BE Magazine - Volume 4, Issue 4 - (Page 8)

will change to new software and methods, motivated by marketing, demonstrations, testing, and validation. Meanwhile, software vendors need to see user demand in order to develop these products. The vendors will develop software rely on some combination of industry standards and ad hoc agreements to avoid incompatibilities. This saves a lot of printing, scanning, and redrafting, and it enables exchange of ﬁles via the Internet. This step toward digital communication helps GSA AND BENTLEY COLLABORATE ON NEW GSA BIM GUIDE The U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) and Bentley have collaborated on the development of “The Building Information Modeling (BIM) Guide Series 02 – Spatial Validation Program.” The guide helps designers developing Final Concept designs for GSA’s Public Buildings Services meet GSA’s spatial program BIM minimum requirements. The requirements include the submission of a BIM Industry Foundation Class (IFC) model as deﬁned by the buildingSMART organization of NIBS. GSA, which owns more than 350 million square feet of space, believes that validating architecture and engineering designs at Concept Design is a big step toward better space management. It began validating spatial programs using BIM in ﬁscal year 2007. GSA continues to take a vendor-neutral position on the use of BIM for spatial program submissions for PBS and does not require or advocate the use of any speciﬁc BIM application. Its only requirement for spatial validation is the delivery of a compliant IFC model such as that delivered by Bentley Architecture. >>more from users’ requirements statements. But requirements for new business processes are hard for users to identify while they are caught up in their current practices and while they continue to think in terms of the capabilities of the software they routinely use. Our tools shape our thinking. Our business relationships also shape our thinking. Most architects and builders are still in between paper and digital ﬁles. It’s easiest to do business with people in the way they know how to do business. Architects usually design with CAD, but often they still communicate with paper (or drafting ﬁlm), partly because the computer systems used by speciﬁers, component suppliers, contractors, and city ofﬁcials often don’t interoperate very well. Increasingly, however, the systems do interoperate, at least through ﬁle transfers. But the digital ﬁles that get transferred are not as secure as paper: it’s easier to trust a paper document. One can know with some certainty who created it, when it was created, and when it was last updated. Despite these obstacles, businesses that work together on big projects increasingly exchange digital information. They typically designers leverage their investment in CAD and helps construction contractors realize the beneﬁts of CAD. Some ﬁrms and their partner companies are easing into the next step, which is to avoid exchanging whole ﬁles and instead accessing data that is made available through Web servers. Just as a traveler can get a local map from a huge map database such as Google Maps or MapQuest, a contractor or building inspector can access a window detail or a sewer connection detail from a set of construction drawings that the architectural ﬁrm has put on a server. Anyone with permission can download views of the design database, but almost no one needs to download the discrete ﬁles that make up the database. With BIM, city models, and the Web, client software can be constructed that draws on multiple database servers to provide extraordinary interactive capabilities, such as clicking on a ﬂoor level of a building to see who the tenants are, rendering a view of the urban landscape from a particular window of a building, or determining which company has installed ﬁber-optic cables. Additional elements such as time (4D) and cost (5D) enhance BIM’s signiﬁcant capability for comprehensive lifecycle management. Increasingly, stakeholders with a wide range of business or governance goals can introduce business process re-engineering into the planning, design, ﬁnancing, construction, insuring, renting, operation, management, renovation, repurposing, decommissioning, and ultimate demolition of buildings and other facilities. Organizations working within the standards processes are well positioned to develop business relationships in this new area. Breaking down the old technology stovepipes opens new opportunities for disintermediation (cutting out the middleman). Large and small companies are creating new types of businesses, services, and partnerships. These companies recognize the growing market need and the potential to meet that need using technologies that are converging in the presence of Moore’s Law—the doubling of computer power/price every 18 months—and Metcalf’s Law—the value of a network resource is proportional to the square of the number of users of the resource. Anyone looking for growth in CAD should look closely at BIM. This article was originally published in Cadalyst, June 2007, and can be found on the publication’s Web site, www.cadalyst.com. Copyright 2007 Questex Media Group, Inc. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission. Sam A. Bacharach joined the Open Geospatial Consortium About Sam A. Bacharach (OGC) in April 2000. Bacharach has presented on geospatial services and OGC in the United States and Canada, Asia, Africa, Australia, and Europe. He represents OGC to the International Standards Organization (ISO) Technical Committee 204, the Digital Geospatial Information Working Group, and the Committee for European Normalization (CEN) Technical Committee 287. 8 BE MAGAZINE | Volume 4, Issue 4 http://www.bentley.com/bim http://www.cadalyst.com/

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of BE Magazine - Volume 4, Issue 4

BE Magazine - Volume 4, issue 4 Contents The Drive To Innovate News BE Newsletter Highlights Converging on the Market Bytes and Bricks Generative Components Building Courting Success Remodeling an Icon Structural Integration Building News From Bentley Civil Greenfield Airport Takes Flight Good Neighbors Collaborative Innovation Civil News From Bentley Advertisers Index Geospatial Ring of Fiber Revolutionizing Integrity Management Port City Transformation In Conversation With Greg Bentley Geospatial News From Bentley Plant Single-Source Service Committed to Cleaner Air Expediting Expansion Plant News From Bentley Strength in Numbers The Art of Visualization A Winning Legacy Zero Change Culture: Further Definition A Remarkable Collaboration With a Forward-Thinking Community

BE Magazine - Volume 4, Issue 4

For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.