News

bSa Monthly Report - November-December 2010

Dec 16 2010

Since there was a Board of Direction meeting November 30 and then a face-to-face meeting at the conference on December 6 this report is combined and distributed prior to the holiday season. I apologize up front for a very long report this month. However, there are many amazing things happening right now in our industry.
The minutes from the two Board of Direction meetings can be found here:
http://projects.buildingsmartalliance.org/files/?artifact_id=3615
November started with an invited visit to Helsinki of the Executive Director to deliver a keynote to Granlund Construction upon the retirement of their president, Reijo Hänninen. During the visit Deke was able to also visit Skanska International, the Helsinki Music Hall construction site (A completely IFC coordinated project with over 300 contracts) and participate in a status meeting of RYM, the $3M private sector openBIM research and development effort funded by 50 companies in Finland.
The next week involved buildingSMART International (BSI) Executive Committee and User Committee meetings in New York City. As a result of the ExCom meeting the BSI web site update was released with even further simplification to make it easier to understand the mission of BSI.
Birgitta Foster of Sandia National Labs was named the Assisting Director for buildingSMART alliance. Her role will be to bring the owner perspective to the Alliance as well as to support the ever-expanding role of the Alliance.
The following week involved a presentation by Deke Smith, Kimon Onuma, and Birgitta Foster to the North West Construction Consumer Council in Seattle. This was an opportunity to coordinate the message of the Alliance and present a broad-spectrum message across the life cycle.
buildingSMART alliance and the International Institute for Sustainable Laboratories (I2SL) now have an MOA in place to coordinate their work and to involve the laboratory community in the National BIM Standard. Several other MOA efforts are under way and will be completed soon.
The Board of Direction meeting at the end of November was highlighted by updates on the National BIM Standard efforts as well as planning related to the International Users Group. We are working to build a continuum from the grassroots practitioners in North America to the international community through the local interest groups now in many cities across the country.
The buildingSMART alliance National Conference at Ecobuild America was in early December.
- There were five threads in play during the conference. One was on how education is changing to prepare the new practitioners for the world we are creating. The papers from this effort are published on the web site. The focus on the collaboration emerging between Bim and GIS was a major aspect of the conference initiated by the Fall edition of the JBIM magazine and culminated with a keynote by Jack Dangermond of ESRI. Another thread build on the McGraw-Hill Smart Market Report Green BIM publication issued earlier in the year. The remaining threads focused on the standards and case studies of BIM in practice. Comments after the show indicated that the content was exceptional and the only complaint was that too many good sessions were going on at the same time.
The following key face-to-face meetings occurred during the conference week:
- buildingSMART alliance Board of Direction - The focus was on NBIMS as well as improving our message to the industry and identifying specific projects needing funding. These will be posted on the Alliance web site. Tom Gay was re-elected BOD chair, David Morris, re-elected vice chair, and David Hammond re-elected Treasurer. John Cross had to step down from his position as Secretary due to other commitments and we thank him for his dedication and service. David Jordani was elected in his position as secretary.
- National Interest / Users Group Meeting - This meeting discussed the relationships merging and how we propose connecting all the dots. More information will be going out to the interest groups.
- NBIMS Planning Committee Meeting - This is the group that handles the administrative process related to the NBIMS based on the Rules of Governance.
- NBIMS Technical Sub-Committee Meeting - This group ensures that the ballots moving forward are technically sound and that the documentation is complete and accurate.
- NBIMS Project Committee Meeting - This is the group who will develop the ballots and vote on the standard. Now nearly 200 strong this is the heard of the standards development effort.
There are also weekly NBIMS Planning Committee and Technical Sub-Committee meetings occurring to help ensure progress on action items that need to be completed prior to the kick-off of Version 2 of the National BIM Standard - United States. Details are available on the web sites.
It should be noted that we are going to receive "blue Sky" ballots prior to official ballot submissions to help the community understand the level of effort required in developing ballots. Our challenge will be to write up ballots in terminology that the layman can understand so that the members of the NBIMS Project Committee knows what they are voting on.
We have delayed the receipt of the official ballots until March 6th so that folks can have more time to prepare their ballots. Folks are now beginning to understand fully how much effort will be required to develop the ballots and simply more time is needed.
A call to the NBIMS Project Committee should go out next week for Project Committee members to identify which of the four groups they represent - Design, Procurement, Assemble, or Operate. Very soon also, the Project Committee will be invited to submit their interest forms for being on one of the Working Groups. Members will be selected based on their level of expertise. Not everyone on the Project Committee needs to be on a working group. In fact the working groups should be rather small (10-12 people) to keep them manageable.
It is still not too late to be on the NBIMS Project Committee. Please sign up at:
http://www.buildingsmartalliance.org/index.php/support/application/ Your primary job on the NBIMS Project Committee will be review and understand all the ballots and then to vote acceptance or rejection on the ballots. You can of course also abstain. However, participation in the development of those ballots is voluntary.
Please disseminate this report to the organizations to which you belong to ensure that we get appropriate representation from as many stakeholders as possible. It is our goal to cover as much of the industry as possible. We are not the experts you are - so please participate so that your professional interests are represented properly. The NBIMS document will have profound and long-term effect on the transformation of an entire industry.