The benefits of the governments’ BIM Level 2 legacy are potentially immense. However, there is a caveat – the BIM process creates more data than the industry has ever faced before – what good is that data if you don’t know its accuracy, completeness, or compliance with the project requirement? Without Quality Assurance, extra data inevitably means an increase in errors as the project progresses – BIM could actually cause more harm than good.
Therefore, it is not sufficient just to manage the data, we have to ensure it is correct. Solibri Model Checker (SMC) does just that – it provides an intelligent, configurable environment to take accurate data from the model.
This unique and intuitive software solution performs a number of tasks in delivering quality assurance and data mining and these can be summarised as follows:
– Federation – SMC brings together data from authoring tools irrespective of source.
– Viewing – SMC provides extensive viewing capabilities into individual or federated models, including data interrogation, dimensioning and mark up.
– Quality Assurance – either for a single discipline or federated model – SMC ‘rules’ allow models to be analysed for quality. ‘Rule Sets’ can be generic (e.g. constructability, clash), specialist (e.g. COBie, Building Regulations) or bespoke (e.g. project specific).
– Communication, Version Control – Identified data errors are reported using a wide range of communication protocols. Different model versions can be overlaid to rapidly identify changes and validate that errors have been corrected.
– Information Take Off – Interrogation templates extract model data to reflect individual requirements such as quantity take-off and COBie.
SMC and COBie
Central to delivery of the BIM Level 2 legacy is the need to produce a series of discipline specific models with the provision of a single environment to store shared data and information (COBie).
The requirement to produce COBie data is increasing rapidly. It will be a requirement for government projects by 2016.
Solibri has produced a COBie application which is widely used by industry. It enables models to be checked at every stage ensuring that data (i.e. floors, spaces, types, components, etc.), is complete. It then transfers the data to the correct location in the COBie structure. COBie data links directly to the model for bi-directional visualisation and XLS sheets are produced automatically.
Unlike other applications, SMC therefore produces a COBie output that goes beyond simple validation – it is accurate.
In summary, SMC does the one thing that every model needs – it allows you to Measure the Quality of what has been modelled, and to Measure the Quality of the data that accompanies each model object. BIM cannot deliver on its promise if data quality is poor. It really is that simple.
David Jellings
Managing Director
Solibri Uk Limited
Tel: 0844 854 9250
