The AEC industry has in many ways changed little over the last 100 years. The traditional nature of the industry involves bringing together multi-disciplines/practitioners to deliver a complex one-off product with high levels of competition and low levels/barriers to market entry, along with requiring a tremendous amount of coordination.The tools to manage and develop the design process have until the last decade been focused on automating the 2 dimensional drawing board techniques and the contracts or rules by which the industry engages have their roots firmly in Victorian processes. Recent developments have seen emerging technology focused on web based collaboration systems and 3D object based tools. One of the main reasons for this rapid take up has been the fact that the basis of the system is to automate an existing drawing distribution process. Collaboration has taken off to such an extent that web based collaboration systems are have been/are being used on a significant number and varying value of projects.
Although project information may be produced in an electronic form, in essence it is distributed among the various multi-disciplinary teams involved in the project as documents. The format of such information is also rich and multi-dimensional. Such is the nature of the industry that it has resulted in significant barriers to communication between the various stakeholders, which in turn has significantly affected the efficiency and performance of the industry. Gallaher et al. (2004) indicated that, US$15.8B is lost annually in the U.S Capital Facilities Industry due to the lack of interoperability.
In recent years, Building Information Modelling has become a very active research area in order to tackle the problems related to information integration and interoperability throughout the lifecycle of a building (from feasibility and conceptual design to demolition and re-cycling stages). Building Information Models (BIMs) are promising to be the facilitators of integration, interoperability and collaboration for the future of the industry.BIMs of today have emerged as a result of an evolution from de-facto drawing exchange formats such as DXF through Semantic AEC Information Models (which in the main are based on STEP technologies)
Today, the key information models in the AEC industry are the Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) and the CIMSteel Integration Standards (CIS). IFC is the effort of IAI/buildingSMART whose goal is to specify a common language for technology to improve the communication, productivity, delivery time, cost, and quality throughout the design, construction and maintenance life cycle of buildings. The CIS are open standards for the digital exchange and sharing of the engineering information relating to a structural steel framework.
The main aim of BIMs is enabling interoperability between various different application used in the industry throughout the lifecycle of the building (facility).
According to the AEC industry’s viewpoint, interoperability can be enabled by seamless data exchange and sharing around a universal (open and commonly recognised) data model (NBIMS,2007). In this context, today an implementation of this paradigm is achieved by using IFC models, i.e. several CAD and structural analysis applications are capable of importing and exporting their internal models as IFCs, and some applications are also capable of acquiring information from an IFC model through the use of a shared resource such as a shared file or a model server database. Applications that are capable of accomplishing these (Import/Export/Sharing) tasks via IFC can be certified by International Alliance of Interoperability (IAI) as IFC compliant applications. The effort towards achieving certification (as IFC compliant) by the IAI is known as Implementation activities and is supported by the Implementation Support Group (ISG) of the alliance.
Building Information Modelling is applied in many different areas, e.g. either BIMs used as a resource to enable interoperability or Building Information Modelling has been realised as a process of managing a project through a single shared information backbone. Recent research in the area demonstrated how 4 to N dimensional simulation applications can be facilitated using BIMs. Countries such as Singapore use BIMs to validate that building models are compliant with code and regulations. Research has also demonstrated that Building Information Modelling can facilitate the design of energy efficient buildings.
Mission and Objectives
The mission of this handbook is to provide an up-to-date comprehensive and collective perspective of both the latest leading-edge research along with the current understanding and practice in the area of Building Information Modelling within the global construction industry. The overall objectives of the handbook are to:
Although project information may be produced in an electronic form, in essence it is distributed among the various multi-disciplinary teams involved in the project as documents. The format of such information is also rich and multi-dimensional. Such is the nature of the industry that it has resulted in significant barriers to communication between the various stakeholders, which in turn has significantly affected the efficiency and performance of the industry. Gallaher et al. (2004) indicated that, US$15.8B is lost annually in the U.S Capital Facilities Industry due to the lack of interoperability.
In recent years, Building Information Modelling has become a very active research area in order to tackle the problems related to information integration and interoperability throughout the lifecycle of a building (from feasibility and conceptual design to demolition and re-cycling stages). Building Information Models (BIMs) are promising to be the facilitators of integration, interoperability and collaboration for the future of the industry.BIMs of today have emerged as a result of an evolution from de-facto drawing exchange formats such as DXF through Semantic AEC Information Models (which in the main are based on STEP technologies)
Today, the key information models in the AEC industry are the Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) and the CIMSteel Integration Standards (CIS). IFC is the effort of IAI/buildingSMART whose goal is to specify a common language for technology to improve the communication, productivity, delivery time, cost, and quality throughout the design, construction and maintenance life cycle of buildings. The CIS are open standards for the digital exchange and sharing of the engineering information relating to a structural steel framework.
The main aim of BIMs is enabling interoperability between various different application used in the industry throughout the lifecycle of the building (facility).
According to the AEC industry’s viewpoint, interoperability can be enabled by seamless data exchange and sharing around a universal (open and commonly recognised) data model (NBIMS,2007). In this context, today an implementation of this paradigm is achieved by using IFC models, i.e. several CAD and structural analysis applications are capable of importing and exporting their internal models as IFCs, and some applications are also capable of acquiring information from an IFC model through the use of a shared resource such as a shared file or a model server database. Applications that are capable of accomplishing these (Import/Export/Sharing) tasks via IFC can be certified by International Alliance of Interoperability (IAI) as IFC compliant applications. The effort towards achieving certification (as IFC compliant) by the IAI is known as Implementation activities and is supported by the Implementation Support Group (ISG) of the alliance.
Building Information Modelling is applied in many different areas, e.g. either BIMs used as a resource to enable interoperability or Building Information Modelling has been realised as a process of managing a project through a single shared information backbone. Recent research in the area demonstrated how 4 to N dimensional simulation applications can be facilitated using BIMs. Countries such as Singapore use BIMs to validate that building models are compliant with code and regulations. Research has also demonstrated that Building Information Modelling can facilitate the design of energy efficient buildings.
Mission and Objectives
The mission of this handbook is to provide an up-to-date comprehensive and collective perspective of both the latest leading-edge research along with the current understanding and practice in the area of Building Information Modelling within the global construction industry. The overall objectives of the handbook are to:
- Provide a unique comprehensive and collective perspective of Building Information Modelling to-date along with the opportunity to initiate the debate towards an agreed definition.
- Bring together the current collective body of knowledge of academic research with that of industry understanding and practice in order to provide an holistic picture of Building Information Modelling within the industry.
- Provide contrasting and comparative perspectives on the latest leading-edge research from academia with the understanding and practice of both the construction and other industries.
- Provide a future reflection of the direction for Building Information Modelling in identifying the barriers and addressing their resolve
