Tuesday 10 July 2012

July Event - Beyond BIM with Paul Fletcher

Paul Fletcher of the RIBA Construction Strategy Group  led an interesting debate into life beyond BiM, and where an evolution of BIM may lead us towards designing better buildings.

For progressive designers, Level 2 BIM is now readily deliverable. So what does life beyond BIM look like? Incorporation of social engineering will lead to a step change in delivering better buildings. Henry Ford once said "if I ask people what they want, it is faster horses". They never dreamed of a step change in to life without horses. As an industry we need to embrace the power of BIM and the social client engagement agenda to take the BIM knowledgement on and use it to deliver better environments, not just spaces, in the future.

BIM needs to take cognisance of BEM, the building environment model, and BPE, post occupancy performance evaluation, to build buildings better, with better certainty on outputs, and better associated quality. Smart energy management and user engagement could save 30% energy costs compared with enhanced insulation and cladding.

The audience was inspired to lead the way in the future, rather than follow the example of mainstream BIM package vendors. A common approach using COBie standards was seen as a good thing.



As one would expect debate was lively and promoted a lengthy Q&A.

BIM remains a topic that brings in a large audience and our thanks go out to Paul on throwing down challenges for us all to respond to. Something that was the subject of discussion over a glass or two of wine during the networking afterwards!