Highlights of the ‘BIM in Practice’ Conference

A critical review of this recent conference in Sydney that gathered key national and international experts to  share their progress on implementing BIM on a variety of projects.

Review of the GSA and Penn State guides on BIM for FM/Owners

Blog entry by: Dominik Holzer

In early BIM days architects, engineers and manufacturers (hence those authoring BIMs) were the main parties of interest when it came to BIM literature, followed by contractors who would learn about BIM's advantages for coordination and site related work. This is changing and two recent U.S. publications illustrate that the focus surrounding BIM is currently moving towards exploring advantages for Owner / Operators in general, and Facility Management FM in particular: The General Services Administration (GSA) 'BIM Guide for Facility Management' and the Penn State 'BIM Planning Guide for FacilityOwners'

Autodesk University (AU) 2011

Blog entry by: Dominik Holzer

With the main focus on promoting new features and capabilities of Autodesk products for architects, engineers and contractors (in particular in the realm of BIM), the AU also included a series of seminars and innovation forums that dealt with BIM culture, process and implementation strategies in practice.

I’ve predominantly been attending these less technical and more management oriented sessions in order to investigate BIM directions globally. I heard from other Design Technology leaders about the progress they are making and the challenges they are facing in the transition from CAD to BIM.

Overall my impression was that the problems outside Australia are very much the same we face here. Even further, I got the impression that Australia is actually on par if not ahead of other countries when it comes to the BIM implementation effort across our industry.  The reasons for this are as follows:

Designing the Dynamic

Blog entry by: Dominik Holzer

AEC Connect has been strongly involved in a 5 day event titled Designing the

Dynamic’ this November at RMIT University in Melbourne. Hosted by RMIT’s Design Research Institute (DRI) and the Spatial Information Architecture Lab (SIAL), Dominik was part of the organising committee and Andre presented via Video link from overseas on the opening day of this 4 day workshop plus one day symposium.

Informa BIM Summit, Sydney

Blog entry by: Dominik Holzer

The inaugural two day BIM Summit in Sydney defied the usual trend of consultants gathering to update each other on their BIM progress. Instead, the event attracted a large number of contractors as well as some clients and government bodies in addition to the ‘usual suspects’. The level of presentations was high with both top national as well as international speakers from architecture, engineering, contractor, PM and legal background.

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?

Smart Geometry 2010 (Barcelona)

Blog entry by: Dominik Holzer

There is certainly a fresh breeze detectable at this year’s Smart Geometry workshop and conference in Barcelona. Whereas in previous years, experimentation during the workshop was mainly limited to tasks resulting in computationally generated geometry (on people’s laptops) this year was certainly different. Practitioners and researchers combined sophisticated computational design with the creation and testing of physical models. The activity of ‘making and breaking’ seemed like a relief compared to the usually narrow focus of individuals creating virtual masterpieces on their laptops. There was a sense of illustriousness and productivity previously unseen at SG and the IaaC delivered the perfect backdrop for this.

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.