AEC (UK) BIM Standard now available

The AEC (UK) Standards Committee today announced the Phase 1 release of its new BIM Standard documents. The standard, targeted at companies migrating from CAD to BIM, provides a practical & pragmatic BIM standard for the Architectural, Engineering and Construction industry in the UK. It includes protocols and procedures for:

• Central and project resources
• Model naming
• Object naming
• Drawing composition for CAD/BIM and 100% BIM workflows
• Spatial co-ordination
• Component modelling
• Data exchange
• And more

The committee members include architects, civil, structural and MEP engineers, multi-disciplinary firms and technology consultants, representing a broad cross section of the AEC market. Nigel Davies, chair of the AEC (UK) committee, and CAD/BIM Management expert, feels this is an important factor in the AEC (UK)’s successes. “The fact that this is a standard written by people who are using BIM tools in their day-to-day work sums up what the AEC group has always been about,” he says. “This isn’t a ‘What Is BIM’ brief, this is the foundation for a common way of modelling, managing and exchanging BIM data in the UK. This is for people who have been sold the idea – and the software – but are asking ‘What now? How do I go about doing this?”

Paul Woddy, Revit guru, sees the standard as an important step forward in the on-going modernisation of the construction industry: “By bringing together in agreement, two opposing forces of Revit users and Bentley users, we have a robust and thorough framework for a universal BIM methodology.” He goes on to add, “We still have a long way to go and are now working on product-specific documents, templates and libraries, which will assist users to comply.”

The AEC (UK) BIM Standard is available for download from the Documents page of this website.

 

AEC (UK) BIM Standard in preparation for release

The AEC (UK) Committee is working on the final wording of the new UK BIM Standard. The document is to be released on the 16th November 2009, with corresponding object libraries for Autodesk Revit and Bentley Building products scheduled for mid- to late-January 2010. Following the initial release, the AEC (UK) committee will be seeking to provide further compliant content from manufacturers and for other BIM software.

AEC (UK) BIM Standard draft for comment now available

The AEC(UK) Standards group have been working towards developing a standards & guide documentation for BIM. We are please to announce that a draft of the AEC (UK) BIM Standard has been released for comment. It is available for download from the CAD Managers Forum*.

All comments should be returned to Nigel Davies (nigel@evolve-consultancy.com) no later than 30 October 2009. The comments will be reviewed at the start of November with an aim of publishing version 1.0 later that month.

AEC (UK) chair, Nigel Davies, on WorldCAD Access

Chair of the AEC (UK) Standard Committee, Nigel Davies, took a few minutes to discuss their work with Ralph Grabowski. He explains how the AEC (UK) approach is down-to-earth, providing a practical BIM standard for those who need it now.

Read the article at http://worldcadaccess.typepad.com/blog/2009/05/the-bim-standard.html

AEC (UK) BIM Standard to lead the way

Users of industry leading Building Information Modelling (BIM) software have asked for a common approach to collaborating with engineering data.

Although BIM is now widely accepted as the route to a better quality of Architectural, Engineering and Construction (AEC) design output, there is a distinct lack of common approach across the industry. This absence limits wider adoption of BIM, minimises the return on technology investment made by companies and forces them to continually re-invent disparate processes and software content. Without any practical or independent guidance in place, and following requests by software users, the AEC (UK) Committee has undertaken to produce a BIM standard. The AEC (UK) BIM Standard will address the needs of design organisations whose projects demand operating in a multi-disciplinary BIM environment to connect their design geometry with engineering, scheduling, cost analysis and sustainability technology.

In addition to a published document, the AEC (UK) Committee aims to provide configurations and online content for both Autodesk and Bentley Systems BIM software. To achieve a practical implementation approach across platforms, the Committee has welcomed new, expert members from the UK Revit Community.

The first release of the AEC (UK) BIM standard is anticipated for October 2009 and there will be opportunity by the UK BIM community to shape its future development. This reflects earlier, successful collaborative efforts by the Committee to produce the AEC (UK) CAD Standards. Further details about the Committee’s work can be obtained by emailing the chairman, Nigel Davies at nigel@evolve-consultancy.com.

AEC (UK) Committee, May 2009

AEC (UK) Committee to reconvene

You’ll be pleased to hear that the AEC (UK) committee is getting back together on the 18th May. We’ve joined forces with the Revit User Group UK to begin work on the AEC (UK) BIM Standards documentation. We’ll keep you up-to-date with developments as they occur, but in short, this looks like a very positive step forward for BIM standards in the UK.

We won’t be publishing any white papers on what BIM is, or what it means to the industry; we’ll be putting together practical standards which anyone should be able to use. File naming, object naming, how to split models up and solutions for exchanging information are all subjects we intend to cover. As usual with the AEC, this will be a standard produced by those people actually working on these issues.

Keep an eye on this site for more news shortly.

Welcome back to AEC (UK)

Welcome to the new AEC (UK) website. We’re in the process of updating the content, so please visit us again shortly.

In the meantime, please view and download the current AEC (UK) CAD Standards documents.