here to provide an engineer's perspective. Of course ARUP are not your everyday engineers, and Dan produced several examples of projects where ARUP had worked closely with the Architect to acheive typical needs of thermal and noise comfort for buildings that had complex geometry.
In one example, the Al Raha Tower, the team Took a visualization model, and then watched it react as they changed parameters.
On another project only the MEP was accomplished in BIM. The team found value here, even though the others didn't 'play along'
Dan noted that the challenges of providing BIM for MEP seem greater than for structural or architectural models. MEP software seems to run slower and crash more often. MEP data also seems to be more heavy (many small pipes as opposed to rectilinear objects)
Some of hte workarounds that engineers have put into practice include:
-Modeling a single 'right of way' volume to represent a bank of pipes.
- Separating sectional views from the associated mdoel to clean them up (many are 'too literal' showing objects in teh foreground that obscure the view of a detail connection)
-Dividing models to smaller segments, dividing both by sector and by discipline.
The movement from simple documentation to an interactive model meant a big change in the engineer's workflow. Typically the first 75% of the process was an engineering exercise, followed by 25% of drafting the result. Now the modeling needs to begin at the onset, and increase as the systems are developed and refined.
This can be an advantage, allowing the 'drafter' to become a 'design coordinator' that learns about the decision process of the engineer.
In the future, we expect there will be more of a push towards 5d (cost implications within a model) and 4d (seeing the construction sequence of a model virtually on a timeline)
The last speaker of the session was Shane Berger with Grimshaw, and he demonstrated clearly that he is well ahead of the curve. Shane didn't talk about embracing BIM (He doesn't care for the term)
Shane refers to the whole concept as the 'digital building prototype' ('DBP' -- it doesn't work as an acronym) The concept exists because we have three things:
A design methodology
Knowledge management and
Information Technology
Each firm must ask -- what will let the office do it's own work?
With an explicit model, we have to ask the question of how much to show -- the higher the detail we expect in a model, the greater effect we have on our design agility.
Shane's analysis went further into deconstructing the revolution of the Building Information Model. Besides the Modeling of both explicit geomoetry and parametric design, there is the 'intelligence' that lives within the objects. ( A good example is how many BIM applications will automatically 'clean up' objects for you -- draw two walls that intersect, and they will 'heal' together at the intersection. ) The user of the software doesn't want the program's 'intelligence' to conflict with her/his own.
There is also a data component to any good model. We need to be cognizant of this and get savvy about being able to extract the data into scheudles.
Shane's presentation generated quite a few questions from the audience, although many of these dealt with implementation, not with finding the right tools and processes as he indicated during his talk. All thinkgs considered, this was perhaps the best session of the conference for firms that are jsut starting to move into BIM.
The three speakers at this session all came from different company backgrounds to provide unique perspecitves about BIM.
The first speaker was Mark Dietrick with Burt Hill, a multidisciplinary firm focusing on sustainable design, technology integration, and energy management.
Mark offered yet another definition of BIM: 'A digital model of a building system'.
He further described 'levels' of BIM based on added value:
BIM 1.0 -- (improved) 2D and 3D drawing production
BIM 2.0 -- a 'process enabler' that improves and informs our design choices, our ability to integrate with other design professionals, and ourlevel of service
BIM 3.0 -- is a situation where design and construction are fully integrated via the model(s)
Mark noted that there is a significant change involved with investing in IPD along with BIM, but also was able to rattle off several advantages. Here are a few:
Parametric Planning (seen in the Onuma software 'BIM Storm' demonstration at this conference)
Communication with builders (via Jetstream)
Discipline Integration (seeing everyone's work together in a model -- a prerequisite for the Jetstream clash detection)
Building Performance Analysis (measuring light, wind, other factors in designing a system)
Logistical Planning (working within the IPD)
Of all of these, the parametric planning is the newest and most enticing. I could just imagine feeding programmatic requirements into a logical filter, then watching the computer create a block plan. I could decide I don't like it and have a new scheme in seconds, repeating until I find one worth exploring. The amount of time saved here, at the very beginning of a project, could propagate through an entire design phase, resulting in further savings of time and effort, not to mention the fact that one could be confident about the initial step, having just reviewed oh ... maybe 100 alternatives?
Theres also 'generative form' creation, where a script or set of parameters leads to a computer generated shape or shapes, but this is still in it's infancy as a useful tool.
There was a question from the audience -- given all the various software platforms in use to get these benefits, how many people at Burt Hill are competent in all the applications? The answer: we focus on providing 'just in time' training to our staff.
Dan Brodkin with ARUP spoke next. He was here to provide an engineer's perspective. Of course ARUP are not your everyday engineers, and Dan produced several examples of projects where ARUP had worked closely with the Architect to acheive typical needs of thermal and noise comfort for buildings that had complex geometry.
In one example, the Al Raha Tower, the team Took a visualization model, and then watched it react as they changed parameters.
On another project only the MEP was accomplished in BIM. The team found value here, even though the others didn't 'play along'
Dan noted that the challenges of providing BIM for MEP seem greater than for structural or architectural models. MEP software seems to run slower and crash more often. MEP data also seems to be more heavy (many small pipes as opposed to rectilinear objects)
Some of hte workarounds that engineers have put into practice include:
-Modeling a single 'right of way' volume to represent a bank of pipes.
- Separating sectional views from the associated mdoel to clean them up (many are 'too literal' showing objects in teh foreground that obscure the view of a detail connection)
-Dividing models to smaller segments, dividing both by sector and by discipline.
The movement from simple documentation to an interactive model meant a big change in the engineer's workflow. Typically the first 75% of the process was an engineering exercise, followed by 25% of drafting the result. Now the modeling needs to begin at the onset, and increase as the systems are developed and refined.
This can be an advantage, allowing the 'drafter' to become a 'design coordinator' that learns about the decision process of the engineer.
In the future, we expect there will be more of a push towards 5d (cost implications within a model) and 4d (seeing the construction sequence of a model virtually on a timeline)
The last speaker of the session was Shane Berger with Grimshaw, and he demonstrated clearly that he is well ahead of the curve. Shane didn't talk about embracing BIM (He doesn't care for the term)
Shane refers to the whole concept as the 'digital building prototype' ('DBP' -- it doesn't work as an acronym) The concept exists because we have three things:
A design methodology
Knowledge management and
Information Technology
Each firm must ask -- what will let the office do it's own work?
With an explicit model, we have to ask the question of how much to show -- the higher the detail we expect in a model, the greater effect we have on our design agility.
Shane's analysis went further into deconstructing the revolution of the Building Information Model. Besides the Modeling of both explicit geomoetry and parametric design, there is the 'intelligence' that lives within the objects. ( A good example is how many BIM applications will automatically 'clean up' objects for you -- draw two walls that intersect, and they will 'heal' together at the intersection. ) The user of the software doesn't want the program's 'intelligence' to conflict with her/his own.
There is also a data component to any good model. We need to be cognizant of this and get savvy about being able to extract the data into scheudles.
Shane's presentation generated quite a few questions from the audience, although many of these dealt with implementation, not with finding the right tools and processes as he indicated during his talk. All thinkgs considered, this was perhaps the best session of the conference for firms that are jsut starting to move into BIM.
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