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commentTransformative Tools Start to Take Hold
A critical mass of building information modeling projects demonstrates
the technology’s benefits and its potential for redefining practice
New technology, old standards
One challenge facing designers, contractors, and other users of BIM is the lack of standards for the organization and format of the data contained within models. “We still depend on standards that are a legacy of drafting in 2D,” says Kirksey’s Wooten. Organizations such as the National Institute of Building Sciences (NIBS) and the International Alliance for Interoperability are pushing hard on the issue. (Note: record publisher McGraw-Hill Construction is an active member of the alliance.) At record press time, the institute was due to release a draft document establishing principles and methodology for a national BIM standard. The draft will be available for public comment at www.nibs.org through mid-May, with release of a final document slated for early June, according to Deke Smith, chair of the institute’s national BIM standards committee.
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A particular focus of the NIBS effort is postconstruction accessibility of the building information model so that it could be used by a variety of stakeholders, including insurers, first responders, or facility managers. Some sources worry that the effort is geared too much toward the building’s end users to be valuable to designers. But Smith points out that “the true payback [of BIM] is in the building’s facility management phase, since it is the longest, typically 50 to 75 years.”
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Roles and relationships
One barrier to adoption of BIM is not the technology itself, but the implications for changes in the relationship of all the members of a project team. Because BIM allows architects, their consultants, owners, and contractors to share information and expertise more easily and earlier in the life of a project, many proponents see it as a catalyst for use of more integrated delivery methods than design-bid-build. The AIA, the Construction Users Roundtable, and the Associated General Contractors of America are collaborating to better understand the impact on traditional professional roles and liability. Among these groups’ initiatives is an effort to create new model contracts to help define responsibilities and address the allocation of risk and financial reward.
The issue of ownership of the data contained within the model is also unresolved. John Marinello, Flack & Kurtz C.I.O., worries about the interpretation of data generated by computational fluid dynamics tools and other complex simulation programs. “We don’t want our data manipulated by another consultant,” he says.
