Highlights & resolution

BuildingSMART groups and members from around the world met in Munich during 7–11 October to take forward the buildingSMART programme.

BuildingSMART’s groups and ‘rooms’ comprise the International Technical Management Committee (ITM), the International User Group (IUG), the Product, Process and Infrastructure Rooms and the bSDD group. All of them met to discuss and resolve on next steps.

A Research Day was also held at the Technical University of Munich and ISO Technical Committee 59, Sub-Committee 13, Working Groups 8 and 11 met on 10 and 11 October, so that bSI members who take part in TC 59 work were already on the spot and available to join the meetings.

Funding

One highlight was funding of €200,000 secured for the infrastructure alignment project, and a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) was signed on 8 October. The Swedish government, the Dutch government and the EU are providing the sum jointly for work being done by the Infrastructure Room on alignment – the straights and curves of a road, sight distances, and so on. The Infra Room is developing IFC entities to cover the elements of alignment.

Product Room

In the Product Room, the buildingSMART Data Dictionary (bSDD) has made progress on its software structure. Working in partnership with bSDD, Norwegian software developer Catenda has created a cloud-based Application Programming Interface (API) for the Dictionary. The new API is more flexible than its predecessor, is built on Google and offers excellent scaling potential. At Munich an agreement between the bSI and Catenda was approved for Catenda to host the Dictionary and support the user community.

Also progressing the bSDD project, Dutch object library CB-NL has agreed to collaborate with the Data Dictionary and a two-year agreement was signed.

Process Room

In the Process Room, agreement was reached to develop BIM guidelines to help users understand how to work collaboratively in projects where BIM is being used.

BIM Forum

As the week drew to an end, a conference, referred to as a BIM Forum, was held for a largely German audience. Patrick MacLeamy, CEO of HOK and bSI chair, flew over from the US to give a presentation on the impact of BIM on projects. Chris Groome, bSI business manager, also gave a presentation on the UK BIM initiative.

Source: www.buildingsmart.org

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