Understanding Building Information Modelling (BIM) and OpenBIM

The entire idea behind building information modelling is that we create structured, relational information with regards to how we build and manage buildings. Such information includes the geometric description of the building and its building components, the description of its assembly, cost, time, documentation and more. It is necessary that this information is relational in nature, so that a change to any one of the information components automatically updates any other relevant information to keep the description of the building project accurate.

Building Information Modeling (BIM) is the holistic process of creating and managing information for a built asset. Based on an intelligent model and enabled by a cloud platform, BIM integrates structured, multi-disciplinary data to produce a digital representation of an asset across its lifecycle, from planning and design to construction and operations.

Autodesk

Once we have structured and interconnected our information, there is wisdom in keeping this information in a centralized storage location where it can be accessed from different locations, be it at site or in the office. This centralized storage location is called the CDE (Common Data Environment) and is typically set up as a cloud storage service to allow access from different locations. There is an inherent advantage in this common environment approach as it avoids information duplication and gives a single source truth. The alternative approach to this would have been to keep the information in multiple places, which has the drawback that some information would be updated whilst other information would not be.

Once we have established that we need structured related data that is centrally stored, we begin to ponder on the question of who and how that information is put in this common data environment. Traditionally, construction is a collaborative industry that features multiple stakeholders with different roles and skillsets. Each of these stakeholders must be able to access the information on the CDE and utilize their own professional tools and methods to manipulate this data in a manner that is relevant to their particular profession.

OpenBIM principles show an understanding of this collaborative nature of the built environment and focus on the accessibility, usability, management and sustainability of building information. Information is stored and exchanged in standardized information formats such as IFC (Industry Foundation Classes), BCF (BIM Collaboration Format), COBie (Construction Operations Building Information Exchange) and more. The idea here is to liberate information from its authoring tools thus allowing for better collaboration between different industry players. Whilst the ideal situation would be to have just one exchange format, the reality is that the is fragmented and thus different exchange formats have been developed to handle different use cases. The important thing though is that these different formats are open and accessible regardless of the software vendor

The principles of openBIM recognise that:

1. Interoperability is key to the digital transformation in the built asset industry
2. Open and neutral standards should be developed to facilitate interoperability
3. Reliable data exchanges depend on independent quality benchmarks
4. Collaboration workflows are enhanced by open and agile data formats
5. Flexibility of choice of technology creates more value to all stakeholders
6. Sustainability is safeguarded by long-term interoperable data standards

Building Smart

As we begin adding building information to our CDE, we begin to realize that we are naturally creating an exact digital replication of the actual physical building, this is referred to as the digital twin. If we intentionally keep our digital twin UpToDate during the ideation, documentation, construction and lifecycle of the building, we accumulated a rich set of data that becomes beneficial in analyzing building performance, simulating different interest scenarios as well predicting maintenance programs, schedule and more.

References

https://www.autodesk.com/industry/aec/bim
https://constructible.trimble.com/bim/bim-explained-video-what-is-a-common-data-environment
openBIM Definition

https://constructible.trimble.com/bim/why-bim-need-digital-twins