No 23 BSI Newsletter Final Version | International home of openBIM - Global standards for openBIM

8/18/2019 No 23 BSI Newsletter Final Version | International home of openBIM - Global standards for openBIM

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Newsletter No 23 • April 2016Global standards for openBIM

Launch of Swiss chapterNew chapter to accelerate local BIM uptake

A new buildingSMART chapter was launched inSwitzerland in January. It has attracted membership

of over 100 companies and more than 35 organisations

along the whole value chain of the construction industry,

making this a chapter with wide reach and inuence.

Background Although Switzerland is the youngestchapter in the buildingSMART family,it is not new to the organisation, as thecountry was previously representedby the German-speaking chapter.‘But Switzerland is a country withfour different regions, four differentlanguages and at least four differenttypes of cultural behaviour, not tomention the differences between thecantons,’ explains Birgitta Schockwho chairs the chapter. ‘Consequentlywe recognised that it was time forSwitzerland, with all its diversity, tobecome an independent chapter.’

BIM maturity and benets

BIM is relatively new in the country.‘There are not yet a lot of projectsthat can be ofcially branded as open

BIM,’ says Peter Scherer, who isresponsible for national issues. ‘Butthere is already strong recognitionof the value of IFC and open BIMprocesses at a grass-roots level.’

At least half a dozen projectsusing open BIM are underway, in arange of sectors including healthcare,commercial and university. One

project that is attracting attention isthe LimmiViva hospital complex inSchlieren, near Zurich – an eight-storey building due to be completedin 2018.

The benets of BIM to a small

country like Switzerland are beyondquestion, as board member MarkBaldwin strongly believes. Mark’sconnection with buildingSMARTgoes back some six years, havingserved as the IUG representativefor the Middle East chapter during2010–12. ‘Stakeholders all alongthe value chain of our industry willbenet from open BIM,’ he says. ‘And

buildingSMART, with its internationalstandards and programmes, will helpthe Swiss industry get up to speed.’

‘BIM uptake in Switzerland israpidly accelerating,’ conrms Alar

Jost, board member and formerlya member of the German-speakingchapter. ‘Strong clients like Siemens,Roche, SBB, Post and Credit Suisseare actively developing their strategiesto make use of the BIM benets.

There are also initiatives from largeconstruction companies which arebroadening the “pull” for BIM in the

market.’‘We are a small country,’ adds

Birgitta. ‘Knowledge is one of ourresources and a way forward forour industry.’

Continues on page 4…

Above right: The Monte Rosa Hut, a sustainable

and largely self-sufcient lodging in the Swiss

Alps, was built using BIM software; the case study

is reported on the BIM HUB and the Vectorworks

website Credit: TBH Editor

Kajima joins SACKajima Corporation, the Japanese

construction company with operationsaround the world, has joined theStrategic Advisory Council (SAC).

Kajima is the rst company from

Asia to join the SAC and is thesecond company from engineeringand construction on the Council.The SAC now has representationfrom architecture, engineering andconstruction, and software vendors.

‘We believe that digitisation withinthe industry is gathering pace and

that the key enabling technologiesdeveloped by buildingSMART arecritical to its future,’ says HiroyoshiKoizumi, representative director andexecutive vice president of Kajima.

Kajima has global operations andwide expertise but is particularlyknown for its advanced seismictechnologies. Having built therst skyscraper in Japan, Kajima

Corporation has always been aheadof the times in developing construction

methods for safe buildings.This made it possible forKajima to build the rst

high-rise building in Japan ofreinforced concrete, as well asthe world’s rst building with

seismic response control.Staying ahead of the

times, Kajima has beendeveloping new seismicresistance methods such asbase isolation and vibrationcontrol, new materials such

as large-space membranesand new nuclear power stationconstruction methods.

Kajima’s strengths in constructionwill make it a valuable member of theStrategic Advisory Council.

Above: the Himeji Castle restoration involved

repairing and reinforcing the structure, as well as

replacing the roof tiles


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What the intranet can do for us…

An interview with Richard Kelly

As buildingSMART has grown, with the addition of new rooms and activities,

the need for improved internal communication has become evident. The

buildingSMART intranet was developed during 2015 and given a soft

launch after the Singapore Summit. Richard Kelly, director of operations,

takes questions from editor Betzy Dinesen and explains the rationale and

development of the intranet.

With buildingSMART a growing yet

widely dispersed organisation, the

need for an intranet was clear. But

how did you dene requirements?

