Future Look - BIM for Owners and Facility Managers

A difference I noticed between the 2008 and 2011 editions of the BIM handbook was that in 2008 the handbook focused on the benefits of 3D drafting, while the 2011 edition focused much more on the benefits of 3D drafting for an integrative design process. In 2008, all disciplines could make separate models and eventually bring them together to form a cohesive design. Now, and in the 2011 version, it is possible for all disciplines to work together from the beginning of the design process using BIM.

This version of the handbook introduced the concept of Integrated Project Delivery. A difference this poses for owners is that they are now responsible for specifying the required scope and level of detail they want for a project before design begins. The design process is now changing in that multiple people are working on a design at the same time, which poses new legal issues concerning responsibility. As Kayleigh stated in her post, "the development of standards is a pivotal and important step in creating a cohesive use of the new method." Owners must understand and be able to communicate in BIM terms exactly what they want from their architects, engineers, and contractors, who will be responsible for what, and when. Like what Eric talked about in class last Tuesday, each project is unique and requires the owner to create BIM standards for every project.

Right now it seems that we have the technology to create fully integrated models between all disciplines but we do not have the proper space or memory to create files that large. On page 188 in the 2011 Handbook it states, “two to five years ago the creation of an integrated model required extensive effort on the part of a project team and dedicated technical expertise to support the integration. Today, many of BIM design tools have matured and provide integration capabilities between several disciplines at the generic object level. “ It seems that most members of my group agree that in the future, companies will have IT departments specifically there for BIM support to help address these issues.  With these advances, we also see performance issues with this technology. Within the next ten to fifteen years, I imagine this space to become accessible, and the norm will be for project design to be fully integrative from the beginning design stages. 

Week 4: The Future of BIM

I believe that BIM in the future will become the benchmark for the construction industry and will be the standard form of managing the critical design information of a building or any design project at hand.

When researching the future of BIM, I came across video I liked that was posted to www.archdaily.com featuring Patrick MacLeamy, Chief Executive Officer of HOK, and his description of the uses of BIM both now and in the future of projects to come. In summary, MacLeamy comes up with the mega acronym of “BIM-BAM-BOOM” to describe the various aspects of a construction project that BIM has come to be used for and can, when used correctly, optimize all facets of a building project. The original building design is supported by BIM and its ability to develop and test different design ideas. After designing, contractors use BIM as a Building Assembly Model or “BAM” allowing better scheduling and the facilitation of subcontractor coordination and cost control. Finally, over the lifetime of a building an owner can use BIM and BAM to optimize the building’s operation. In this stage of a project, the owner can put benefit by using BIM as a Building Operation Optimization Model or “BOOM” to manage the energy consumption of the building and schedule maintenance in an orderly fashion.

With this mindset, the use of BIM in the construction industry is almost limitless in its uses and becomes an ongoing method of optimization for a building as a whole. BIM has already come quite far in the construction industry and has become a very useful tool that continues to seek improvement to better serve its users’ needs. For this reason, I see BIM continuing to strive and becoming a crucial part of any and all construction projects.

I found my peer Lorena Alvarado's post this week (http://ae-510-ay12-13.blogspot.com/2013/01/bim-in-future_29.html) to be very interesting and have some key important statistical facts. As she mentioned, one of the main concerns of BIM at this current time is the "learning curve" and the training necessary for companies to efficiently make use of BIM programs. However, the increase from 43% (in 2008) to 60% (now in 2013) of architects in the United States using BIM shines a light of hope for the future and is proof that BIM will only move forward from here.

Sources:

http://www.archdaily.com/262008/the-future-of-the-building-industry-bim-bam-boom/

Future Outlook on BIM Tools and Parametric Modeling

As presented in my post from last week, I do not believe the progress of BIM and its tools and parametric modeling are not going to be the issue in the building and construction industry.  With time the software and hardware issues will undoubtedly be resolved as well as upgraded and the systems will become more compatible, as well as user friendly.  And, I do not doubt that drafting in BIM will become a specialty skill as mentioned by G. Carpenter and required to a certain degree for those in the industry as mentioned in J. Lancellotti’s post.  The issues that have and will most likely continue to slow down the progress of BIM are the industry conventions that all groups within the industry have built their practices around.  This was addressed by our speaker Eric Kuszewski during our week 3 class.  He addressed the fact that many of the building system drawings and efforts were being doubled as a result of wanting to use BIM to show it one way and then the system engineer or someone else wanting to see in another way, or the “old” way.  He also addressed that this not only affected the engineers and their products, but those dealing with the contracts, deliverables, and metrics.  The groups that work on the latter have built what they do around the existing conventions.

