CC1705

EVENTfocus
COBie or not COBie?
David Chadwick looks at some of the issues covered during the CAD User Seminar on COBie, held at
the London Transport Museum in May in association with Vectorworks
When the idea of running a
question and answer session on
Information Modelling was first
mooted, my immediate reaction was one
of very mild panic! Having attended
many, many conferences as a journalist I
am acutely aware of the fine balancing
act involved in making a subject as
complex as COBie an engaging and
rewarding one for an audience whose
knowledge of the subject will naturally
range from novices genuinely seeking
answers to a couple of confusing or
contradictory points, to experts on the
subject who have highly technical
questions to put to the panel. It's a skill
that, in my experience, few conferences
have mastered.
Well I’m happy to report that the CAD
User Seminar on COBie, held in
association with Vectorworks at the
London Transport Museum in May, was
deemed a success by attendees and
speakers alike. The aim was to highlight
the importance of the information created
using 3D building modelling, and where
and how it should be used. Our
attendees were able to take advantage of
the subject being thoroughly aired, with
its pros and its cons, by experts on all
sides of BIM. These ranged from creators
of the Information Model, software
experts who demonstrated a number of
alternative methods of presenting that
information, and even a representative of
the eventual users of the model - a rare
beast on BIM panels - along with a
consultant with years of experience in
watching both developers and users
getting to grips with the problem.
The aim of the seminar was certainly
achieved - namely to widen the discourse
surrounding BIM and the way it should
be delivered. The salient issues
stemming from both COBie and the use
of a Federated Model to deliver BIM were
not wholly resolved, but our informed and
well-briefed audience were provided with
sufficient information to make their own
decisions as to what would best suit their
particular requirements, or to encourage
them to research the subject more
thoroughly. We were, after all, debating a
subject that will fundamentally change a
company's working practices going into
the future.
GENERATING INFORMATION FROM
A 3D MODEL
With a lot of ground to cover, and a range
of expectations within the audience, we
worked through a logical sequence of
presentations, starting with an
introduction which looked at designing
buildings in 3D and the way in which this
automatically generated building
information, and how it’s used and
supplemented on even small projects.
This was given by Jonathan Reeves of
Jonathan Reeves Architects (JRA) and
the author of an invaluable guide on
'Innovative Vectorworks BIM'. This was
followed by an exploration of COBie, the
UK Government's BIM Level 2 delivery
mechanisms and Soft Landings concepts
by Martyn Horne of Vectorworks.
Next on the agenda was a presentation
from Andrew Norrie at 3D Repo, offering
an alternative method of providing
building information using the latest
digital technologies - the federated
building model. This combined building
information in a single 3D model and
used the latest visual and virtual reality
techniques to display the information,
provide access to it within the model, and
maintain it within a cloud-based
environment as a single source of truth,
totally up to date and accessible to all.
With two alternative methods of
delivering building information to the
building operators - who are, after all, the
prime reason for embarking on COBie in
the first place - we decided that it would
be salutary to listen to an asset manager
to find out whether promised deliverables
were supplied, correct and used. We
were fortunate therefore to have Andy
Stanton of Transport for London talk
about his own experiences and those of
his team during the extensive works
being undertaken on London
Underground and a number of stations -
comprehensive projects that involved a
great deal of collaboration between
10
May/June 2017