BIM for IWMS

Allen Angle – BRG (Business Resource Group) VDC-FM Integration Manager

BD5800 Preparing, Using, and Updating As-Maintained Revit Models by the Owner

Learning Objectives At the end of this class, you will be able to:

Describe the Owners Total Cost of Ownership

Describe how a collaborative ‘Exchange’ can deliver value to the entire team

Comprehend how associated workflows bridge metadata and model geometry into an Enterprise System

Understand how authoring models are what’s needed for an IWMS

About the Speaker

Allen has more than 18 years of experience in the AEC industry on both the architecture and construction

side; he is now using that experience on the client side with BRG. As Integration Manager he is

responsible for oversight and management of programs, tools, and processes for Construction Project

Management, Corporate Real Estate (CRE), Facilities Management (FM) and Lifecycle Management. He

has a unique focus on the full building construction and renovation processes using Building Information

Modeling (BIM) from conceptual design through client handover and into Lifecycle Management. Allen

acts as a liaison between architects, engineers, contractors and trade partners for BRG's clients during

the design and construction process focusing specifically on the BIM and FM metadata that each party

generates and how this data will be used by the CRE and FM teams post construction.

He is involved with many construction projects types with BIM specifications and documents from

architects and construction managers. Most owners focus on how to optimize design and the initial

construction build through coordination with BIM, but are vague on the subject of metadata, facility

management and the lifecycle efficiency of a building. Using VDC from an Owners perspective, he works

alongside the AEC Team to leverage VDC/BIM and Lifecycle Management for the Facility and Operations

Team’s needs. With VDC and BIM more mature and prevalent than ever, the timing is right for a Lifecycle

Management approach. For that Reason BRG invested in creating ILM (Integrated Lifecycle

Management) which pairs the AEC Team together with the Owner so they can understand their unique

O&M needs and how to achieve that during design and construction.

aangle@brg.com

BIM for IWMS

2

The Future IoT (Internet of Things)

Smart Buildings of the future are said not

to have a computer but be computers

themselves, with every element, fixture,

or fabric monitoring and responding to

conditions inside and outside the home.

That would throw us directly into the

realm of FM as we maintain and operate

those buildings.

RFID tags could be further embedded in an object and augmented with additional IoT information that is needed to make it Internet-enabled and smart. Beacons will wake up apps on our phones and tablets to send us small bits of data about our surroundings. At this level of integration, building elements will be interconnected capitalizing on that shared data. It is understandable that the majority of the IoT discourse so far has been directed at the stage when buildings are completed. So from an infrastructure

perspective the focus of IoT on the lifecycle management phase makes sense as the lifecycle cost of a building far exceeds the cost of design and construction. What does this mean? The Total Cost of Ownership for that building and its related assets need to be directly influenced by an owner's interests and objectives, and be active in how they defining them.

Interoperability Gap

As an industry we are overly connected, yet disconnected when moving quality data through the building

stream. As an industry we are diving deeper into BIM/VDC modeling, computation and simulation

workflows. The number of software tools on a given project keeps growing, yet we still rely on Excel and

manual process for 87.4% of metadata transfers. The industry recognizes the value of implementing a

mix of digital tools, but until the Internet of Things becomes a true reality we still have language barriers

BIM for IWMS

3

between our workflows that lead to tremendous waste and inefficiencies. Yet we wonder why productivity

continues to fall within the construction industry.

Throughout the industry we also continue to practice inefficient “handover” process. This information is

rarely compatible with the owner’s technology and data structures, and aren’t easily accessible to frontline

facilities and maintenance staff. Even owners who want to tap into the Operations and Maintenance

(O&M) benefits of BIM files and data have been reluctant to do so because the information is hard to

understand and use.

However, recent advances in technology—specifically cloud computing and mobile devices—have

brought the long-awaited benefits of post-construction BIM into view. Yet, to fully attain these benefits and

advance as an industry, it’s important to determine what solutions can help complete the circle; we must

consider long-term operations and look at the best way to integrate workflows and technologies.

So without an "exchange" process defined for the entire design, construction process teams are forced to

perform tedious manual input and data-wrangling tasks as well as searching for data that may not exist.

The most recent NIST study put the cost burden to the construction industry at $15.8 billion annually.

Teams are all looking for interoperable solutions to provide data pipelines between workflows since

information is the framework around the entire building process. When working with disconnected

solutions it’s easy to see the inefficiencies.

So where are Zapier and IFTTT for construction as well as operations?

Based on more than 20 years of FM database

experience BRG recognized this opportunity

to improve industry practices and leverage a

better electronic integration process with

the AEC Team and the Owners IWMS.

Integrating AEC Tools to an IWMS improves

collaboration and reduces software and

training costs between teams.

