I had the opportunity to see a presentation on Building Information Management (BIM) standards yesterday at the Open Geospatial Consortium’s Technical Committee Meeting in Boulder, Colo. The U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) is the landlord for all federal buildings throughout the country, and has been at the forefront of implementing Building Information Management as well as 3D and 4D building technologies.
The presentation by Calvin Kam was an impressive endorsement of the efficiencies that can be gained through BIM technologies for visualization, simulation, coordination and integration of 3D and 4D. The GSA has been instrumental in pushing the concepts and the technology forward as they see great cost savings and efficiencies from the construction process, and better design for more efficient buildings.
The organization has published two components of the BIM Guide Series (3D-4D-BIM Overview and Spatial Program Validation), are set to release the next installment on 3D Laser Scanning this week, and have plans for guides on 4D Phasing, Energy Performance and Operations and Circulation and Security Validation. These guides are an invaluable resource for organizations interested in the advancement of BIM. They tackle important technical areas for the advancement of spatial accuracy within the models and advanced BIM analysis functions.
The work that GSA is doing with architects, engineers and contractors to understand individual requirements and push BIM forward is a world-leading effort that is gaining international attention. GSA is working with Norway, Finland and Denmark on defining open standards for a BIM approach. They’re also meeting with Japan and Australia.
GSA has completed 70 BIM projects to date and has worked with the vendor community to define standards and advance software capabilities. They’re clearly an organization to watch for the convergence of spatial technologies and the creation of intelligent 3D models.
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Please Keep me posted on the BIM Stds development