Big in BIM

Big in BIM Bond Bryan Digital

While the adoption of BIM is growing, many practices still struggle to fully adapt to new processes. Bond Bryan, by contrast, has embedded BIM at its core – and has been able to expand into offering digital services to other companies as a direct result, writes Martyn Day.

In the early days of BIM, its key selling point (at least according to software vendors) was that it gave users a 3D model that would automatically generate coordinated section and elevation drawings, even while editing.

Not only did this woefully undersell the benefit of the ‘I’ in BIM, it also misled many architects into thinking that BIM is a replacement for CAD — which it isn’t. The industry has been struggling with this misconception for ten years.

BIM’s true value is becoming clearer now. The UK government’s requirement for all publicly procured projects from 4 April 2016 to be completed in BIM has required a herculean effort on behalf of companies trying to adhere to rapidly developed national standards, to collaborate effectively, to deliver data at the right times, in the right formats. But from that effort has come a wealth of new insights.

In short, modelling and generating sections and elevations are not where the true value of BIM lies. To achieve BIM Level 2, the focus must instead be applied to the management, definition, and coordination of project data.

This isn’t something that comes ‘out of the box’ from any vendor. It requires knowledgeable and experienced personnel, using their skills and insights on subjects such as IFC (Industry Foundation Class), data structures, data wrangling and so on. Companies must also understand what they hope to achieve from adopting these processes.

In this respect, Bond Bryan is ahead of the game. The firm switched to using BIM way back in 1994 and, in addition to creating exciting buildings, now plays an active role in educating clients and sharing its BIM expertise with the wider industry. It has recently expanded to offer a range of digital services, through which it shares its over two decades’ worth of project-proven BIM expertise.

Introducing Bond Bryan Today, with offices in London, Sheffield, Birmingham and Kuwait, Bond Bryan is an award-winning, research-led practice offering architectural, interior and landscape design. It offers services ranging from strategic estates advice, master planning, feasibility studies and BIM-related digital services, too.

Its staff of 120 people has significant expertise in education, research, manufacturing and workplace environments. It works on public-sector and commercial projects, to create mixed-use, commercial, residential and retail developments. It enjoys a strong reputation in the further and higher education sectors, having worked with over 50 major institutions, on projects with a combined value of well over £500 million. These include the Glasgow School of Art and the Universities of Sheffield, Nottingham, Chichester and West London.

BIM lies at the core of the company’s coordinated design process. It uses Graphisoft’s ArchiCAD as its core BIM weapon of choice. The practice’s expertise in collaboration has led to work with Bam Construct, Willmott Dixon, Wates and Balfour Beatty.

ArchiCAD BIM In the UK, Bond Bryan is seen as a poster child for its expert use of ArchiCAD, and even had its work, The David Hockney Building for Bradford College, featured as a signature building on the box of ArchiCAD 19.

The firm has used ArchiCAD since 1994 and has become closely involved in Graphisoft’s development programme, feeding back feature requests and testing beta versions of forthcoming releases. The

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firm has also presented at a number of firm has added digital services to its Requirements (AIR) and Employer’s Graphisoft events, including openBIM business model. The company says it pre- Information Requirements (EIR), togeth3D, BIM in Practice and Key Client fers to think of BIM as standing for er with providing documentation manConference, as well as giving talks at the ‘Better Information Management’ and agement, coordination and processes. BIM Show Live and RTC. aims to assist clients in building standard These are based around open standards,

It therefore follows that Bond Bryan processes that benefit all parties involved to support design and construction was one of the first teams, with a focus of delivGraphisoft clients to deploy the company’s BIMcloud collaboration technology, ‘‘ I see my role as helping designers deliver the ering high-quality clean data to other post-occupancy fields such as facilities enabling its design teams to right information, and by developing a management and lifecycle share models through the cloud, while enabling easi- process, you consistently deliver models asset management. Bond Bryan Digital has er management of projects, created to standards. Rob Jackson, Bond Bryan delivered complete BIM templates and content in a centralised location. The company currently uses version 19 but in the design, construction and mainte ’’ execution plans to clients, from analysing complete supply chains to providing common data will be upgrading to version 21 once it’s nance of built assets. environments with model validation for released. Bond Bryan Digital’s information man- COBie production [Construction agement services offer firms assistance in Operations Building Information Digital services achieving BIM Level 2 capability, work- Exchange]. Having built such a wealth of internal ing towards BIM level 3 (due in 2020), Despite the UK having tens of thouexpertise in information handling, the helping to define Asset Information sands of architects and thousands of

architectural firms, the BIM hardcore is still quite a small, tight-knit community of advocates, practicing what they preach and trying to spread the BIM religion by handing on their dark arts, a bit like Jedi Knights but without the robes.