The main requirements were that ithad to make people’s lives easierso they can work together moreefciently across the planet to deliver

solutions for a common cause.However, it also had to be scalableand capable of managing manydifferent teams so that people weren’tdrowned out with information butcould nd what they need for their

particular activities.

Can you tell me something about the

development process?

Richard Petrie – our CEO – and I setourselves a summer project. Whenyou are busy running an organisationon a day-to-day basis, it is difcult to

nd time for the big developments

unless you give yourself a challenge.

We originally thought that we coulddevelop a system ourselves withsome technical help; in retrospectthis was naive. But we knew thatthe German-speaking chapter werepleased with their intranet and Rasso[Steinmann] introduced us to the teamfrom Plattform – a company attachedto the University of Mannheim – whohad developed their intranet. Whenwe met them, we found that theyunderstood our needs immediately.

That said, our needs grew as wecame to understand the layers of ourwork structures and the capability ofthe system. I think we pretty muchmanaged to keep within our six-weekplan to have a trial system ready toroll out.

Can you tell me about the launch?

Why did you opt for a ‘soft launch’?

We launched immediately after theSingapore Summit with ten volunteerswho were asked to use it and try to

break it. We’re a big believer in thecontinuous improvement approach toquality. You know – plan, do, check,improve. These rst ten people tested

it really well and we made severalimprovements to its usability in thoserst few weeks.

Once I was condent that the

system was good enough to standwider use, we started inviting inother users. This was done on ateam-by-team basis rather than, say,

alphabetically.We now have over 200 people

on the system with more being puton every day. Who knows how big itwill get?

Have you received feedback?

Yes, lots. Feedback is a gift and weactively encourage it. It’s an essentialpart of the continuous improvementcycle. We are encouraging peopleto use [email protected] forrequests and feedback.

What would you say are the top three

benets of the intranet?

Collaboration, information-sharing andefciency.

What does the management of the

intranet entail? And are you looking

for improvements?

During this initial period, it has beenquite time-consuming to ensure thateveryone who is invited in is given a

meaningful and informed introduction. Also, because we are populating itrapidly from empty, there has been alot of work to do to make sure peoplehave the correct access rights fortheir teams. This won’t be completelycorrect, by the way, so again we urgepeople to tell us if they don’t have theaccess rights they need.

The volume of effort will tail off asthe rate of new introductions eases.However, there will always be a need

to keep track aspeople movebetween teams,ensure theling structure

isn’t becomingclutteredand respondto continuousimprovement

requests. We areemploying a PhDstudent, JuanEcheverria, on apart-time basisat the momentto help with theadministration and rst-line support.

This is sufcient for now.

We are gradually giving teamleaders administration rights aswell, so they can manage their own

team structures. I’m doing this in acontrolled way when we are surethat people have got the right levelof capability in order to maintain thequality of the system.

In the wider context of internal

communications and of enabling

the working groups to progress their

projects, how do you see the role of

the intranet in the future?

It is central to it. We want the intranetto be the core of the working structure

of buildingSMART.

Tips for using the intranet • Provide full and accurate prole

information – people need to know

who you are and where you work

• When you write a news story,

remember that only the title andthe rst part of the abstract will be

displayed, so make them informative

• Hover your mouse over an icon to

see the auxiliary text – most icons

have text as well• And if there’s more than one green

arrow, use the auxiliary text to see

what each arrow does

• When you create an item, it will

inherit the access right from where

it is created, eg a news item created

in the ISG will inherit the group’s

access rights

• Add [email protected] to

your ‘safe senders’ list, so that

emails from the intranet reach your

inbox correctly


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A common construction market for Europe

CEN to adopt IFC4The European Committee for Standardization, CEN, brings together thestandards bodies of 33 European countries. Through its Technical Committee442, it supports and coordinates the harmonisation of BIM within Europe.

‘CEN standards have a stronger connection to European legislation than ISOstandards,’ explains Øivind Rooth, who chairs the committee. ‘In the future webelieve that CEN standards that relate to IFC will link directly into European

directives, which form a framework for the construction industry in Europe.’One important development is the adoption of IFC4, published as ISO 16739,

by CEN. ‘This process has started and if the TC support it, IFC4 will be a CENstandard by the end of 2016,’ says Øivind.

