Stephen Hamil, director of design and innovation and head of BIM at RIBA Enterprises details the development of a digital toolkit which will guide industry to complete Level 2 BIM
In September of last year, a team led by NBS, with colleagues from BIM Academy, BDP, Laing O’Rourke, Mott MacDonald, Microsoft and Newcastle University, was awarded a £1 million contract from Innovate UK to develop a digital toolkit to complete Level 2 BIM.
Put simply, the project involves devising a standardised and digitally-enabled classification system and a digital plan of works tool. This will create a unified, single classification system for use within construction, and will provide an easy to use web portal which guides users through the construction process.
The digital toolkit will be free to use and will be delivered in the spring of this year in advance of the 2016 deadline for collaborative 3D BIM, with electronic project and asset information and documentation on public sector projects.
Collaboration is at the heart of BIM and at the heart of the toolkit. As David Philp, Head of UK BIM Task Group, said in this publication at the end of last year, BIM is a behavioural change programme more than anything else and the industry runs a risk of getting side-tracked by almost endless technical discussions. It’s also important to remember that computers don’t collaborate, people do, so consultation, conversation and discussion are vital elements of our development process.
The digital toolkit will be fit for purpose right across the industry, including all disciplines and all scales of projects from large infrastructure schemes to small, domestic scale works. It will also be intuitive so that individuals at all stages of BIM adoption can use it – otherwise how will adoption become more widespread?
Discussions with architects, contractors, engineers, clients, manufacturers and facilities managers have reiterated that there’s a real need for this initiative, which makes the team hugely optimistic that it will be used in the private sector as well as public because it’s just a smarter way of working.
At a recent roundtable held at NBS Live, the widespread view was that, although everyone’s current processes allow projects to get built, there are many holes in these existing methods of working. It’s these holes that the digital toolkit aims to fill, providing the missing pieces of the BIM jigsaw.
The first piece, the classification system, will be a new version of Uniclass which will be based on the international ISO/DIS 12006-2 framework. This will build on the work NBS have already carried out over recent years under commission from the Construction Information Committee (CPIC). By completing this, the industry will have a unified structure which will provide mapping and guidance so objects can be configured at a project level to have the correct multiple classifications where required.
Some 5,000 templates will be developed, setting out guidance for Levels of Detail (LOD) and Levels of Information (LOI) for construction objects. Initially these will be spaces, systems and products for architecture, building services, structural engineering, landscape design and civil engineering. These will be freely available online and will also be available in both IFC and MS Excel format. These will form the “construction language” that all project teams can use to define their information exchanges for a particular stage of a project.
The second piece, the digital plan of work, will enable the project leader to clearly define the team, responsibilities and an information delivery plan for each stage of a project, who, what and when – in terms of documents, geometry and property-sets.
Over the next few months the project team will continue conversations with representatives of all disciplines and will be asking for feedback on progress. To assist this, events, webinars and seminars will be organised by NBS in partnership with the professional bodies that sit on our steering group.
The digital toolkit is for the whole industry and to have the greatest chance of success, we want it to be developed by the industry. To get involved and to keep up with latest developments, please visit the NBS website (www.thenbs.com/bimtoolkit ) and the NBS BIM Toolkit and Digital Plan of Work Discussion Group on LinkedIn ( https://www.linkedin.com/groups/NBS-BIM-Toolkit-8199514?home=&gid=8199514&trk=anet_ug_hm ).
Stephen Hamil
Director of Design and Innovation and Head of BIM
RIBA Enterprises
Tel: 0191 244 5500
www.twitter.com/StephenHamilNBS
