Ask any professional in the building industry what BIM is and, at the very least, he or she will have heard of it and—more likely than not—be using

it (71 percent in 2012)[1]. Try posing that same question to land development professionals (engineers, owners or even landscape architects), however, and you’ll likely see their eyes glaze over. That shouldn’t be all that surprising; after all, it is building information modeling. While the word “building” can and probably should refer to the entire built environ-ment, the National BIM Standard-United StatesTM definition and the current state of BIM would say it is likely only refer-ring to an actual building or facility.

But when a commercial, industrial or residential site is trans-formed from its natural or deteriorated state into a developed one, land developers and other professionals are the ones designing and building the other components of that built environment. That includes the civil infrastructure—i.e., transportation (streets, railroads, pedestrian/bike trails), wet utilities (water, sanitary and storm sewer), dry utilities (electrical, communication), terrain

(both shape and composition), landscape, traffic control devices, property boundaries, etc. The designs even incorporate non-built information, with topography, tree surveys, wetlands, floodplains and more.

From a modeling perspective, what do we call this civil infrastructure, if not a building information model? The emerging and appropriate term is a civil information model (CIM), which embodies the theoretical principles of BIM, but in the context of civil infrastructure.

While the moniker CIM may be new, its application is not. In fact, some companies have seen as much as 20 percent of their clients requiring CIM software on their projects.[2] Following are several areas in which CIM can be beneficial to land development.

BIM-Like CollaborationJust like building construction, land development is accom-plished by a collaborative team: the owner, developer, land-scape architect, engineer, general contractor, subcontractors,

26 Journal of the national institute of Building sciences – June 2013

civil information Modeling: Become acquaintedBy Talmage Hansen, EIT and Randy Dymond, PhD, PE

JBiM edition: Building information Modeling

ILLUSTRATION ON COMPUTER SCREEN: Via Dept. of Civil & Environmental Engineering, Virginia Tech

NIBS_0613_Civil_Engineering.indd 26 5/30/13 8:24 AM

utility companies, municipalities and others. According to the BIM Project Exe-cution Planning Guide,[3] such a collab-oration should consider the following: a [CIM] champion; owner involvement; and an open environment of sharing and collaboration.

An open environment is as much a cultural challenge as it is a technical one. The cultural aspect will come along as familiarity increases and new meth-ods of project delivery (e.g., Integrated Project Delivery [IPD]) are implemented. The technical side entails open standards, which requires a concerted effort from the profes-sional community. This effort, which began with LandXML more than a decade ago, has seen a recent surge across the globe. The Government of the United Kingdom, specifically, “will require fully collaborative 3D BIM as a minimum by 2016” to include civil infrastructure.[4] Not coincidentally, build-ingSMART International (bSI) is “committed to the development of open data standards for infrastructure and the built environ-ment in cooperation with the Open Geospatial Consortium for Geographic Information System (GIS) standards. The aim is to have the ability to model infrastructure by 2016”[5] and “to make its infrastructure model interoperable with its building model.”[6]

Integration and InteroperabilityInteroperability with GIS is both a key and unique aspect of CIM. While CIM and GIS data may be used differently, they are, more often than not, com-prised of similar data types, i.e., broad-scale infrastructure. Most current CAD to GIS standards focus primarily on layer-mapping. Going forward, it also will be important to consider the under-lying attributes and database inherent to a CIM. GIS is no stranger to underly-ing databases, and the transition is not only feasible, but natural. Knowing this potential opportunity gap for improved

GIS data, counties and municipalities will be eager for land development that takes a model-centric approach to construction and that can become a repository for attributed data when digital record drawings (“as-builts”) are delivered at the end of a project.

GIS isn’t the only thing with which CIM can be integrated, however. Sustainable credits for LEED-certified development can benefit from a more BIM-like approach to design and con-

struction. Specifically, LEED for Neigh-borhood Development focuses on the components of land development that are not included in buildings—storm water management, transportation and landscaping, just to name a few. Imagine being able to quickly and com-prehensively assess a design for LEED credibility using your CIM. That is the direction that BIM is going and, surely, CIM will follow.

