On Friday, April 13, FitzGerald Senior Architect Timothy Blatner, AIA addressed the AIA Technology in Architectural Practice webinar BIG BIM Bang – Enterprise BIM and BIG Data. He presented projects illustrating the way that design and construction teams capture, transform, and share BIM (Building Information Model) data during the design and production process.
The seminar presented results of selected BIMStorm events where teams across the country participated in real-time charrettes, digitally collaborating to create smart models that in turn solved planning, design, and construction challenges. Tim has presented at several such BIMStorms over the last four years, including urban planning challenges in Los Angeles and San Diego, and compiling post-disaster resources for transitional shelter options after the 2010 Haiti earthquake.
BIMStorm is a real-time, cloud-based planning and design workshop demonstrating the collaboration between BIM (Building Information Modeling), GIS (Geographic Information Systems), and non-BIM software and illustrating the benefits of shared data over many individual proprietary data sets for design, analysis, reporting and management operations. By designing and sharing of basic BIM massing models, teams can rapidly create multiple viable iterations containing real data that can then be analyzed and used to make critical directional decisions earlier in the design process. These decisions – made sooner than in traditional design-build schedules and based on meaningful information – can reduce short-term costs and the duration of construction, as well as define and detail long-term operational issues such as energy consumption and expenditures.
During the most recent BIMStorm, Tim led the ground-up architectural design of the MiraCosta College athletic facility demonstrating real-time collaborative design and planning. Initiated by the collection into FUSION software of 71 million square feet of BIM data by the Foundation for California Community Colleges, and utilizing GIS infrastructure data layers in Onuma System, he modeled three architectural massing schemes with conceptual floor plans.
Through further modeling and simulation, these plans produced critical data for cost estimating, constructability assessments, construction scheduling, environmental analysis and energy usage. As a result the design team demonstrated that between the three schemes, there was a $900,000 difference in operational cost over the lifetime of the buildings. Decisions thus could be made at this early stage to pursue the most viable and affordable solution. Some of the team’s results are summarized here.
Tim has also presented similar post-BIMStorm findings in a joint meeting of the Chicago BIM-IPD Group and Chicago BIM Community, and participated in a BIMStorm webinar entitled 3 Owners::2 Days::155 People::35 Tools::Lots of BIM. For more information on BIMStorm, visit BIMStorm.com.
