BIM Handbook: A Guide to Building Information Modeling for Owners, Managers, Designers, Engineers and Contracts

After reading the entire book, I highly recommend this to those who are starters in BIM adoption or for those who are willing to understand the BIM and what it can do for their organisation. This book talks about the fundamental concept of BIM, scrutinising different BIM authoring tools in terms of capability and interoperability, and most importantly present you with real life project case studies for you to understand more BIM in real practice.

Some of the information from this book that are worth sharing:

• The book does not directly answer the question about what kind of procurement process that is best for BIM. Instead, it give some opportunities and challenges with regards to two procurement process. Design-Bid-Build according to the book approaches greatest challenge to the use of BIM because the contractor does not participate early in the design process. On the other hand, Design-Build approach provides an opportunity to exploit BIM technology because of a single entity in responsible for design and construction.

• What is not considered a BIM technology?

1. Models that contains 3D data only and no or few attributes (a bit confusing for me)
2. Models with no support behaviour
3. Models that are composed of multiple 2D CAD reference files that must be combined to defined building
4. Models that allow changes to dimensions in one view that are not automatically reflected in other view

• Discriminating BIM issues associated to their usage as a "tool" and as a "platform"

1. BIM as a tool - intended for single/limited purpose usage

• User interface - easy to learn and should have modular structure to their functionality
• Drawing Generation - easy to generate drawings
• Ease of developing custom parametric objects
• Complex curve surface modelling
• Other-tool-level-capabilities

2. BIM as a platform - intended for multiple purpose usage

• Scalability
• Tool interfaces
• Libraries of BIM elements
• Platform user interface consistency
• Extensibility
• Multi-user environment
• Effective support for managing properties

ISO 15926 - a STEP standard for industrial automation systems and integration

Industry Foundation Class (IFC) - is a schema developed to define an extensible set of consistent data representation if building information for exchange between AEC software applications. I will discuss this in more details on the next post.

• IFC Coverage

1. Geometry (B-reps/NURBS)
2. Relations
3. Properties
4. Metadata

Buildingsmart alliance and NBIMS in their process maps adopted a well known modelling language. The "Business Plan Modelling Notation" or BPMN.

• Other effort supporting interoperability

1. International Framework for Dictionaries (IFD) - dictionary was formed to address issues like language differences for a property or any data type in IFC
2. Omniclass - develop by International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) and International Construction Information Society (ICIS) and they are classification schemes for building elements and assembly used for specifications and cost estimates mainly in US
3. COBie - Construction Operations Building information exchange addresses the handover of information between the construction team and the owner.
4. XML-base schema - extensible markup language suited for website

"Building Information Modelling" by Willem Kymell

I just finished reading the book "Building Information Modelling: Planning and Managing Construction Projects with 4D CAD and Simulations, 2008" by Willem Kymell. Although this book is not definitely up to date, it is still full of substance and is relevant to our current BIM practice and worth buying. The book talk about the fundamental concept of BIM, its approaches, BIM adaptation processes, team dynamics, etc.

Here some useful points to take note from this book:

• BIM Project Planning

1. Determine the purpose of BIM  -(set project process and goals)
2. Develop BIM Specifications -(choose processes, tools and milestone for the work)
3. Developing Implementation Plan -(develop process strategies, select the team, and develop evaluation and adjustment methods) 

• Model Progress Specification 

• Model Progress Specification Matrix

• Type of Models (based on the author's opinion)

1. Conceptual or Schematic Model - low level of details
2. Design Model - mid-level detail
3. Construction Model - high level detail
4. Shop Drawing Model - high level of detail with necessary information for fabrication
5. Detailing Model - high level of detail specific to a portion of the project
6. As-built Model
7. Operations and Maintenance Model

• Always understand BIM Deliverables

• Overall BIM Processes 

1. Planning the project
2. Communicating the project
3. Information feedback loop
4. Tracking the project
5. Delivering the BIM

• Qualitative Analysis - considers the nature of the issue

1. Communication and marketing illustrations
2. Constructability analysis 
3. System coordination and clash detection
4. Energy Analysis

• Sequential Analysis - study that includes time

1. Assembly and installation sequences
2. Construction schedule and sequence

• Quantitative Analysis - measuring the amount of something

1. Quantity take-off
2. Construction estimates
3. Life cycle cost analysis

The topic I like the most here is about Project BIM Planning. The author only emphasised the important matters the affect BIM deliverables. His processes are quite straight-forward and very practical to current industry practice. I will definitely adopt the principles that I learned from this book. By the way, have also case studies that highlights the benefits of BIM in three disciplines. 

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