Aug 30 2011
Dear buildingSMART alliance member,
- The National BIM Standard again took the spotlight for this past month. We are in the commenting period as most probably are aware. There was a lot of discussion on several of the ballots and almost none on others. We have until September 14th to complete the comment phase of the process.
- Looking toward next month in NBIMS-US™, after we complete the commenting period the working groups and authors will be resolving those comments and preparing for a presentation of the ballots on September 29-30 to the Project Committee just prior to voting which starts Oct 3 and ends Oct 30. The complete calendar is on both the web site and portal.
- The rules of governance have served us well and now having nearly a complete cycle under our belt lets us know that the business process defined in that document has stood its first test.
- We have not seen any ballots suggesting changes to the rules of governance, but they can be submitted at any time.
- The fall edition of JBIM is almost complete and it proves to be another exceptional edition of our magazine. Thanks so much to all the authors who were selected as well as to those who sent in abstracts. We continue to have excellent participation and many exceptional submissions. It will be available in early October.
- In looking over the mailing list for JBIM, I was amazed to see that we have readers from over 60 countries! The magazine is distributed to 6,000 people. Those people have an obvious interest in buildingSMART and open BIM standards. We will be reaching out to them more in the future.
- The month was quiet as far as presentations go and mostly we are preparing for next month, see the event section on the web site for details of upcoming events.
- We are looking into publication capabilities for the NBIMS-US™. We are attempting to provide you the ability to customize your NBIMS-US™, either from a discipline point of view or to specifically allow you to choose the sections you want included. It will be published on the web similar to the way NCS© is published to allow for rich hyper-linking to backup material.
- Dr. East held a series of meetings on the status of the various Information Exchange projects that he is coordinating early in the month. These included COBie, SPie, and LCie. LCie or Life Cycle information exchange is essentially the overarching structure that the other information exchanges fit.
- We renewed and updated our MOU with the Open Geospatial Consortium with a signing last Thursday. This updated agreement now also includes CityGML. David Jordani will be attending the OGC meetings in Boulder to monitor efforts in both CityGML and 3DIM.
- This week marked another planning meeting with Henry Green, the Institute President, and the ExCom to help improve our economic situation. Our focus was on five areas:
- Holding a sponsor workshop to listen to existing sponsors identify reasons others should become sponsors
- Seek additional sponsors so that we may continue the work of the Alliance
- Develop marketing materials which increase understanding the value of the Alliance
- Formalize the buildingSMART alliance interest groups to provide a link to the International Users Group
- Continued focus on projects and expanding the scope and value of NBIMS-US™
- We remain focused in these difficult economic times on coming up with ways to ensure the funding stream remains strong. A challenge I am sure everyone reading this report is struggling with also. Far too many organizations have had to reduce their giving and it is negatively affecting our work.
- There will also be the kick-off session for the IFMA, I2SL, bSa, research agenda meeting. This effort is being supported by Virginia Tech. This first meeting will be immediately before the I2SL meeting in Providence, RI on September 19th. Subsequent meetings will be in Phoenix in conjunction with the IFMA meeting and in Washington in conjunction with the bSa meetings at Ecobuild America.
- A call for sponsors went out this month for bSa project: “Synthesis of BIM and Facilities Management Research Studies and Survey Results,” Project Presentation conference call scheduled for October 4, 2011, at 2:00 pm EST. The Alliance is seeking multiple sponsors to fund this project. The National Institute of Building Sciences buildingSMART alliance (bSa) is looking to fund a compilation of BIM for FM research. Over the past several years, various parties have conducted a number of BIM for FM surveys. While independently these studies provide some benefit, leveraging all of the study results together would derive the best value by providing facility managers and owners with the tangible evidence they need. As a means of encouraging faster adoption of BIM for FM, bSa is looking to prepare a summary of the different findings.
- In addition to that, there will be a buildingSMART International meeting in Singapore September 20-23. David Morris, the bSa Vice Chair and Chair of NBIMS-US™ will be representing the Alliance.
- At that same time, we will be presenting to the Coordination Council of NIBS. We are continuing our focus on how BIM helps support High Performance Buildings (HPB). Since HPB have legislation and executive orders encouraging its implementation we feel this is a good area of focus. This same concept was presented to the SPie group by Deke Smith as well as to a Building Seismic Safety Council meeting. Our goal is to ensure that the Institute’s Coordinating Council in fact is coordinating.
- Please keep an eye out for your renewal notices. One of the issues we are discussing this week is the need to ensure that memberships are retired on the day the membership expires. This is tied into the voting requirements for NBIMS-US™.
- With that, we will bring to a close this month’s report. Wish us well as we divide to cover all the meetings, which seem to be occurring at nearly the same time next month.
