Jul 03 2010
Following the BOD meeting each month I try to provide a digest of the events that occurred over the past month:
- The big news for this month is that IFC 2x4 was approved to be considered as Draft International Standard (DIS). The document will need to be re-formatted to meet ISO requirements. It is hoped that by this time next year IFC's will be a full ISO standard - ISO 16739. Please commit to exercise IFC's on every project and let buildingSMART International and your vendors know of any problems or success you achieve.
- Also on the international front, a new certification process was unveiled. This certification process is far more detailed than the old process and should yield far better results. It however, is only one part of the complete certification suite that will be coming together over the next several months.
- A very successful call for papers went out for the education thread for the December conference. Based on the response we expect a very enlightening educational thread this year. It is hosted by both the Alliance and BIM Forum.
- A call is also out for case studies. If you have BIM efforts that you would like to show off then please respond to that call.
- At the AGC BIM Forum, the topic was BIM and Lean Construction. There were several excellent presentations, but the one that I thought best was from John Cannistraro, Jr. demonstrating the extent they have been able to take pre-construction because of BIM. They are working faster, more efficiently, at lower costs and producing a far superior and pre-tested product.
- At ASHRAE a group of Mechanical Engineers shared their concern that designers in general are not stepping up to the plate fast enough and that contractors and sub-contractors using BIM will further erode the designer’s responsibilities unless the designers act quickly to assume a leadership role. I have the same concern for architects after coming from the AIA convention earlier in the month.
- You may have noticed that the Texas Facilities Commission, which was embracing BIM on their web site and requiring BIM for their projects, is now strangely devoid of anything to do with BIM. I was able to find out that after the new director was hired, he was forced to severely cut back on personnel. Among the casualties were all the BIM proponents. Therefore, BIM is no longer a requirement in Texas. It seems somewhat ironic; the thing that could actually save them money over the long haul was the thing they cut. However, this is typically the situation when the culture has not had an opportunity to change.
- From the BOD Meeting:
- Finances are adequate, although if we had more income we would be able to accomplish our task more quickly.
- The expected dip in members renewing after their "comped" year following the sun setting of the Facility Information Council was not as large as expected and most of the attrition has sadly been related to the economy and people losing their jobs.
- NBIMS is working to develop the ballot forms to be used for the voting in the future
- We currently have 150 validated members on the NBIMS Project Committee. If you go to the portal and see the NBIMS Project Committee in your list of Programs, then you are on the committee. If not and you wish to be on the committee then go to the Join section of the web site and sign up for the NBIMS Project Committee. This group will be more active very soon.
- A NBIMS Executive Committee meeting is going to be held in San Diego later this month to work out plans to begin the NBIMS update and develop the schedule. This is intended to be distributed at the next BOD meeting.
- We will be holding a webinar in the not too distant future to bring everyone up to speed on the consensus process and the steps leading to the next version of NBIMS.
- The Stakeholder Activity Model (Goal #2 of the Strategic Plan) is progressing, albeit slower than anticipated. The product will be posted on the web once completed. Work has begun on posting the products of the effort.
- The buildingSMART alliance BOD unanimously passed a motion to initiate a marketing contract with Bryant Hilton of Great Communicate. They work closely with our web master and therefore implementation will be much easier. The first phase of the contract will assess the material we have and work to develop a better approach to messaging. I received a comment for someone the other day indicating that they did not know what we did….they thought it might be standards, but they were not sure. We need to fix that and make our work more accessible to all.
- The next meeting to organize the International Users Group (IUG) will be held in Copenhagen in early September. This meeting will be open to chapter delegates only.
- Prior to that meeting, we will hold a meeting of the Interest Group Chairs on August 27th. More information will be coming out shortly to the Interest Group chairs. It is our goal to have the Interest Groups generate issues to bring to the International Users Group.
- We are now planning a National Users Group to which everyone will be invited at the buildingSMART alliance Annual Meeting in December. More to come on that also.
- It is anticipated that the first full IUG meeting will be held in the spring of 2011. It may be in Abu Dhabi, UAE.
- Several OmniClass tables were voted on to be released and a couple were voted on to undergo further work. While the work is largely complete the tables have not yet been released, but should come out in late summer, according to CSI.
- The BIM-GIS group met and there were well over 20 people on the conference call. This project has a lot of interest and appears to be moving forward at a good speed. Please note that the entire Fall 2010 issue of JBIM will be dedicated to this subject and there will be a complete thread at the conference in December on BIM and GIS.
Again, I encourage you to help us identify members and potential sponsors for the Alliance. We have many volunteers working but we need more staff to coordinate the efforts. Staff are paid for by your memberships. With more staff we will be able to move this process along more quickly.
