When I first jumped into BIM and worked to understand what it all meant I quickly realized the array of tools could be an issue. I found the buildingSMART.org website and dove in reading about a worldwide industry body driving digital transformation of the built asset industry. Imagine an organization that brings the worlds visionaries in the built environment industry. After being a part of teams that continually fought over internal company standards and how to protect people from stealing them yet getting others to use them it was refreshing to read about a collaborative community from around the world.
My recent move to an international company gave me the opportunity to attend one of the summits held twice a year. This year I was able to attend the spring session held in Dusseldorf Germany.
buildingSMART focuses on standardizing processes, workflows and procedures for BIM on a worldwide stage. We are a community of volunteers from around the world made up of industry users who have a passion in BIM and want to create Open Standards. I could spend several blog posts discussing the value and the goals of buildingSMART so please take a look at their website to see if your company would like to submit a project for use case, or better yet, win an award.
The Spring Summit began with an opening Plenary. There were 4 keynote lectures:
1st Keynote lecture: Industry insights on the state of digitization by Carsten Lotz (McKinsey & Company),
2nd Keynote lecture: Digital Twin for buildings by Peter Löffler (VP Innovation and Industry Affairs, Siemens Building Technologies),
3rd Keynote lecture: The Digital Twin for Infrastructure by Mark Enzer (CTO Mott MacDonald)
4th keynote lecture: Future of Cloud Technology by Andy Verone (Global VP Industry Strategy and Innovation, Oracle).
Being able to hear from different technology companies from around the world helps give perspective.
The second and third day are about ‘Rooms’, the rooms are divided into 2 categories; Technical Focus and User Focus.
The Technical Focus Rooms includes; (from the buildingSMART website)
Building Room’s core mission is to create open digital standards and solutions by enabling intelligent data that either contributes to the planning, design and construction of buildings, or the ongoing operations and maintenance. This will enable process and data integration for the buildings for the entire lifecycle.
Infrastructure Room’s purpose is to combine, enhance and develop open standards for intelligent data, which enable process and data integration for infrastructure.
Product Room’s purpose is the development and provision of processes, templates, tools and functionality to enable the robust and efficient use of the product data, relevant third party standards, classification system and other forms of structure content for openBIM
Technical Room has overall responsibility to explore and coordinate the investigation and where desirable facilitate buildingSMART’s engagement with fundamental technical advancements which may enhance or accelerate the provision of robust openBIM solutions to users.
The User Focus Rooms includes; (from the buildingSMART website)
Airport Room’s purpose is to develop and deploy open digital standards for the airport environment. The unification of digital airport standards will enable more efficient working form the common supply chain and create a uniform approach to the industry.
Construction Room’s purpose is to advance site productivity, lower construction costs, and improve construction safety through the use of BIM and the application of open data standards.
Railway Room’s purpose is to accelerate and exploit new digital opportunities for railway systems and create a comprehensive and applicable digital representation of the entire railway ecosystem that will support all phases of the lifecycle.
Regulatory Room’s purpose is helping project owners and regulatory authorities benefit from the use of openBIM.
There is also a bSI General Room where we received updates and overviews of what bSI is implementing and working on. Each of the rooms have a steering committee to create the work goals and remits of the room. Going to the rooms give us the opportunity to hear where they are headed, ask questions and give any feedback they require.
In order to advance the notion of OpenBIM we need to collaborate as a whole. Getting everyone from around the globe who are passionate about open standards and getting the industry to move forward is exciting.
BIMFreak 