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Implementing BIM successfully: The software is only half the battle


Date: 6/1/2010
URL: www.informatix.co.uk


In dark rooms, dimly lit by the glow of computer screens, the software developers of the CAD world are moving inexorably onwards. To them BIM is a done deal, and today they are setting their minds to the development of the next logical extension of the concept. Build Lifecycle Management, or BLM, is the integrated management of all the graphical, textual and numeric data relating to the planning, contractual negotiations, conceptual design, environmental studies, structural analysis, detailed drawings, post-handover facility management, and even the planned demolition or decommissioning of a project.

Despite these noble aims, the rest of us mere mortals are still coming to grips with the practical selection and implementation of a BIM solution that we can integrate into our real world business practices, skills and experiences.

These issues can perhaps be more easily understood if we look at some of the practical demands that had to be met by the integrated design team of Foggo Associates on the current Canon Place Project, a new mixed-usage development to be built over London railway and tube stations.

The project was to provide 622,174 square feet (57,800 m2) of reconfigured office space, new station facilities and concourse for the mainline station, new ticket offices, and access to the London Underground station and retail accommodation. The expressed steel mega structure of the building needed to span and cantilever over the mainline railway and London Underground station and tracks.

The major archaeological issue for the Canno Place development has been how to build the proposed new foundations through areas of the surviving Roman Governor’s Palace Scheduled Monument. A solution has been arrived at through an iterative process of consultation and design within the project team (Foggo Associates, MoLAS, Laing O’Rourke, Expanded Piling and Griffiths McGee) and discussed in detail with the English Heritage Inspector for London,the English Heritage Science Advisor for London and the Senior Planning and Archaeology Officer at the Corporation of London.


In BIM terms, Foggo needed to ensure that they approached the project with a CAD software tool set that would guarantee that they were able to:

• Create and maintain an extremely large centralized project database (both graphical and textual) with both local and remote simultaneous and secure multi access for all consortium members.
• Work on a single 3-D model with linked 2-D plot views, allowing immediate updates of project documents in the event of changes to the model detail in the planning/ engineering processes.
• Map and scale data over a very large physical site for master planning.
• Integrate with Ordnance Survey data(OS Master Map).
• Integrate with Terrain Survey Data. • Work with objects that would allow downstream users to extract information from the drawings for scheduling and take off.

Foggo used Cambridge, England-based Informatix Software International’s MicroGDS as their BIM toolset to satisfy these needs, but their associated challenge, as is found in all BIM project implementations, lay in the two simple words, “create”and “maintain.”

The success or failure of BIM project implementations truly revolves around the company management both understanding the data they need to record during the process, and putting in place the associated people, administrative structures and processes that ensure that it is captured and maintained.

BIM has a great deal to offer, but will only succeed where companies have the will, the time and the relevant process structures to make it happen, such as at Foggo Associates.

Adrian Williams is the business development manager for Informatix Software International, Cambridge, England. For more information, visit www.informatix.co.uk.
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