Rob Jackson, BIM expert Even with social media sites like Twitter as places to exchange information and so many events and forums at which BIM advocates share their knowledge, some individuals still stand out for their passion and knowledge.

Rob Jackson, associate director at Bond Bryan Digital (@bondbryanBIM) is one of those experts. He’s been championing the concept of BIM, data openness and collaboration from its earliest days and has specifically examined and implemented standards for BIM data.

Through Bond Bryan Digital’s blog (bimblog.bondbryan.com – see page 17), Jackson has come up with a novel idea on structure data. National stan- University of With so much BIM data flying how to explain the intricacies of BIM dards continue to evolve, some- Nottingham around between authoring and through the medium of Lego, having mod- times at a bewildering pace. Technology Entreneurship visualisation tools, common elled Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye and used The one thing users can be Centre data environments, COBie, IFC it to explain core BIM concepts. sure of is that simply clicking on readers and so on, it can be sur-

Talk to Rob Jackson for long enough an COBie export button will not pass a prising what data gets filtered out in the and you will be left with no doubt that data integrity test. Things get even more process. BIM data exchange is rarely a BIM software, while improving, is far messy when they need to generate a lossless process. Jackson and his team are from perfect. The inherent inefficiencies COBie drop from federated databases, so skilled at this that they’re hired by softwith which the AEC space has struggled which originate from software created by ware vendors to test their code. are still ever-present. This is a challenge – different developers from different firms “The industry is struggling to deliver and Jackson likes to solve problems. and with different standards, some of consistent reliable information and it’s no

BIM’s data problems start with the which may not quality-check their output. surprise,” says Jackson. “For instance, basics. Firms that don’t have standards are As Jackson explains, “I see my role as Autodesk Revit has an ‘IFC out’ and a inconsistent and don’t check the quality of helping designers deliver the right infor- ‘COBie out’, when COBie is a subset of their work. In many coun- IFC — but they are develtries, there are now emerging standards with which to comply. Here in the UK, for ‘‘ We have worked on projects where all oped by different teams. “Then there are user inconsistencies. We have example, a key deliverable is participants are using the same authoring worked on projects where COBie, a non-proprietary structured format for quan- tool, but there are huge discrepancies. We end all participants are using the same authoring tool, tity, location, installation up spending a lot of time mapping stuff but there are huge discrepand maintenance of building assets. Ideally, designers would understand these requirements. ’’ mation, and by developing a process, you ancies. We end up spending a lot of time mapping stuff. We have to clean it up into a format that is

Then there is the software developer’s consistently deliver models created to usable.” interpretation of this format, which can be standards. It’s easier to tackle at source, Here, Bond Bryan Digital’s weapon of very hit-or-miss. Some packages offer a than [to] fix when we get to the stage of choice is Solibri, Jackson explains. “As far COBie export button, for example. Users merging IFCs. It’s all about getting infor- as we are concerned, working in an Open click on this and think they have complied mation to the client that is good and to do BIM environment is about conforming to with the standard. But this function may that consistently. However in BIM, every- IFC, COBie and BCF formats. We perform be fundamentally limited by how the data thing is constantly changing, it’s a never- element classification tests, merge federis structured in the core architecture of ending cycle, it’s constantly moving — but ated data, perform clash detection and the BIM software, which may not have the we need to establish levels of confidence.” build rules to validate models using granularity for proper definition, or may Acquiring this knowledge may mean Solibri. We make sure we achieve highsimply not have a correlating data field. breaking things: Jackson regularly carries quality information take-off and create fil-

Added to all this, software developers out geometry and data tests on many ters on classifications to check the quality insist on upgrading and changing their industry tools, to identify what elements of data.” applications every year, or even more fre- go in but don’t come out, to understand While Solibri acts as a common data quently, which can change the way they the limitations and to seek out remedies. environment for wrangling IFC data for

validation, Bond Bryan Digital West London flexibility, while still being able is currently investigating the Volkswagen, a Centre to produce structured data.” quickly developing world of of Excellence for the Volkswagen brand in One of my regular questions generic BIM common data the UK to BIM experts is how much 2D environments, with clients work they do to their auto-genusing disparate systems from Dropbox erated sections. The more 2D detail is and Buzzsaw to dRofus, which added, the less benefit they get from autoNemetschek acquired at the end of last matic coordinated updates when the year. Jackson has yet to find a truly out- model changes. standing one, but is increasing his expo- According to Jackson, “We embellish sure to the options available by working the model with 2D over the top, I guess to with clients’ different choices. make it what people would expect the out-

With so many firms struggling to move put to be. Everything we try not to do! It’s BIM data around their offices, I asked [about] level of information, which goes Jackson about Bond Bryan’s own set-up. back to not trusting contractors, adding

“We have ArchiCAD BIMcloud across detailed specifications to the drawing to all offices. We have never required data ensure everything is unambiguous. compressors. As to file sizes, I don’t really There’s always a fear that if you don’t add know anymore; with BIMcloud, I don’t that detail, mistakes will happen. But I’d see them and BIMcloud just sends the love the industry to move away from data that changes, not the whole model. being drawing-based.”

