BIM for Interiors, Land Surveyors and Sub-contractors

There are 3 new practice papers available from the joint AIA (Australia) / Consult Australia BIM Steering Group. They are an extension to the 7 Outreach papers that were published last year:
O1 Educating Clients - What to ask for when requesting “BIM”
O2 BIM for Architects and Building Designers
O3 Engineers: What does BIM mean to my business?
O4 Possible uses of BIM for Construction
O5 Quantity Surveyors and Cost Planners: How can BIM improve my business?
O6 Facilities Managers: What benefits are there for me in engaging with a BIM process?
O7 Manufacturers and Suppliers: What can BIM do for my products?

As chair of the BIM & IPD Steering group of the Australian AIA and Consult Australia I had the pleasure to launch 23 Practice Papers back in August 2012.

National BIM Seminar by the AIA Australia

After traveling the continent for the AIA National BIM Seminar for two years in a row, I've handed over the baton to Dan Jürgens, the National BIM Manager at Cox who will start his 'tour' on Wednesday, 23 November in Perth. The AIA will run the seminar in a slightly different format this year: A networking lunch with an expert panel session.

BIM - 10 years on

A reflection on achievements (and misses) of BIM in the past 10 years based on  a range of highly diverse, BIM related conferences that are currently on the way in Australia.

It has now been over 10 years since BIM became officially accepted as the industry acronym to represent the breadth of investigations into object-based virtual modelling and building product models that reach out to the entire building lifecycle.

Dominik Holzer of AEC Connect appointed as Senior Lecturer at The University of Melbourne

As of early February 2013 AEC Connect’s Dominik Holzer occupies a half time position as Senior Lecturer in Digital Architectural Design at The University of Melbourne where he complements his activities as a consultant with an 'academic edge' at this highly regarded University.

As one of the leading academic institutions in Australia, The University of Melbourne provides a fertile ground for critical reflection on contemporary architectural and construction practice.

Dominik looks forward to a rich discourse with his colleagues at the Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning, as well as expanding his horizon through research, teaching and learning with potential partners across the entire university.

'BIM in Practice' Seminars

Blog entry: Dominik Holzer

After a successful launch of the 23 'BIM in Practice' documents back in late August, I will now embark on a 15 city tour of Australia to share detailed insights from the work undertaken by the BIM and IPD Steering Group of the Australian Institute of Architects and Consult Australia.

‘BIM in Practice’ - A great start!

Blog entry by: Dominik Holzer

Over the past 3-4 months one of my main occupations as partner at AEC Connect has been to support the Australian Institute of Architects and Consult Australia in their efforts to publish their first collection of Practice Papers about BIM. Chairing their BIM and IPD Steering Group is a challenging yet rewarding task.

buildingSmart National BIM Roadmap - Workshops

Blog entry by: Dominik Holzer

Dominik Holzer from AEC Connect has been invited to attend an industry leadership workshop by buildingSmart Australia. They have recently secured funding from the (Australian) Commonwealth to analyse means to propagate the use of BIM across the building sector in Australia. The funds were given to buildingSmart with the aim to identify tasks, priorities and actions for the development of a National BIM implementation plan.

AIA (Aus) Seminar Series, BIM – beyond Software

Blog entry by: Dominik Holzer

I’ve been invited by the Australian Institute of Architects to run an Australia wide (see locations and dates below) seminar series on BIM. Titled: BIM, beyond software, I chose to focus on informing participants about the process and changes they are likely to experience when running projects using Building Information Modeling (BIM).

Learning outcomes:

The seminar participant will learn the difference between traditional deliverables and specific BIM requests in project briefs.  The seminar will then explain the impact of BIM deliverables on the work-flow and the design/documentation approach. Attendees will learn to respond to client BIM requests by aligning the services requested with responding in-house activities and ultimately with responding fees for the provision of those services.

Dominik Holzer confirmed as chair of the BIM and IPD IPD Steering Group of the AIA (Aus) & Consult Australia

Blog entry by: Dominik Holzer

The Australian Institute of Architects and Consult Australia have trusted me with the challenging task to chair their joint steering group with BIM experts nationally. The group will promote the use of BIM and IPD in the Australian AEC industry. We will provide guidance to practitioners and we will inform the position of those key industry bodies on BIM overall.

My first task is to guide the setup of four working groups that address the most prevailing issues we face in practice considering BIM. In order to do so, I intend to promote the sign-up of a broad spectrum of industry experts, including architects, engineers, contractors, QS, Facility Managers, lawyers, risk management/insurance and clients. Wish me luck! Dominik

buildingSmart MESH Seminar Series

Blog entry by: Dominik Holzer

Under the ‘Mesh’ logo, buildingSmart Australia organised a conference series in several Australian capital cities, weaving together multiple aspects of design technology, collaboration and product lifecycle data.

Some of the questions raised during Mesh were as follows: How do we collaborate with multi-disciplinary models; what opportunities are there for optimisation, improved environmental performance, sustainability, life cycle assessment? How is planning compliance, Local Government management, etc affected? How do modellers get access to life-cycle product data?

Australian BIM Forum 2010

Blog entry by: Dominik Holzer

Public discussions about BIM by industry bodies such as the Australian Institute of Architect or Consult Australia have been rather sparse since the 2007 RAIA National Conference in Melbourne. At that event, the RAIA held an entire one day parallel stream about BIM, to complement their ‘usual’ program that was less technology focussed.

Since 2007 a lot has happened in the BIM world and the RAIA (now AIA) joined forces with Consult Australia and Autodesk to set up a series of BIM  forums in four major Australian cities. I was invited by the organisers to facilitate the Melbourne and Sydney events in October and November 2010. The forums had the aim to identify the challenges, successes and failures of using BIM to create integrated principles within the AEC industry.

A selected number of 35-40 AEC industry representatives with design, engineering, construction and client background were invited to review key challenges in the uptake of BIM. Those challenges included: the cost of implementation, cultural change, IP Ownership, data manager and security, quality of documentation, improved collaboration, earlier decision-making, the evaluation of alternatives for sustainable design and improvements using analysis during the design process.

Discussions at all the forums were lively with extensive feedback provided by the floor. During the individual sessions comments were recorded and they were then summarised in a 14 page report titled: BIM in Australia 2010 that can be downloaded here!

ACADIA 09: reForm()

Blog entry by: Dominik Holzer

AEC Connect attended the 29th annual conference of the association for computer aided design in architecture (ACADIA) that was held in Chicago, Illinois from October 22nd 025th with a line-up of presenters from academia and design practice. There was a notable difference to the usual workshops that we have seen preceding conferences such as ACADIA, Caadria, or eCAADee over the past few years. This year a staggering number of 12 workshops were on offer in Chicago with parametric modelling and scripting in Rhino as well as environmental analysis in Ecotect raising most interest. The workshops attracted nearly as many visitors as the conference itself and some participants didn’t even stay on for the main event. It makes me wonder if the focus of architectural computing conferences is shifting towards more pro-active participation and training.