As a result, I believe the BIM execution plan that Kuszewski mentioned will be heavily involved in creating new BIM centered conventions.  I do not believe that in 5 years everything will have completely made the switch to being “BIM-centric,” but the ability for all those involved to work together to shift from the practice of making separate drawings for buildings to virtually creating the building will be much improved as a result of one building era ending as the beginning of another approaches.  These changes may indeed result in the predictions made by M. Tedesco regarding the industry in ten and twenty years.

BIM For Architects and Engineers: Future Design

                Although it’s not the most commonly type of design used yet, I believe that BIM is the future of engineering and architectural design.  Since it’s a fairly new technology, many companies already use other design/drafting programs such as AutoCAD which causes problems when trying to implement BIM. Due to the large alteration to files among other deciding factors, BIM can be too expensive for many companies to make a full transition. Once BIM becomes a bit more competitive in its pricing, I am sure that it will become a sole monopoly in any type of design field. This is due to its ease of use, and productivity rate that one is allowed when using the program. 

                Five years from now, I believe that  BIM will be a major form of the design process used for any type of construction. A major reason for this improvement is because of the efficiency of the modeling that  Matthew and Maria also discussed. A big difference is that in former programs such as AutoCAD, a line command simply draws a line, while in a program such as Revit, a line can represent a whole wall. When drawing this wall, there is preset characteristics applied to it, that can be changed or updated upon the users liking. This simple change alone can greatly benefit architects who are trying to come up with a quick design that can be changed before a customer.

                In ten years, I feel that BIM will be close to becoming the sole form of design with regards to any type of construction. This new form of BIM will be commercially available anywhere and will replace AutoCAD from schools. With that being said, I agree with my teammate Rita that there might even be an actual degree in BIM.  BIM has a lot of advantages over current design and in 10 years there’s no doubt that it will take over the construction industry, thus schools will allow for degrees and specialties in the field. A mix of BIM and Computer Sciences might also be a possibility to further develop the program.

                Finally in 20 years, it’s hard to think about how  heavily we will rely on BIM. It’s similar to taking a look back 20 years ago, when the first drafting programs such as AutoCAD were released. Now those programs have exponentially improved and in some ways helped create this new Building Information Modeling. I feel that BIM, might have changed drastically in 20 years, into something more advanced that is easier to use, and perhaps even more productive.

BIM Handbook: A Guide to Building Information Modeling for Owners, Managers, Designers, Engineers, and Contractors.  Chuck Eastman, Paul Teicholz, Rafael Sacks and Kathleen Liston  Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

 http://ascpro.ascweb.org/chair/paper/CPGT182002008.pdf

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Building_information_modeling

BIM in the years to come...

Building Information Modeling (BIM) is definitely going to be the main stream method used by architects and engineers for building projects for many years to come in the future. But being on the same boat as Rita Pauliushchyk of being new to the subject matter of BIM and in the process of training myself to become proficient with all the tools which are incorporated in BIM it is hard to accurately predict where BIM will stand 5-10 years from now as she mentioned in her blog post. The reason I am confident that BIM is the future of architects and engineers is because firms which have already implemented BIM in their projects resulted in achieving decrease time, cost reduction, facilitating documentation, greater quality of visualization, allowing better integration, and facilitating sharing and transferring of information as Maria Gonzalez stated in her blog post has all allowed more and more people to gain confidence in the BIM process as a whole. One of the main reasons it is difficult to predict where BIM will stand 5-10 years from now is as the speaker Eric Kuszewzki from our previous mentioned the learning curve for BIM is very high for the architects and the engineers in the field today. Therefore it is difficult to predict how quick that learning curve can be decreased in the future before BIM becomes main stream for projects.  

Based on an article I read “BIM’s future up in the cloud” by Dominic Thasarathar, I believe the learning curve for BIM will decrease in the years to come. One of the reasons the learning process of BIM has been so slow is for the roadblocks consisting lack of computing power and high cost of hardware which sets many limitations for training in BIM. So the article talks about how BIM is in the works of major integration with cloud computing to turn these roadblocks into “sidesteps”. BIM’s integration with cloud will able its users to use BIM from an average computer from any location on the earth with unlimited computing power to make BIM accessible to wider range of users. Additionally more and more institutes, colleges, and universities are enforcing their scholars to use BIM software in their curriculum which is helping again to decrease the learning curve. For instance I as an architectural engineering student here at Drexel University am required to use Revit for design purpose and SAP2000 for structure analyses, both of the software are incorporated with BIM. So lot of investment and effort is being place in the architecture and engineering industry to switch over to encounter projects using the BIM process conventionally.

