I thought it would be interesting to make a topic about BIM in building operations.
I work within social housing as BIM manager. I manage +15.000 homes divided into +240 BIM models. I am responsible for the application used to perform move-out reports for our tenants.
This means that I am responsible for entering current unit prices for our contractors, as well as surface areas for multiple building components.
For quantities, I for example need:
The net wall surface areas per room,
Floor area excluded the fixed casework â as kitchens,
Lining area as wood or wall,
Panel lengths
Architraves lengths
Door and window areas per room
Tiles as in bathrooms, and much moreâŚ
This is a challenge when you work with software that is made for construction projects. No BIM software supports the building operation needs â as far as I know. With Dynamo it is possible, but it is a complex graph with many calculations â as you can see.
With that said, I think it is an interesting discussion. In construction projects we use the models for properly maximum 3-8 years until the project is done. In operations we talk 100-200 years. Is IFC the answer? I donât know any system that support that. IFC has for example a class called NetWallArea, but no software support it, I suppose.
Yes! I hope that we soon have a Digital Twin â a map with al our buildings connected to maintenance plans â maybe colored building components â green means âall okâ, red means âneed to be replacedâ. Have a realtime energy consumption and so much more. Also building owners could better to specify ICT requirements, with a systems that supports BIM better.
Maybe I am wrong, but this is what I experience and my thoughts about it. Let me here your thoughts!
Hej Anders , great discussion, but dont think any softvare/workflow will work for 100-200 yearsâŚI use speckle and Dynamo for most of all you mention in the moment but that workflow will probably change tomorrow
This is a really great topic that doesnât get discussed enough in our industry (from my experience). Intelligent families and modular systems go a long ways here as you can schedule a lot of this information with the right setup. For the rest of the cases, and for ease of use with external references or databases (materials, cost, time-based data, etc.), Dynamo can be a good tool for mapping all of that together. The âeasyâ way can quickly become the âhardâ way if youâre not careful though. Taking the time to setup these families, parameters, schedules, and databases (and maintain them!) are way more up-front effort, but are definitely worth the value in the end.
Working towards some version of a âDigital Twinâ is the right idea in my opinion. Having all that information in the model, mapped to additional resources and a UI, makes this a no-brainer.
This is the solution, and why Tandem was made into a product in the Autodesk EcoSystem. That said, itâs a jump and takes some time to create. In the meantime, Revit + Dynamo can help.
Looking at that graph, I think youâd benefit a LOT from building some custom nodes to do stuff, as well as having a look at what can be accomplished via Automation. As long as you have the model set up to a standard (that should be your first sets of automation if not) you can look at leveraging something like Bird Tools Dynamo Multiplayer to set the parameter value of âPaint Areaâ for all rooms in all 250 buildings in single shot while appending the results to a spreadsheet so you know if there were errors or if things worked out as youâd expect. This removes the need of doing ALL THE THINGS ALL AT ONCE which many graphs that look like this often struggle with.
Following this thread with interest as Iâve been wondering how on earth this is possible.
Weâve just had new legislation in the UK and readily available information to building owners and occupiers is on the list⌠Iâve been wondering how on earth someone buying a flat could access all the Revit data without them just being given a huge PDF document (which isnât great to use and isnât interactive.)
Iâm wondering about some kind of standardised database format (like COBie/ FIREie⌠but nicer) which various programs could then search/ display in a user friendly way⌠But there doesnât seem to be much out there atm.
This will be how most comply with the letter of the law. Maybe one PDF with a hyperlink to the specification for each item. Or an excel file.
Complying with the intent of the law will require a specialized tool⌠Tandem certainly fits the bill (doubly so if âonline accessâ counts), as do a few other software offerings in the digital twin space.
You are absolutly right about model standards. That´s a huge challenge, because we receive models from varies contractors. Everyone is different. I have tried to use as much build-in information as possible, but when it comes to nested families, curtain walls and room calculationpoint etc. they need human attention. Never heard about Bird Tools, but looks interesting.
