Live 2017

BIM Show Live 2017

After a hiatus, the BIM Show Live has come roaring back, taking place in the Boiler Shop, Newcastle, where Stephenson’s Rocket was originally built. The two-day event this February attracted over 400 attendees, speakers and exhibitors

Newcastle Upon Tyne is synon- of construction. The seminar sessions ymous with BIM develop- were packed out, and left standing room ment and promotion in the only. The enthusiasm from speaker and UK. It’s also where the driv- delegates was superb to see.” ing force behind BIM Show Live, Rob Charlton, CEO of Space Group, lives. The Two days, five keynote speakers event has been held in London and With five keynote speakers over the two Manchester in the past, but after taking a days, each gave us very different perspecyear out, it looks set to find a new annual tive on digital construction, from innovahome in Newcastle. tors and developers to clients and end users.

While there are many, perhaps too Mark Shayler, founder and director of many, BIM events in the UK, BIM Show Ape, gave the show its electric start with Live always attracts serious users of the his endless enthusiasm, instructing the technology and these firms have always audience to embrace opportunities and to been happy to share their knowledge and experience on-stage at the event. In ‘‘ Will the use them to transform how we live and work. Using musical references to illuskeeping with that tradition, introduction trate the rapid rate of this year’s show mixed indepth technical presentaof artificial change over the past few decades, Mark took his tions with some that might intelligence audience on an epic journey. be considered a little more mean that He urged the audience to see ‘out there’. The speakers were expertly choreographed by chairs machines take over all of our change as a positive thing and to realise their goals and ambitions —because, in David Philp, global BIM/IM jobs? Elliot his words, we don’t need to consultancy director at Crossley of be the person we were yesAECOM & chair of the Scottish BIM Delivery Group on Day One, and BDP thinks not. There is terday. James Pellatt, head of projects at Great Portland Simon Rawlinson, head of still a place Estates (GPE) not only strategic research and for creativity delivered a captivating talk insight at Arcadis on Day Two. and on past and future GPE projects, but also told us what

With the seminar independent clients need and expect from streams split between four thought, he BIM providers – not just rooms, delegates found selecting which sessions to attend a difficult task, as each offered an elevated level of learndata, but an embedded understanding of how to translate BIM into a commercial endeavour that produces longargued ’’ ing, insight and indeed inspiration. term returns on investment. GPE delivers

Show co-founder Rob Charlton com- superior returns, he said, by seeking to mented: “At Space Group, we wanted to outperform the market and, in the procreate a show that not only produced a cess, developing some of the most technoknowledge exchange and learning plat- logically advanced buildings in central form for digital construction, but to put on London. a show to remember and we certainly The third keynoter on Day One was achieved both. Stuart Maggs, founder of Scaled

“Since we first began in 2011, we have Robotics. Stuart gave his audience an maintained the philosophy that we are insight into machine learning through doing this for our colleagues and peers, to robotics and the advancements that have create opportunities and secure the future taken place in this sector over the past few years, plus provided his predictions for what will be happening in the not-sodistant future, in terms of how robots will transform our lives. We design digitally, but still build manually, he said, and robots and drones will take us into a new era of construction.

Nell Watson, an engineer, future-orientated thinker and faculty member of Singularity University was a very tough act to follow, after blowing everyone away with her presentation on the capabilities of artificial intelligence and how machines operate in a very similar way to the human brain, through programmed data and algorithms. Just like humans, machines learn in both structured and unstructured formats, and learn from feedback, trial-and-error and by being rewarded for their accomplishments.

Peter Runacres, senior projects director for Argent, talked us through some of Argent’s recent projects, and in particular, its retail and office space redevelopment at King’s Cross in London. Peter attributed Argent’s ‘place making’ abilities to its aptitude at putting the right people and processes in place. Through its smart network of people, the company ensures that its inhouse teams deliver exceptional build quality using advanced technology. All of the learning gained at King’s Cross is now being applied to the multi-million pound Brent Cross redevelopment in London.