Thasarathar, Dominic. "BIM's future up in the cloud." BIM's future up in the cloud. 08 Aug. 2012. 29 Jan. 2013 <http://www.bdcnetwork.com/bim%E2%80%99s-future-cloud>.             

The Future of BIM

In class we discussed how BIM has not only been the biggest advancement in the building industry in quite some time, but it has also been one of the fastest developing technologies within the industry.  When first developed, the theories and ideas behind the technology were much further ahead than the technology.  With rapid advancements within the technology, it is becoming commonplace for designers and owners to prefer BIM implementation in their project.  BIM is allowing for better communication between the owners, designers, and different disciplines.   Better communication and integration will lead to better designs, more efficient building processes, and slightly cheaper building costs. 

As Kayleigh said in her post, the need for a dedicated BIM department will be pivotal in the success of architectural and engineering firms in the future.  With the complexity and potential for multidisciplinary integration, consistency within the design process will be very important.  These departments will control design standards and regulate families and model synchronization within the firm.  This integration will increase model efficiency and allow for further development of model use in the field.  Which brings me to the point that Junwah made; we are no longer limited to advanced technology only being available in the office.  With the advancement in mobile technology, there is reason to believe that a tablet device could be loaded with the BIM, allowing a contractor to navigate the model in the field when questions arise during construction.  I believe that within the next 5-10 years mobile device technology will allow for this type of integration in the field.

Source: BIM Handbook: A Guide to Building Information Modeling for Owners, Managers, Designers, Engineers, and Contractors. Chuck Eastman, Paul Teicholz, Rafael Sacks and Kathleen Liston Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

  

Future of BIM Parametric Models

I believe BIM will change a lot of the next 5 years. I would anticipate that it will be more user-friendly and have an interface like AutoCAD. As mentioned in G. Carpenter’s post, “In AutoCAD, when drawing a building frame with joists, minimal mouse movement is required; type “l” for line, move the mouse slightly to the right, type in the length of the line, click “enter”, repeat for all directions of the basic frame.  A line can be highlighted and repeated for joists or offset for a column.  I could see this becoming the norm for BIM with the ability to construct a basic "outline" of the structure and then change the "basic" objects in the outline to reflect the different sized pipes, columns, etc.  In this way, a whole building can easily be constructed from a couple of mouse movements.” I believe that if BIM was to become more like this than it would be easier for current designer to make the transition.  

Lastly, during our last class meeting my group discussed how there is a major communication problem between programs. Both G. Carpenter and W. Chunyi brought this up again in their posts for this week and I completely agree with them. If BIM is to become the next big thing then it needs to become more compatible with other programs that are already in use today. I really liked W. Chunyi’s idea of being able to scan the blueprints of old buildings that were design by AutoCAD and creating a dataset in BIM.

Future BIM

The future of BIM is very optimistic. Considering the progressing of BIM systems in the last 20 years, from pre 2 dimensional to 3 dimensional and beyond, a lot ground has been gained in how we use these tools to design our infrastructure. The future demands that we build our infrastructure faster and cheaper. BIM can help us solve these demands. Last week’s lecturer showed how present day BIM applications can save time and money with his example of the pipe that was installed around a duct that was not there yet. In the past that pipe would have needed to be retrofitted after the fact because the pipe-fitters would not have realized that space was initially intended for such a duct.

So what does the future BIM look like? First off I have to agree with Gabrielle Carpenter who explains that with the progression of more complex BIM systems that the industry will demand BIM specialists. Ordinarily a drafting degree can be obtained at technical college but soon the BIM systems will be so intricate that they will need to be operated with people who have undergraduate and graduate degrees. I wouldn’t be surprised if a BIM major popped up at a prestigious engineering college in the next decade.

Additionally I believe that BIM software manufactures will focus their efforts on making their software more robust in the arena of finite element analysis (FEA). Currently BIM applications are limited in their engineering capacities. Although BIM software incorporates these elemental analyses they are still guilty of computer error. This computer error may be negligible in building a three story tall building, but imagine when we compound these errors over the course of 200…300 or even 500 stories. Will we not need to build our buildings taller to accommodate our ever growing population?

Lastly I agree with Wang Chunyi that BIM will develop a technique for analyzing the life cycle of a building. Future BIM software will be able to model the effects of more than just wind loads. E.G. rain, temperature and climate and the lasting effects they have on the building materials used.