BIM Alliance Sweden

1.

I have just come back from this year's jubilant education and research seminar of the KTH Department of Real Estate and Construction Management in a spectacular venue in Skåvsjöholm. All the staff including researchers and doctoral students embraced this timely opportunity to get to know each other and exchange their experiences in a relaxed atmosphere with lots of fun and sweets. I too managed to give my first short speech in Swedish for colleagues at the department and swim in the chilly though refreshing waters of the Baltic Sea perhaps for the very last time this year.

2.

Kalle, Alex, me, and Mount Kebnekaise

Two weeks ago, I managed to step on the highest peak in Sweden, Mount Kebnekaise. It took us 16 hours on the railroad to arrive at the country's northernmost city, Kiruna. One more extra hour was needed for the bus trip from Kiruna train station to the furthest place that could be reached by car, Nikkaluokta. Our three-member team then went through the hiking route and settled in the base camp (Fjällstation) after seven hours. Finally, we did the last part the day after and made it to the peak through the West route (Västraleden) in a relaxed 14-hour-long pace.

Despite all rain and drizzle of the first day, we were more than lucky to enjoy a fully sunny day and moderate temperatures during our ascending and descending. Our trip was rounded up by an informative tour to the LKAB's largest underground iron mines around the globe and a short visit to the exquisite church of Kiruna. This is one of the few buildings od the city that will be preserved and intactly transferred to a new location during dislocation of the city center for further excavation operations.

3.

The long Swedish summer vacation period is now almost over and I am finally putting together my notes from the annual OpenBIM conference that was held in Arlanda Airport on 22nd April 2013. The central theme for this round of the conference was the clinents' and practitioners' requirements on BIM. 

Prior to presenting a brief history of evolution of building information modelling (BIM), the first speaker of the day, Professor Arto Kiviniemi from University of Salford paid tribute to Professor Chuck Eastman as the father of the BIM who introduced the basics of the concept as early as the year 1957. He then blamed the conservative mindset of the practitioners in the building industry for their resistance to change which has largely hampered a widespread implementation of BIM after all these years. Yet, the ever-increasing passion of such sizable real-estate and facility management firms as the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA), Senate Properties in Finland, and Statsbygg in Norway envisions a bright future for the building industry as a whole.

Arto addressed a remarkable fact that was also echoed in several keynote talks at the CIB conference in Brisbane a month later: the relatively ample level of technological proficiency in BIM at the time and the more urgent need for handling social and organizational bottlenecks of the technology. This issue was also raised by the second speaker of the day, Dr. Calvin Kam from Stanford University when he addressed the inevitably intertwined applications of sociology and technology. 

BIM technology now experiences the Plateau of Productivity phase of its Gartner Hyper Cycle according to Arto. More than 150'000 companies and 3'000'000 people around the world are using BIM. The major problem is, however, the uneven implementation of BIM across sectors, life cycle stages, and actors. This has, in turn, led to dramatically diverse maturity levels across different individuals, organizations, and projects. 

In order to realize the full business value of BIM in practice, there is a need for widespread implementation of such novel initiatives as new procurement and insurance models. Large-scale initiatives such as COBIM in Finland, BIM Task Group in the UK, and IPD method (Integrated Project Delivery) in the US will help drive the industry in this direction. Talking about BIM for FM, it is crucial to understand that only what information that is truly needed (mainly consisting of non-graphical information) should be transferred to the FM sector. Arto's speech was followed by a panel discussion among him and representatives from Coor, Tyréns, Skanska, and the Swedish Transport Administration (Trafikverket):

• Per Bjälness from Coor Service Management emphasized the urge for more user-centric cyber services and provision of structured and measurable information for users of buildings. He also clarified some of the requirements for the BIM material to be delivered to the user such as a clear structure, relevance, and accuracy.
• Tomas Alsmarker from Tyréns criticized the project-based mindsets in the building industry that hampers a user-oriented integrated approach to building as a product.
• Rikard Espling from Skanska noticed the importance of early involvement of actors from different disciplines.
• Arto mentioned the importance of an integrated approach to modelling different components of the built environment including buildings, infrastructure, and industrial plants. He also referred to the significant role of quality assurance processes of information in sieving suitable and reliable information.
• Mikael Malmkvist from Trafikverket addressed, among all, the necessity of implementing standard solutions and shifting towards web-based knowledge centers for building operation.

Dr. Calvin Kam's speech covered a variety of topics including more efficient model-checking approaches, schema extensibility in building data modelling, the importance of collaborative open-BIM projects and yet the substantial role of proprietary tools and formats, the annual BIM award of AIA since 2003, and the ever-increasing implementation of BIM in China and Hong Kong.

The first speaker of the afternoon session, Professor Thomas Olofsson from Luleå University of Technology presented a chronological account of building modelling and its applications for visualization, integration, and automation. He demonstrated a development pyramid, starting with Technology at the top, passing through Methodology and Process, and ending up to Organization at the base where - again - the importance of social and organizational aspects of building information modelling was declared.

Rogier Jongeling, technical director at Open BIM, was the next speaker who talked about, among all, model-driven data analysis and the consequent need for integrated models for carrying out such analyses, the new PLM approach to building information management (Product Life Cycle Management), and model-driven visualization and coordination. He summed up his talk with a real-time display of an augmented reality tool implemented by Locum for conjuring up 3D models out of existing 2D drawings.

Anders Moberg (CAD-Q) and Väino Tarandi 
(buildingSMART and KTH)

Lars Lidén from Specialfastigheter presented the joint initiative by five major public Swedish facility owner firms including Akademiska hus, Sveriges Riksdagsförvaltningen, Fortifikationsverket, Statens Fastighetsverk, and Specialfastigheter for developing a common strategy for asset information management. Energy efficiency in building operations, facilitating knowledge transfer and recruitment of new FM&O staff, tackling the problem of efficient use of existing building stock and implications of an open data format approach for early involvement of the FM representatives were some of areas that were covered in this presentation.

Before the news about the upcoming birth of the BIM Alliance Sweden were announced, Håkan Blom provided an overarching presentation about ongoing and planned research activities around building information modelling as defined by the the Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda for Bygginnovationen. Design visualization and coordination, education, jurisdiction and contracts, optimization of industrial processes, life cycle approach to building information management, facility management and operations, customer engagement, and customer satisfaction were the most significant headlines in Håkan's speech.

Finally, Rikard Espling, Mats Broman, and Väino Tarandi, respectively from Open BIM, Föreningen för förvaltningsinformation (fi2), and buildingSMART stepped on the stage to publicly declare the decision made by their corresponding organizations for merging together and forming the BIM Alliance Sweden that will get a head start on January 2014. BAS envisions a closer collaboration and more coordinated and aligned efforts for standardization which will eventually facilitate an unbroken total-life-cycle flow of information for the Swedish building industry.