Adopters

National BIM Standard-United States™

The NBIMS-US Project Committee (the National Building Information Model Standard Project Committee - United States), is a project committee of the buildingSMART alliance which is a council of the National Institute for Building Sciences (NIBS). Originally chartered in 2005 under the Facility Information Council (FIC) the NBIMS Committee was re-chartered as an Alliance project in 2008 in order to consolidate missions and streamline services. From 1992 to 2008 the FIC mission was to "improve the performance of facilities over their full life-cycle by fostering common and open standards and an integrated life-cycle information model for the A/E/C & FM industry." Although FIC was sunsetted in 2008 its mission continues under the governance of the Alliance. The NBIMS-US Project Committee continues this tradition by knitting together the broadest and deepest constituency ever assembled for the purpose of establishing and managing through an Industry consensus process a series of open source National standards and guidance for all aspects of Building Information Modeling. The NBIMS Charter (PDF) spells out the Committee's vision and describes the results NBIMS-US expects to achieve.

The first version of the National BIM Standard, Version 1, Part 1, was issued in December 18, 2007 and primarily provided the approach to developing open BIM standards, it can be downloaded here. It was not a consensus standard but was written by a team of 30 experts in the field. Since that time, a significant body of knowledge has been developed based on the document to the point where it is felt we can now develop a full consensus standard for BIM.

Version 2 has announced the following revised schedule based on this previous press release:

* For more information on the balloting process and getting involved, see the NBIMS Process page.

The root title National BIM Standard is intended to be applicable to any country worldwide and the core of the standard will be common to all as much as possible with only a minimum number of changes to make it country specific. The changes should not be in concept but in naming structures and work breakdown structures that may already be in use in a specific country that would be counterproductive to change. This will be achieved through international commenting of the issues.

Visit About BIM to read NBIMS-US™ definition and to see an example of how open BIM standards should work. Or jump to the FAQ for the most often asked and answered questions.

The ballots currently being proposed for the future versions of the NBIMS-US can be viewed on the portal by members of the Project Committee. Please keep in mind that there is a waiting period of 84 calendar days before being able to vote on a ballot item after joining the NBIMS-US™ Project Committee as defined in the Rules of Governance (PDF) (Pg. 13) which may preclude you from commenting or voting depending on the date of your application. This policy is in place to ensure that the committee is not flooded at the last minute with persons who have not taken the time to review and understand the ballots being presented for a vote.

How to Get Involved

The NBIMS-US™ Project Committee is dedicated to bringing together the many organizations already working on pieces of the "puzzle" rather than trying to reinvent existing capabilities. The current NBIMS-US Project Committee can be found here. If you are a buildingSMART alliance member, complete and submit the application form to become a member of the NBIMS Project Committee.