Right Thinking About BIM and The National BIM Standards Committee

Alan Edgar, Assoc. AIA
Graphic Systems, Inc.
Communications Committee Chairman, National BIM Standards Committee

The National Building Process Lifecycle Management (BPLM) Standards Committee is not nearly so catchy or easy to remember, but it's certainly descriptive of the work of the National BIM Standards Committee. Since it is unlikely that the Committee will adopt such a name, my challenge is to help the community expand its conceptual understanding of BIM and the potential impact of the Committee's work.

The acronym "BIM," short for Building Information Model, is historically linked to 3D and now 4D virtual modeling of buildings, though it has the capability and even the responsibility to be much more. At this point many readers will be saying "well duh...," which, ironically, proves the point. "Building" in this usage is a noun referring to the structure more than the process. But current usage of BIM technologies and techniques do so with little or no standard business process definitions. Interoperability standards such as buildingSmart (formerly known as IFC), Automated Equipment Information Exchange (AEX) by FIATECH, and CIS/2, a model schema for all aspects of steel-framed structures developed by AISC, are important pieces of the BIM solution, but they are primarily focused on data rather than processes. Applications such as Autodesk Revit, Bentley Architecture, and Graphisoft ArchiCAD are examples of BIM technical solutions that can implement these standards.

Although BIM applications and practices in current use are vastly superior to manual and 2D-only CAD methodologies, there is a pressing need for standardized processes which describe the use and exchange of data. As Mario Guttman pointed out in his AECbytes Viewpoint article buildingSMART (get over it): "The BIM discussion has created a misconception that exchanging information is something like gathering nuts, where the bigger the bag we can toss over the fence at the end of the day, the better." Unfortunately, this pretty much sums up current practice. The BIM applications are, ironically, already capable of supporting standardized interoperable processes if they existed, but in the absence of any standards, this support is only being provided on an ad-hoc, project-by-project basis.

BIM, as it has been adopted into the common lexicon, relates to a narrow set of technologies applied to a few business functions—namely the planning, design and construction of new buildings—within the full scope and lifecycle of constructed assets. It speaks primarily to architects, architectural engineers, specifiers, estimators, scientists interested in performance modeling, constructors and construction vendors, computer application vendors interested in this business space, and owners as they participate in the new-building development process. BIM has great importance for, but unfortunately is not generally used today in conjunction with real property managers, appraisers, brokers, mortgage bankers, facility assessors, facility managers, maintenance and operations engineers, safety and security personnel as incident responders, landscape architects, infrastructure engineers and operators, and others outside the business verticals associated with new building design and construction.

Make no mistake—it is not inherently wrong to use a definition of the BIM acronym associated with use and development of information-based virtual building modeling techniques and technologies. The concern is that BIM, as it is currently conceptualized, is focused on data and technology standards during design and construction and is therefore too narrow to fully realize the potential for information-based, interoperable business processes related to "building" (the verb). BIM, viewed from this perspective, is rightly a subset of "BPLM." Other subsets of BPLM, namely OSCRE's (Open Standards Consortium for Real Estate) initiatives in the real estate business space and OGC's (Open Geospatial Consortium) initiatives in the geospatial business space are examples of initiatives developing both data technology (i.e., interfaces, encodings, schema, etc., that enable different technologies to "plug and play") and generic business process workflows.

The work of the National BIM Standards Committee (NBIMS), a committee of the National Institute for Building Sciences, is to knit together the broadest and deepest constituency ever assembled for the purpose of addressing the losses and limitations associated with errors and inefficiencies in the building supply chain. The current Charter signatories (a list of which can be seen at the NBIMS website) represent most, if not all, of the end-user constituencies listed above as well as most of the professional associations, consortia, and technical and associated services vendors who support them. NBIM standards will incorporate several elements but the focus will be on standardized processes which define "business views" of data needed to accomplish a particular set of functions.

To illustrate this and to give readers a sense of what to expect, here are some of the distinguishing characteristics of and goals for the Committee:

• The scope and planned products are much more practice-oriented rather than data-centric. Both the organization of and representation on the Committee reflect this intent.
  
  
• The Charter assumes and encourages participants from, and value propositions for, all phases of the building process lifecycle.
  