Following the committee’s business plan, TC 442 is establishing collaborationwith relevant technical committees and organisations. BuildingSMARTInternational has been accepted as a liaison organisation and CEO RichardPetrie attended the committee’s second plenary meeting in February 2016.

As CEN develops and publishes BIM-related standards, it will provide a toolto achieve the EU’s goal of a common construction market in Europe – and ‘thiswill help us to create a green construction sector,’ concludes Øivind.

Multimodel Container Flexible tool developed in Germany Work by the German-speaking chapter has built on national research to createa technology for efcient work with multimodel data which has resulted in the

specication of the Multimodel Container (MMC) – a valuable new tool that

allows a variety of applications to be brought together during a building orFM project.

BackgroundInterest in multimodels goesback some seven years. In 2009,the German Federal Ministry of

Education and Research set up theIT project Mesto to explore possible

scenarios, create solutions and makerecommendations. ‘The basic idea ofthe Multimodel is to combine selectedengineering and management modelsin a single and reusable informationresource,’ explains Sven-EricSchapke, former operative projectcoordinator at Technical Universityof Dresden.

In design and construction,all project information cannotconveniently be kept within asingle model. Although softwareapplications already allow the differentbuilding models (eg architectural,structural and building services) tobe coordinated and integrated withinformation on scheduling (knownas 4D) and on risk, quality and costs(known as 5D), there is considerablevariety among these applications.In practice, there is no standardisedexchange of multimodels.

Going forward: the

Multimodel ContainerThe MMC integrates differentapplication models, exposing theirinterdependencies in separate ‘LinkModels’. This allows applicationmodels to be combined based ontheir metadata and retain their originaldata format, whether standard orproprietary. By the time the Mesto

project closed in 2012, it haddeveloped MMC Version 1.0 andproved its application in constructionsimulation and controlling.

It was at this point that theGerman-speaking chapter steppedin. Several members – think project,RIB Software, gibGreiner, Dr. Schiller& Partner, Tragwerk Software, AEC3Deutschland and the Technical

University of Dresden – cametogether with the aim of dening a

generic version of the MultimodelContainer and utilising it in variousapplication domains.

The denitions developed by the

German buildingSMART group arenow available on GitHub as MMCVersion 2.0 (https://github.com/BuildingSMART/MMC).

The work put into the two versions

is answering real industry needs – this is not ivory-tower academicdevelopment. Version 1 has alreadybeen implemented by four Germanvendors of project managementsoftware, namely RIB Software,gibGreiner, Dr. Schiller & Partner andTragwerk Software. Version 2.0 isnow also expected to be adopted inother areas such as asset and facilitymanagement.

ConclusionMultimodels provide a exible

instrument to combine buildinginformation models and otherapplication models and efciently

reuse distributed project informationfrom design, production andoperations. To use multimodelsin project collaboration, thebuildingSMART German-speakingchapter has now publishedthe Multimodel Container(MMC) Version 2.0 and invites

buildingSMART members to explorefurther applications of multimodels indifferent domains and countries.

For more information visit

https://github.com/BuildingSMART Structure of multimodel: Implicit dependencies

between different application models are explicitly

expressed in a generic multimodel

Container metadata

Building model

Operation model

Cost model

Project schedule

MMC Multimodel Container

LM1 LM2

LM = Link Model


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New leader for Implementation Support Group

Jeffrey Ouellette, senior product specialist – architecture industry ofVectorworks, Inc., has become chair of buildingSMART’s ImplementationSupport Group (ISG), having taken over from Rasso Steinmann in early March.Rasso is now chairman of the German-speaking chapter.

Jeffrey is not new to the group. He started attending ISG meetings in 2009and became deputy chair in autumn 2011. As ISG chair, he wants to encourageuptake of IFC4 by software vendors. ‘Our highest priority for 2016 is to fosterthe implementation and certication of IFC4 across the range of products that

have already been involved in the IFC2x3 certication process,’ he says.‘At the same time, my personal goal is to expand ISG membership and

participation to include more vendors who support IFC in their products. Thisensures that their implementations are of the highest quality and compatiblewith the work of those who have been part of the ISG and its efforts for sometime,’ he adds.

