Impressive BIM Case Studies Detailed at Ecobuild 2009

I was a little bit concerned when I entered this large conference room for my first Ecobuild session this afternoon and there were only 10 people. It got worse. Just as we were supposed to start a staff member announced that the session was cancelled. At least there were not a LOT of disappointed people.

On to my 2nd choice, which I have to say was worth the cost of the trip. The session was titled, “BIM Best Practices: Winning Solutions from the Leaders”, and that was the right billing. The presenters were given 12 minutes. Two of the most sophisticated used a video with no text – very slick. But in nearly all cases the depth of understanding and expertise was evident. These were the pros at the use of 3D modeling and BIM for compressing project schedules and reducing costly mistakes in the field. This is not your mother’s 2D AEC project, it was high powered innovation on display.

From the use of tablet PCs for building commissioning, creating virtual prototypes, spatial coordination, constructability review, environmental performance modeling, laser scanning, integrated design bid build, lean operation and lean design, supply chain management – the list goes on and on. BIM was the common thread, but there were a lot of variations. The companies presenting included HDR, Turner, Ghafari, SOM, and Gilbane, among others.

At the end there was an open discussion on how best to capture project case studies like these so that others might learn and adopt some of the best practices. A consensus was not reached, but the buildingSMART alliance and other organizations are going to be working on making this valuable information more readily available.

This was a real eye opener for me, and a confirmation that it really is about 3D for AEC. This is the core driver – 3D modeling. As one speaker noted, if you are not at least doing clash detection than you should not even be a player. But once again most of the projects being discussed were in the hundreds of millions of dollars of contract value. The trick is to push this level of sophistication down to the under $10 million projects.

That will take some time, but the very encouraging news is that even though it takes a long list of software products to cover all of the bases, the revolution is underway.