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Draft Building Information Modeling Standard issued

March 29, 2007  |  from Infrastructure & Public Works Blog

The National Institute of Building Sciences (NIBS) recently issued the version 1.0 draft of the National Building Information Modeling Standard (National BIM Standard).  The National BIM Standard has been in the works for over four years, and is a collaboration between over 30 subject matter experts throughout the capital facilities industry.  An industry review and comment period is now in effect until May 21, 2007.  

The National BIM Standard provides the first comprehensive look at the recommended procedures for the Building Information Modeling process.  In short, Building Information Modeling aspires to change the culture and approach to the construction of capital facilities to a more cooperative model which utilitizes technology to model buildings before they are built.  The National BIM Standard was developed from the following 4 tenets:

  1. to build a facility virtually prior to building it physically so that detailed analysis can occur early in the process, allowing for problems to be resolved electronically first;
  2. to collect data at its point of creation and sharing it throughout the lifecycle of a facility;
  3. to make data entry and data maintenance part of the business process and not a separate step, which would only add work to a project; and
  4. to recognize the importance of the collection of detailed information regarding a facility since detailed information can always be summarized, but summary information cannot be broken down into detailed information.

The National BIM Standard is approximately 162 pages long, and a link to it can be found here.  NIBS is a non-profit organization formed by an act of Congress to be a liaison between public and private design and construction organizations. 

Filed: BIM