ThinkBIM - Summer Conference 2016

Yesterday I chaired the ThinkBIM Summer Conference - Soft data, hard landings and asset management.

The theme was looking at stages 7, 0 and 1 of a project. How the needs of the 'in use' stage of a project could be considered at the 'strategy' and 'briefing' stage.

The venue for the ThinkBIM conferences is now the fantastic Squire Paton Boggs offices in Leeds City Centre. The photograph below shows the lovely new setting that mixes the old with the new in terms of architecture...

A new setting for ThinkBIM

Deborah Rowland was the first speaker. Deborah has experience in facility management in the private sector for Barclays and also as one of the leaders in the public sector through her work with Ministry of Justice.

To find out more about the MoJ story please see the link below:
- https://prezi.com/b73gw4x6duec/moj-bim-story-bim-prospects-2016/

Deborah also talked highly of the work being done by Andy Green from Faithful+Gould on linking SFG20 maintenance specifications with NRM and Uniclass 2015 codes to help with data flow from design and construction into operations.
- https://www.fgould.com/uk-europe/articles/new-customisable-sfg20-changing-world-building/

Jacqueline Walpole then followed with her keynote. Jacqueline reflected back on the work she was involved in a few years ago with UCL Academy, BAM and Autodesk looking at FM and BIM solutions.
- http://www.bam.co.uk/how-we-do-it/case-study/ucl-academy

It was interesting listening to Jacqueline's expertise and seeing how digitised the FM industry already is. The challenge, as always, is to try and get digital information to flow and not to have to start from scratch at certain phases of the project.

A to-scale version of the plan of work that nicely illustrates the importance of the 'in use' phase

Following the opening two keynotes, it was time for the roundtables. For this event, I hosted a session looking at how lessons learned from the operation stages of previous projects can feed into an EIR template for future projects.

A digital technical structure to supplement the EIR process

ThinkBIM Duncan asked for five take-home points from the roundtable. So here we go...

1. A few years on now since the publication of PAS1192:2 and 3 the participants are still not seeing many good examples of EIRs on projects. This includes projects where teams are working for extremely large clients who do many repeat similar buildings. The sample content on the BIM Task Group website and the documents made public from MofJ seem to be the best examples currently:
   - BIM Task Group sample EIR
   - MoJ sample documents
   
2. Lessons learned on successes and failures can feed into the EIRs. A specific example given was repeated mistakes on wall covering solutions on multiple retail projects for the same client from different teams  - could be easily avoidable if this information was captured digitally and fed into a single template.
   
3. Big clients could make big savings by employing one person to standardised their processes and concentrate on good data kicking off a project. If you are building 12 offices/superstore/schools per year - could you save at least £5K per project by employing someone to get the digital process right?
   
4. A solution that allowed information to flow digitally from strategy to brief into the information production phases of a project would be well received. I presented some concepts as to how this could maybe be done through a template plan of work that considered space types and system types and it was well received. For example, a high school will have an assembly hall and washrooms and piling systems and heating systems etc... - having lessons learned captured in a template which then fed into design to ensure a better outcome when the school is used is something that would provide value.
   
5. Could the various sector specific BIM4 groups contribute to sample templates that help their sectors? Sharing knowledge and making the industry more efficient? Many of the BIM groups have been receiving information from the central BIM Task Group over the last five years - is it now time for everyone to show how it can be done?

The final session was from Dr Graham Kelly from BIM Academy. He presented the work they have been doing in Australia with the Sydney Opera House.

This was a fascinating case study - plenty of web links below on how they are connecting many databases via an online 3D model viewer to meet the building's daily FM needs.
- http://www.bimplus.co.uk/news/aecom-and-b1im-acade4my-t5eam-create-bimfm-/
- http://www.i2c.com.au/2016/05/sydney-opera-house-bim-implementation-video/

Graham from BIM Academy - using the 3D model, via a webbrowser for the FM of a major building

So all in all - another super ThinkBIM conference. Well done to all of the team that put it together and I look forward to the next one.

To view all of my posts from the ThinkBIM series over the last five years or so click below:
- http://constructioncode.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/thinkBIM