Are we bimbling into 2016?
December 2015

Bimble v. to take a leisurely approach to adopting Building Information Modelling (see also: BIM).

While 2016 promises to be the year of BIM, with the UK government set to require collaborative 3D (Level 2) BIM on all of its centrally procured construction projects and with the private sector likely to follow its lead, we are a little surprised at the apparent lack of demand for BIM-ready data in our sector, given the relatively low level of enquiries that we have received on the topic of late. Although I would like to put this down to our BIM Guidance Note comprehensively answering all of our members’ questions, I suspect this is sadly not the case. At a recent meeting on the topic attended by representatives from several systems companies and product manufacturers from the wider fenestration sector, while rightly all have been busy developing their BIM strategies and objects, no one confessed to having seen a real set of Employer’s Information Requirements, for example. These are critical documents that form part of the appointment and tender documents on a BIM Project.

You might not be surprised to learn that apparently this audience of product manufacturers has not yet been involved at the sharp end of a project managed in Level 2 BIM-world, but as the meeting went on to explore, specialist contractors in our sector who will be at the sharp end will be required to compile all of the project-specific data. Systems companies, other product manufacturers and trade associations are ready to support the process, yet seemingly this latter group has not been called on extensively by the specialist contractors to date, who presumably have not yet witnessed a significant demand for BIM data either. Are we collectively bimbling into 2016?

Make no mistake, even if enquiry levels concerning BIM seem low now, they will come. The cause of product manufacturers received a much needed boost recently with the announcement that BIM4M2, the Chartered Institution of Building Services Engineers (CIBSE), NBS and the Construction Products Association have agreed to work together to provide standardised templates for the principal product groups and assemblies that can then be populated with the actual product data to create product data sheets for real buildings, developing the approaches of CIBSE and NBS. Without this unified approach, manufacturers could face the prospect of providing product data in different proprietary formats as well as 3D information in different proprietary formats.

With a product data template in place, the required data inputs for that product are defined. This approach will inevitably lead to designers and specifiers trying to compare products using this information when, worryingly, they may not realise that they might not be comparing like-for-like. While a systems company, for example, could provide some generic or product family data to start the process, in our world of made-to-measure assemblies (and that is what, say, a window is in reality), it will be the specialist contractor’s role to provide all of the data sheets specific to a given installation, based on the actual products installed and where the performance data could differ significantly from any generic data. So 2016 must be the year that as an industry we sort out product data templates and the year that specialist contractors seek out all the available support to reach Level 2 BIM. Bimble no more!