CU1711

CASEstudy
encouraged to present the project at
different events in Manchester, Leeds
and London, and as far afield as
Hungary, Germany and Denmark. You
may well be one of the lucky people to
have seen, or even contributed, to one
of the Blog sessions. Choosing LEGO
as the vehicle for the project was a
masterstroke, as it appeals to
enthusiasts from 3 to 103, and you
needed to understand the principals of
LEGO and not necessarily those of
CAD!
THE PROJECT SO FAR
At the time of writing there have been
31 published LEGO Architecture meets
BIM blog posts. These range from an
introduction to the 3D model, to taking
a look at things like schedules,
geometry exchange and visualising
model data, through to information
take-off, Common Data Environments,
and, of course, COBie. The latest blogs
posts will look at BIM to FIM and CAFM
and 'as-built models', and sharing the
final project files using IFC models and
COBie.
The aim of the project was to
demonstrate all of the elements and
uses of BIM as possible - things we do
on a regular basis - but also to enable
users to explore new workflows. One of
the first problems that had to be
overcome was the lack of a usable
library of LEGO components (bricks),
which had to be modelled using the
authoring tools available in some of the
architectural applications.
By and large, the many standard
processes used had already been
implemented into Bond Bryan's
working practices as early as 1994 -
they were using BIM, thanks to
Graphisoft's ARCHICAD, well before
the term became synonymous with
information modelling and data
sharing.
As a proponent of open workflows,
using structured reliable and reusable
data across platforms, and being a
member of buildingSMART UK, Bond
Bryan developed the model to comply
with open standards IFC
(ISO16739:2013), BCF (BIM
Collaboration Format) and COBie
(actually covered by BS1192-4:2014, a
subset of IFC).
GOING FORWARD
Now that the project has been freely
shared, clocking up over 40,000 views
online and being shown to over 500
people at the public events, Bond
Bryan can congratulate themselves on
achieving their core aims - namely to
demonstrate the core benefits of
OpenBIM and encourage all of us to
work collaboratively with others - and
all at no cost! The project is even being
mooted for inclusion in a university
course and to be used globally to
demonstrate the benefits of OpenBIM.
As we saw at the Construction
Computing Awards this year, there is a
trend towards providing an enhanced
training environment for those who
wish to take full advantage of BIM. This
is also evidenced by Viewpoint, the
runner-up in the BIM Project 2017.
Viewpoint for Projects is being used in
the National College for High Speed
Rail project, which is also featured in
this issue of the magazine.
Individual construction companies -
architects and contractors - don't
always have the resources or expertise
to embark on full-scale BIM
implementation. Gearing up a
company to work in a fully collaborative
environment, operating under entirely
new workflows, and learning how to
manage and share the building
information they are being inundated
with, can have a huge impact on
company's already stretched
resources. The two examples provided
by both Bond Bryan and Viewpoint
explore ways that this can be more
profitably achieved, first of all by
simplifying the training and making it
more enjoyable for all involved, and
secondly by incorporating it within the
project. The result is training which can
be fully costed on the job.
If you haven't already discovered
LEGO Architecture meets BIM then you
can explore all of the instalments to
date on Bond Bryan's BIMblog, below.
http://bimblog.bondbryan.com/categor
y/lego-architecture-meets-bim/
22
November/December 2017