  
• A primary goal is to maximize value for all process participants involved in the building lifecycle.
  
  
• A primary strategy is to maximize existing research and development through alliances, cross-representation, active testing and prototyping, and an open and inclusive approach to both membership and results. NBIMS will, through memorandums of understanding, recognize and harmonize its work with other standards-development organizations.
  
  
• The Committee has significant representation from government owners, private and government practitioners, vendors, and specialist professionals. It is actively seeking more involvement from, for example, private owners, A/E/C practitioners, property and facility managers, and real property professionals.
  
  
• The Committee supports the view that a building process lifecycle is not a strictly linear process but is a primarily cyclical process with feedback and cycle-to-cycle knowledge accumulation. The best representation of the building process lifecycle is therefore believed to be a business process helix with a central knowledge core and external nodes representing process suppliers and external consumers. Between these three elements exist information interchange "synapses" which require exchange rules and agreements (see Figure 1).
  
  
• One of the principal products of the Committee's work will be process standards describing parties to a process and the contracted information exchange requirements between the parties. It has been estimated that about 250 process definitions will eventually be required to support an interoperable building supply chain. NBIMS plans to release developments in packages that will be immediately useful even as each release adds additional and more mature concepts and practices (see Figure 2). The first packages are scheduled to be available in late 2006.
  
  
• NBIMS will support the development of content taxonomy standards such as CSI OmniClass, which provides organized classification of elements important to the building process lifecycle.
  
  
• NBIMS will recognize and facilitate the harmonization of software implementation views as they provide necessary "machine interpretable" data sources to the building information exchange process. buildingSmart, ifcXML, BLIS, AEX, CSI/2 and others are examples of software implementation views.
  
  
• Vendors are actively participating on the Committee because they see value in having consistent and predictable processes to which they may apply their technical solutions. Having to develop, market and maintain products to support multiple, inconsistent processes is expensive and complicates the product development cycle.
  
  
• Though not a CAD standard, NBIMS will address non-graphic information and processes as well as phases both before and after design and construction. However, the National CAD Standard will continue to be important as, for the foreseeable future, building processes will continue to need standards for 2D drawings as well.

By now, readers should understand that the work of the National BIM Standards Committee is the next logical step in transforming the building supply chain. I differ with those who say a paradigm change is not required, since the definition of paradigm change is reforming the underlying pattern or model on which actions are based. Participants in the building supply chain, through standards development and use of existing BIM technologies are already well on the way to doing exactly that. By focusing now on the business view of contracted information exchanges and best-use of interoperable data sources, and by expanding the conceptual scope of BIM to include all phases of the building lifecycle, we can realize promised new levels of quality and efficiency.

The Committee invites participation by all parties to the building process lifecycle. For more information please visit http://www.nibs.org/BIMcommittee.html and/or contact Earle Kennett, Vice President NIBS via e-mail at ekennett@nibs.org.

Useful Links

CSI OmniClass: Construction Classification System (known as OmniClass™ or OCCS) is a new classification system useful for many A/E/C applications, from organizing library materials, product literature, and project information, to providing a classification structure for electronic databases.

FIATECH: An industry consortium formed to identify and accelerate the development, demonstration and deployment of fully integrated and automated technologies.

OSCRE: Open Standards Consortium for Real Estate has as its mission the development, synthesis, and adoption of e-business standards that enable the Real Estate industry to function effectively and efficiently in the new economy.

OGC: Open Geospatial Consortium is a non-profit, international, voluntary consensus standards organization that is leading the development of standards for geospatial and location based services.

buildingSmart: The vision of IAI North America, a council of National Institute of Building Sciences, is to develop a standard universal framework to enable and encourage information sharing and interoperability throughout all phases of the whole building life cycle.

About the Author

Alan Edgar, Assoc. AIA, has twenty-two years experience in architecture, A/E/C/O processes, and facilities management information technology. He has served as project architect, a director of architectural information systems for an international architecture and engineering firm, and is currently a vice president and senior consultant for facilities information management at Graphic Systems, Inc., serving corporate, institutional and government clients. Mr. Edgar is the chairman of the Communications Committee for the National BIM Standards Committee. He can be reached at aredgar@comcast.net.