Other Day One highlights Highlights from Day One also included a ‘warts and all’ view of a day in the life of a BIM Manager from Mike Turpin, head of BIM at Capita. There’s no single definition of this role, Mike said — it means different things at different organisations. But in the BIM world, standardisation is essential, therefore we still have some work to do to get this right.

Two associates from Herbert Smith Freehills, Sarah Rock and Ashleigh Cole, looked at BIM from a legal perspective, asking us to do more to take into consideration what the client actually needs and wants and facilitating this. It was a fascinating insight into the workings of BIM

from a different angle.

Gareth Edwards and Michael Hudson from Flanagan Lawrence, meanwhile, took us through a client case study and gave an honest view of what worked and didn’t work. This was complimented by Sainsbury’s Michael Barbour and PCSG’s Mark Stodgell, who talked about the Sainsbury’s BIM story and the benefits this has brought to the organisation.

In the first of two talks, Elliott Crossley of BDP took a look at the role of the architect in the modern built environment and made some predictions about the sorts of transformation we will encounter over the next few years. Will the introduction of artificial intelligence mean that machines take over all of our jobs? Elliot thinks not. There is still a place for creativity and independent thought, he argued.

And at the close of Day One, before the party started, Olly Thomas of BIM Technology ended proceedings on a practical note, proposing that drilling down to the core of BIM and passing over the ‘fluffy stuff’ is what will get us the real results. The value in collaboration is early engagement, he said, and to ensure all parties work to exacting standards, we need quality information and data. This quality is often questionable and that issue urgently needs to be addressed.

Welcome to Day Two On Day Two, Jonathan Ingram of City Simulations, who might legitimately be referred to as the ‘Father of BIM’, told the captivating story of the origins of BIM, 3D software and programming. The audience reaction was: ‘Wow – We forgot that computers really looked like that in the 1980s.’ For his amazing story, Jonathan was awarded the Best Classroom Talk in our show’s BIMMY Awards. (Attendees at AEC Magazine’s sister publication event DEVELOP3D LIVE in Warwick on March 28 will also get the chance to hear Jonathan Ingram speak. For more details, see our show preview on page 39.)

We also heard from town planning expert Rosemarie Andrews from Hot Architecture on how, until recently, planners have not made best use of BIM. However, it’s now transforming the planning process, she added.

Malachy Mathews, from the Dublin Institute of Technology, presented on growing synergies between BIM and blockchain technologies and proposed a new process for true collaboration. And taking us through data requirements and how to create the right kind of data, Nigel Davies of Evolve told us that data has always existed, we just probably don’t always register it correctly as data. Therefore, we need to understand the long-term journey of our project, identify key deliverables and match our data accordingly.

Long journeys, valuable learnings Steve Appleby of AECOM joined the BIM Show Live speaker line-up after traveling all the way from Australia. He was, however, born and raised in the North East, so it was a warm welcome home for Steve.

Other international speakers included: Ashleigh Cole, also from Australia; Susan Brattberg of Global eTraining, from Canada; Patrik Lindvall of Bonava in Sweden; and White Arkitekter’s Nina Borgstrom, Rikard Matson and Sara Yilner, also based in Sweden.

In fact, many of the event attendees had also travelled from overseas themselves, in order to see these BIM experts in person and to extract core-learning practices from the proceedings that they can take home and translate into their own projects, all over the world.

Out of all the BIM events we’ve attended in the last three years, this year’s BIM Show Live was easily one of the best. Delegates shared their passion and stories, looking to improve their implementations and find like-minded companies with which to work.

As with all conferences, the chat outside of the main event and often over a few beers was just as enlightening. This certainly was a show about the people and for the people who are passionate about digital construction methods and what the future holds for the industry.

Key learnings included the need to future-proof the construction industry by introducing new design, build and delivery methods — and the answers to these challenges may very well lie in the hands of skilled software developers and technologists.

We’re looking forward to seeing for ourselves how far things have progressed when we visit BIM Show Live in 2018, which we highly recommend that you attend, too.