“I guess as some indication, our IFCs When it comes to hiring staff, does Bond get to be 150MB. We use standard off-the- Bryan automatically look for experienced shelf Macs. Nobody complains about ArchiCAD users? “Obviously, at the speed. When creating renderings is per- moment, the industry is massively conhaps the only time users wait but, day to strained with a skills shortage. We don’t day, the computer operates faster than the advertise for ArchiCAD users specifically, users. Speed is not an issue on our project we just look for good architects or techniwork. If you asked our users for their top cians. As far as we are concerned, those are 20 issues, speed would be at the bottom. the core criteria and our chosen authoring The number one issue would be the com- tool, ArchiCAD, can be learnt in a week. plexity of my templates – I won’t deny it!” It’s all about attitude and mindset.

Bond Bryan has a single Revit Suite and “We get a lot of interest from young stuwhile the firm has considered setting up a dents, because we go out and give lectures small Revit team in the past, it decided and talks. They see what we’re doing and that supporting two BIM tools was crazy. the level of expertise we have with the

“I think ArchiCAD is the best design tools and [they] approach us,” he says. tool as it’s less structured,” says Jackson. “Revit is very structured, so great as an Evolving BIM engineering tool, but as an architectural In many ways, the BIM market is still tool, I would personally rather create evolving, trying to sort itself out. The workflows in ArchiCAD as you can have problems include proprietary file formats, inconsistent data formatting, poor compliance to data formats, low levels of openness and users who probably don’t achieve good quality or standards in 2D, then going on to replicate bad practices and bad habits in BIM.

While there has been a rush to adopt BIM, there hasn’t necessarily been a rush to adapt to it, or spend much time ensuring that the data that gets delivered is correct. Again, just because your software has a COBie export button, that doesn’t mean it conforms to the standard.

Architectural practices need a new breed of people — IT-savvy people who have the time and interest to experiment in order to address shortfalls in software and the skill levels they encounter in their dealings with collaborators and clients. Many firms are setting up internal R&D teams to ease the deployment of new technology and to wrangle data. From talking with Rob Jackson, it seems clear that firms need to identify their natural puzzle-solvers to drive standards internally and interface with federated teams.

It’s also clear that getting ahead in BIM knowledge opens new business opportunities. Bond Bryan can now bid on a number of levels: design, strategy, coordination, quality assessment and many others. By working with clients in a wider range of capacities, other opportunities arise and the company acquires even more knowledge. In other words, it’s a virtuous cycle.

Looking at BIM from a data-centric viewpoint requires asking different questions of internal processes and introducing a culture of self-checking. Creating a model and coordinated drawings really is the most elementary part of BIM. The bigger picture is getting a handle on all the data that BIM models possess and fathoming out how to get that data in the right format, in order to meaningfully share it with someone — as a schedule, as an IFC, as a COBie sheet, or whatever else is required.

It’s not enough to be using the same BIM modelling tool: inconsistent standards, training and quality can wreak havoc on a collaborative project in the design and construction phases and can go on to negatively impact the occupancy phase. Add to the mix constantly evolving software, often released on yearly upgrade cycles, and the shifting sands of national and international BIM standards, and you’ve got an even bigger challenge with which to contend.

But tackling that challenge — and doing it smartly — is exactly how Bond Bryan Digital has found its niche.

The Bond Bryan Digital Blog

Bond Bryan Digital’s blog

(bimblog.bondbryan.com)

is a mixture of practice news and technology updates – but it’s also where Rob Jackson has created a series of very informative and easy-tocomprehend explanations of BIM through the medium of LEGO and Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye (featured on the front cover of this edition of AEC Magazine).

The series, now 22 posts in length, offers advice to clients and architects, as well as BIM laypeople, covering all the key concepts of BIM. These make it clear that, while many people continue to think of a model and its geometry as an end in itself, these really are only the start of many important processes that deliver value throughout a building’s lifecycle.

With each entry, Jackson explains the concepts, processes and benefits of modelling, model views, visualisation, object libraries, Levels of Detail (LODs), augmented reality, schedules, and so on.

The series is a great starting point for any beginner to the concept of BIM. Our understanding is that Jackson intends to continue with the series and has even bigger plans for additional LEGO-based informative materials.