Better Thinking, Better ResultsIf better collaboration and integration aren’t enough, CIM projects have the potential to improve productivity, quality and, ultimately, the bottom line. Tasks like quantity take-off or construc-tion sequencing can be automated when the civil model is designed with these ends in mind. Revisions and annotations can be more thorough and dynamic. Additionally, CIM software allows for alternative designs, simula-

tions and analyses on the fly. If you, like many, are leery of change, take comfort in the fact that CIM is synonymous with quality and economy. As shown in the MacLeamy Curve[7] (see “Figure 1,” this page), a CIM workflow shifts the major-ity of design effort earlier into the proj-ect—much sooner than a drafting-cen-tric workflow—to a point where cost of design changes are still relatively low. This puts owners back in the driver’s seat by increasing their ability to make

improvements to the design of a project without running over budget.

Visualization also is important, not only to the customer, but to the designer and construction contractor(s) as well. It’s one thing to see 2D profiles of pipes on 20 different pages and understand how there are no conflicts. It’s quite another to visualize this subsurface infrastructure and know that it is free of conflicts almost instantly (see “Figure 2,” page 28). At a time when America’s infrastructure receives a D+ and needs an investment of $3.6 trillion by 2020 (as estimated by the American Society of Civil Engineers[8]), 3D visualization of infrastructure improvements can be a strong catalyst for government and community support.

This is not to say that CIM is with-out its obstacles. One of the biggest obstacles is the expected deliverables of a land development design—the 2D paper plans. Nobody is suggesting that

Journal of the national institute of Building sciences – June 2013 27

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Figure 1: MacLeamy Curve, showing how CIM compares to traditional workflows.

Continued on page 28

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we do away with 2D plan sets ... yet. Like many BIM project guides, however, jurisdictions should consider requiring the owner/developer to submit a digital civil model that meets certain minimum requirements, in addition to a set of plans and PDFs.

The best thing that can be done to pro-mote CIM is through a conversation like this. A little awareness can help develop-ers envision what is possible, designers see what is expected, builders under-stand what was intended and owner/op-erators know what exists. Champions of CIM are needed in industry, academia, government and elsewhere. Perhaps after that, when the word “BIM” comes up in casual conversations among land development professionals, instead of confused looks, you might hear: “Do you mean CIM?” JNIBS

About the Authors: Talmage Hansen is an MSCE candidate at Virginia Tech and a land devel-opment engineer at Dallas-based Spiars Engineering, Inc. (www.spiarseng.com). Dr. Randy Dymond is an associate professor of civil engineering and coordina-tor of the Land Development Design Initiative (LDDI) at Virginia Tech (www.cee.vt.edu), Blacksburg, VA.

28 JouRnal of THe naTional insTiTuTe of BuilDing sciences – June 2013

References: [1] “McGraw Hill SmartMarket Report: The Business Value of BIM in North America: Multi-Year Trend Analysis and User Ratings.” (2007-2012). McGraw Hill Construction.

[2] John Spiars, PE, founder, CEO, Spiars Engineering, Inc., Plano, TX.

[3] Computer Integrated Construction Research Program. (2011). “BIM Project Execution Planning Guide-Version 2.1.” May 2011. The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA.

[4] UK Government Construction Strategy. May 2011. www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/61152/Government-Construction-Strategy_0.pdf.

[5] www.buildingsmart.org/news/buildingsmart-to-develop-open-standards-for-infrastructure.

[6] Email correspondence with Francois Grobler. March 28, 2013.

[7] Patrick MacLeamy, CEO, HOK. www.msa-ipd.com/MacleamyCurve.pdf.

[8] “2013 Report Card for America’s Infrastructure.” ASCE. www.infrastructurereportcard.org/.

Figure 2: Virginia Tech’s infrastructure, shown below and above ground, was modeled by the Center for Geospatial Information Technology.

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