BRG also focused on an exchange, not handover, process to transition the owner from

construction to operations with building asset data during construction opposed to afterwards. When the entire team collaborates on an owner driven set of standards they can compile real-time asset data collection and validation. Assuring the team meets the obligations and expectations set by the owner and while still onsite and accessible to the owner. Capitalizing on this, owners can proceed with confidence to realize the full value of their asset data, starting ownership of the building with a more efficient operations and maintenance plans.

Collaborating with BIM For many years the promise of attaining the full benefits of Building Information Modeling (BIM) has been

on the horizon for architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) professionals, but the opportunity to

deliver an accessible, user-friendly BIM experience to facility owners and managers has fallen short.

BIM for IWMS

4

Though AEC teams have possessed the ability to supply owners with and help them transition to the use

of BIM, they have focused mainly on construction, clash detection and providing as-built models, which in

and of itself is not a BIM lifecycle solution. This has been partly due to lack of BIM education among

owners, who have requested BIM without fully understanding their own requirements or the process

which drive BIM.

Revit in and of itself is not a BIM lifecycle solution either, so the question is, what other types of solutions

are out there that can help complete this circle? For owners that system has to support not just one

building, but a portfolio of buildings and needs to support both Facility Management and Real Estate

Management. The term IWMS was initially launched in 2004 by Gartner, the leading technology research

institute that evaluates and reports on the software and technology markets. IWMS is characterized by

Gartner as an enterprise-class software platform that integrates five key components of functionality,

operated from a single technology platform and database repository.

These functional areas are:

Real Estate and Lease Management

Facilities and Space Management

Maintenance Management

Project Management

Environmental Sustainability

Knowing the IWMS is the final destination of the project data, the team must expand the operations

processes into the design and building process to realize true advancement and learn how to move data

in Revit models to those IWMS solutions. Until we consider operations and facilities management of the

building during the entire project we will not be able to fully realize our advancement potential.

With the IWMS becoming the "single-source-of-truth" for all business processes and metadata for the

owner as an integrated platform, the team must determine when and if model metadata can be collected

BIM for IWMS

5

outside of the model as well as if and when all that

metadata returns to the model. MS Excel has been

widely used but has been inefficient and not very user

friendly in the field or on mobile devices. All these hard

copy files also lead to file management frustrations and

compromise data integrity. Many AEC Teams have

turned to the cloud for more mobility and in return

potentially more data integration issues based on the

amount of construction apps available. If inside

Autodesk’s own BIM 360 platform many of those

integration AEC hurdles have been removed and help

the process. But there are many PIM (Project

Information Management) software solutions currently used, and in most cases the owner is still left out

as it relates to metadata and populating their FM system with data they need.

With these software solutions allowing data to be synchronized and communicated instantly between the

site, office, and the team, it creates a coordinated flow of valuable project information. This new

generation of information management enables some of the benefits foreseen with the IoT. Additional

integration can also aggregate project model metadata from Revit and share it with the rest of the team all

the way through to the owner and their IWMS. If based on a BIM for IWMS workflow, metadata created

during design gets further populated during construction with all the as-built and commissioning asset

metadata an owner needs.

As-Built and As-Maintained As-Built models help an owner document what was actually constructed, and can be delivered in the form

of a Navisworks or IFC model, even a 3D PDF. These models contain a great level of accuracy on as-

built conditions but in most cases are still not the models that the owner is looking for. These new

Faci

PIM IWMS

BIM

BIM for IWMS

6

buildings are practically changing as the construction team leaves the site for the last time. So what an

owner is actually looking for is an as-built model with a high degree of accuracy to what was constructed

with the right level of detail and data priorities for an owner to make changes to over the building lifecycle.

That is not the typical deliverable to owners today because they can’t author physical changes to them.

We refer to our deliverable as a record Revit model which then becomes the owners’ as-maintained

model. Providing them a true BIM lifecycle solution when bi-directionally connected to their IWMS.

The data-driven effort to exchange information with the IWMS does not have to rely on or be connected to

these construction, as-built or record models. Only minimal data needs to be connected as as-built

models take time to generate once construction is over and having all the metadata wrapped up in those

models provides no benefit to the owner day one. But when set up correctly all the data collected outside

the model during construction and populated to the IWMS can be reconnected once the Record Model is

delivered. Allowing the owner to determine what to track in the model, what to track in the IWMS and

what will be linked between the two.

Conclusion Through a well-established and collaborative implementation standard owner-driven VDC/BIM can

produce a BIM for IWMS standard executed by those outside the organization. This process has allowed

many AEC teams to coordinate workflows and handoffs into a seamless information transfer and an

ongoing project exchange. Procedures can progress smoothly from one party to the next, helping ensure

quality and efficiency goals were met along the way. Its best to believe in the concept of not viewing the

construction of a building as the end game, but rather that the building is just the beginning.

Massing

Designed

Detailed

Constructed/Fabricated

Conceptualized

As-Maintained