By Steve Rizer
“I think it’s time for a time out.” No, this remark from last week was not made on the football field; rather, it came from Chris Moor, chairperson of the National Building Information Modeling Standard (NBIMS) Project Committee, during an address to professionals attending the Building Innovation 2014 Conference in Washington, D.C. “It’s time to take a break to consider the future of the National BIM Standard, to look at the rules of governance, to look at the content, to look at the mission, to look at what goes into the [standard], and to look at the cycle times.”
In proposing the break, Moor emphasized, both during his address and in a subsequent interview with ConstructionPro Week (CPW), that much progress has been made in the NBIMS movement thus far and that such a break should be viewed as a positive step for enabling the crusade to “come back stronger.”
Moor suggested a group be formed to address the aforementioned issues during the break so that “we come back with some very black-and-white defined criteria about what NBIMS is and we don’t have any difficulty in explaining” to the larger design and construction community what the standard is, “who it’s for, and why it’s important.” He reported having discussed the idea with members of the NBIMS Planning Committee.
In recommending the time out, Moor floated the idea of having two deliverables, one involving “technical information as the guides, the practice documents.” The second deliverable would be, along the lines of the “Whole Building Design Guide (WBDG),” a “Whole Building Information Management Guide,” which perhaps would be termed “W-BIM-G.” Included in W-BIM-G could be NBIMS and the National CAD (Computer-Aided Design) Standard, which Moor believes “is still very, very relevant.”
Moor said he is unsure when the next version of NBIMS may be released, “but I think that we should probably stick to a rigid timeline, or we should have a different method altogether of issuing the standard.” The traditional cycle for NBIMS has been approximately 2.4 years. “Actually, I believe it’s possible for a break to happen, the lessons to be applied, and a new version to be released inside of the timeline currently planned for the next version. That’s because one of the lessons is about the cycle itself. It needs to be shorter and more adaptable.”
Also included in the building information modeling portion of CPW's Building Innovation 2014 conference coverage (ConstructionPro Network member access):
- More Comments from NBIMS Project Committee Chairperson Chris Moor
- Financial Benefits of the "COBie Calculator" Discussed
- Exhibitor/Sponsor Briefs Featuring Autodesk Inc., Graphisoft, and Others
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