ISG is a forum of vendors/developers which was created to supportthe various implementation and certication activities for buildingSMART

standards. In particular, ISG promotes the use of Industry Foundation Classes(IFC) and the BIM Collaboration Format (BCF) to share BIM data amongdifferent software products. The group works with the Model Support Group(MSG) to determine the optimal means for specifying data exchanges. ‘As a

support forum, we provide a unique opportunity for industry competitors towork together for the benet of the global market.’ ISG meetings are regularly attended by representatives of the large software

companies such as Nemetschek, Trimble, Autodesk and Bentley as well assmaller independent vendors such as Progman, IES and Arkey Systems.Meetings are held twice a year in different locations, hosted by a membercompany, allowing local market vendors to take part.

Jeffrey is well known to the buildingSMART community. Together withcolleagues, he has created the IFC-Compatible ImplementationsDatabase, which grew out of a Vectorworks research project.‘From the beginning, I have been a strong advocate forstandards, end users and the vendor community, trying tomediate the needs of all the parties,’ he says. ‘The future

of the global design and construction industry depends onthe cooperation of all sides to create, implement and usesolutions which make everyone’s work more effective andresult in greater value.’

Taking over from Jeffrey as deputy chair is Angel Velezof Autodesk.

For more information about ISG, contact Jeffrey

at [email protected]

Visit the implementations database at http://www.

buildingsmart-tech.org/implementation/implementations

The chapter launch at Swissbau 2016. Delegates included Markus Weber (L), Richard Petrie (3rd L),

Birgitta Schock (4th L), Chris Groome (centre) and Peter Scherer (2nd from R)

Rijkswaterstaat joins bSIThe Dutch roads and water systemsauthority, Rijkswaterstaat has joined asa standard member. Rijkswaterstaat isa strong supporter of open BIM and hasalready contributed funding to some ofbuildingSMART’s infrastructure projects.‘In the Netherlands we have a signicant

infrastructure network of roads, viaducts,bridges and tunnel complexes, togetherwith our extensive network of waterwaysand water systems,’ says Herman Winkels,

programme manager of Rijkswaterstaat’sBIM programme. ‘We need optimaldata-sharing solutions based on openstandards for design, construction andmaintenance. International cooperation is,in our vision, essential to achieve this.’

… Launch of Swiss chapter

Continued from page 1

A network of chaptersChris Groome, secretary/businessmanager who manages the chapterprogramme, helped the chapterthrough the process of gainingbuildingSMART membership and isenthusiastic about its prospects. ‘The

new chapter has the reach and theinsight to allow it to become a majorplayer in rolling out collaborativeworking based on open technology,’he says.

The location of Switzerland issignicant, as its German, French

and Italian speaking regions willseek to establish connections withtheir neighbours. ‘The multilingualnature of the country means that itcan play a pivotal role in the linking

of developments in neighbouringcountries,’ he adds.

Collaboration has begun. Markis already acting as coordinatorof the people complianceprogramme – in which Birgitta isalso participating – and is a memberof the buildingSMART BuildingCommittee (BuildCom). Birgittais leading an initiative to explorethe common ground between theLean Construction Institute andbuildingSMART, in the interests ofimproving integrated project delivery.

Conclusion‘The key to a successful chapter isa good leadership which relates wellto members,’ concludes Chris. ‘TheSwiss chapter is off to a good startand we wish them well.’

Visit the Swiss website

http://www.bauen-digital.ch/en/

For chapter programme

information, contact Chris Groome,[email protected]


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BuildingSMART International

Board, executive and contact points

Chair Patrick MacLeamy

CEORichard Petrie

Board membersTiina Koppinen, Jan Myhre, Dirk Schaper and Rasso Steinmann

Contact points

Secretary/business manager Chris Groome – [email protected] (Chapter programme andbSI matters generally)

Operations director Richard Kelly – [email protected] (including Standards programmeand website)

CerticationRasso Steinmann – [email protected] (implementation in software and softwarecertication)

Mark Baldwin – [email protected] (certication of people)

Building RoomJan Karlshøj – [email protected] (also IDM and awards)

Infrastructure RoomHenk Schaap – [email protected]

Product Room and buildingSMART Data DictionaryRoger Grant – [email protected]

Regulatory RoomInhan Kim – [email protected]Øivind Rooth – [email protected]

Technical RoomLeif Granholm – [email protected]

Implementation Support Group

Jeffrey Ouellette – [email protected]

Model Support GroupThomas Liebich – [email protected] (including IFC matters)

User GroupKjell Ivar Bakkmoen – [email protected] (also ISO liaison)

Newsletter & communicationsBetzy Dinesen – [email protected]

Global standards for openBIM

No 23 BSI Newsletter Final Version | International home of openBIM - Global standards for openBIM

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