ISG meeting September 2009

buildingSMART Implementer Support Group (ISG) Meeting 16th to 18th September
- hosted by Data Design System

There will be an International ISG meeting in Stavanger, Norway from 16th to 18th September 2009.

The meetings on the 16th (13:00-17:00) and 17th (9:00-17:00) are primarily for CEO's, products managers and other executives representing software vendors and executives and managers for large stake holders and projects owners from the AECOO industry. On the agenda in this neutral round table style meeting are strategically issues including the future direction and priorities for buildingSMART, seen from both a user perspective and software implementer perspective.

buildingSMART standards (IFC, IFD, IDM) are being used on a day to day basis by many Norwegian companies. There are great advantages but also some shortcomings that have been detected. Large Norwegian builders and and building owners (i.e. Statsbygg, Forsvarsbygg etc.) have invested substantially in deployment of BIM and buildingSMART within their organization and with their partners, and will continue to escalate these investments. Even if the potential benefits are great, there are no doubt that some of the “disappointments” has been caused by a gap in user expectations versus the scope of implementation from the software vendors.

Major investments in both competences, training, changing business contracts, evaluating new partners, legal work, BIM software purchase etc. will occur over the coming months and years. For the stake-holders it’s therefore important to know the scope and commitment to the use of open standards from the various software vendors. Another key parameter is achieve better expectation management when it comes to what is possible now and when realistic users requirements can be met in the future (timeline that can and will affect the time and magnitude of activites)
Representatives from several major Norwegian companies from the user side invites the CEO’s, Executives, Product Managers etc. from the committed buildingSMART software vendors to combine their participation at the Executive session at ISG in Stavanger on Thursday with a round table discussion where they’ll present experiences, strategy and expectations from a user and investor perspective. This meeting will take place on Wednesday afternoon, the day before ISG.

In addition to general discussion there will also be presentations from specific projects. One of the projects will be the National Museum at Vestbanen. In this architect competition, Statsbygg demanded proposals to be submitted as BIM in IFC format. This resulted in hundreds of submitted models from all over the world, and the quality (and lack of for some) for these models really shows the actual skills of users and capabilities of the software in daily use. The “users meet vendors” event in short is a discussion (or perhaps more of a vendor challenge) with the topics: This is where (we think) we are today. This is where we want to go. Who can help us get there and when?

It’s expected that representatives from most of the larger leading international software-companies that are implementing IFC and buildingSMART standards will attend this meeting. The Norwegian AECOO industry is one of the most advanced in daily use of IFC/buildingSMART in projects and key representatives from the larger user organizations have already confirmed their attendance.

The location for all meetings will be at the Stavanger University area where Statsbygg have done are currently doing a number of projects with IFC/buildingSMART both for new buildings and for existing building.

From the morning of Wednesday 16th (9:00-13:00) there will also be parallel meetings for the Norwegian ISG and the buildingSMART Norway user group.

The agenda for Friday the 18th (9:00-15:00) will be dominated by technical discussions about how to achive best possile interoperable experience for end users according to their expressed needs and wishes and should be attended by software developers and technical experts.

If you want to attend one or more of the sessions, please register here (Open for all buildingSMART members)

The more detailed agenda for the ISG meetings will be distributed by Rasso Steinman in a separate mail and also published on the ISG official web-pages.

Practical information: Stavanger international airport Sola (SVG) has direct connection with most of the large European hubs like Copenhagen, London, Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Munich, Stockholm, Oslo etc. The Stavanger area is quite busy with oil activities and hotel reservations in advance is highly recommended. Stavanger is a relatively small city (120.000 people) and it’s recommended to find a hotel within 5km from Stavanger central station.

The distance from Stavanger Airport to Stavanger central station is about 14 kilometer (Transportation with SAS Airport Bus or Taxi)
The distance from Stavanger central station to Stavanger University is about 5 kilometer (Good communication with bus but also affordable by Taxi)

The currency in Norway is Norwegian Kroner (NOK) and major credit cards can be used almost everywhere (including all Taxis etc.)
1€ = 8,7 NOK. (Q&D head calculation: Divide NOK amount by 10 and deduct 10%)
1$ = 6,0 NOK

Please contact Bjørn K Stangeland bks@buildingSMART.no +47 90 15 88 87 if you have any questions regarding the event.