The age of facility managers' paper boxes is yet far from over

The first time I saw the top left image was July 2012 during a keynote speech by Dr. Bill East as part of the ECPPM in Reykjavik. I had then just started my doctoral studies and roughly outlined my research area as lifecycle-support building information management. Through literary sources such as the BIM Handbook, I had already noticed the urge for extending the use of high-end information technologies to the operation phase; but I still had an avid hunger for more insights and indications for finalizing my research topic.

The image at the top left shows a room where FM documents are stored - in a hospital if I remember correctly. The image conveys an uncomfortable reality about the status quo in the facility management sector: the information required for operating buildings and planning and executing maintenance tasks often needs to be dug out of piles of blueprints, brochures, manuals and contractual documents stacked in some shabby obscure room. The gist of Dr. East's talk was to unravel how inefficient, error-pone, sluggish and counterproductive this prevailing practice of information management is and a suggested approach to turn the tide.

In my first paper, 'Is the age of facility manager's paper boxes over?', the problem was addressed in detail, an alternative solution (FM:BIM) was disclosed through literature, and the major categories of obstacles to be lifted to truly leverage BIM for a more efficient FM&O sector were designated.

Since then, I have been constantly monitoring the subject area to ascertain the relevance of my research goal and gauge the possible need for updating or modifying the overall set up. Through hours of talks and discussions with professionals of different positions in both fields of FM&O and construction IT, attending seminars and observing practitioners, I can confidently conclude that the problem still prevails - even in such an IT-friendly country as Sweden.

The picture in the middle shows the construction drawings and operation documents of the condominium where I live, freshly handed over from the construction company to the facility management firm! All documents are, of course, accompanied with their counterparts in digital format; but these are the paper versions that are legally binding and will be used for daily operation activities. Moreover, the digital hand-over documents are, in the best case, PDF files and no original model or drawing in either proprietary or neutral format has been included; apparently because no such requirement exists in contractual documents which, in turn, is a result of lack of national legislations on digital hand-over requirements.

The strategic document 'BIM i staten' which has been procured by five Swedish public organizations and provides guidelines for open-standard information management in the AECO industry and other initiatives from BIM Alliance Sweden gradually paves the ground for filling the legal gaps mentioned above.

I took the picture to the top right the other day upon entering the pool where I usually swim. One of the staff was carrying a number of maintenance folders to the storage room in the basement. Apparently, the handover documents in paper format were still in use as the primary source of information for running the facility! In fact, FM&O information is currently stored in a broad range of formats as depicted in the diagram below ranging from blueprints and paper folders to cloud-based object-oriented repositories. The majority of FM&O firms are, nonetheless, still using the rudimentary formats that are demonstrated towards the left end of the diagram below.

Spectrum of forms and formats of FM&O information (Parsanezhad, 2014)

Technologies such as 3D-scanning could help speeding up the process of creating BIMs for older buildings or upgrading old-format legacy documents to more semantically-rich building drawings, models and databases. My third paper is, in fact, a critical reflection on one of such efforts (though not using 3D-scanning) for creating BIMs for pre-BIM facilities. The co-author was Johannes Dimyadi who I was lucky to bump into during WBC2013 in Brisbane. We described and analyzed the case of developing BIMs of 191 campus buildings in Auckland over 4 years. The models had then been coupled with a centralized database in an SQL DBMS and a number of APIs through a portal solution and deployed for optimizing their FM&O activities. I presented the work at CIB-W070 in Copenhagen last year.

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Keeping to my recent blogging tradition, below comes some anecdotes of the events I have lately attended:

23rd September - During our last departmental lunch seminar, Professor Hans Lind presented his recent paper on merits of vertical integration in the real estate sector. The term 'vertical integration' originates from the literature in industrial organization and refers to integrating complementary services into the core business activities of firms. The other alternative is outsourcing or buying in such services when necessary. Through this research, a number of theoretical propositions had been tested within four real estate firms in Sweden. Construction, acquisition, selling and operating facilities were the core and complementary business fields of the selected cases.

According to the literature, some examples of the rationales for vertical integration are: preserving the quality of services and products, entering the retail market, enacting more control over input resources and protecting corporational information. As an example, facility owners who also operate their buildings possess more bargaining power when renting out their properties and are less prone to making incorrect decisions such as selling their assets at the wrong time or at a low price. All in all, vertical integration provides firms with additional options. One common feature is that vertical integration increases bargaining power in markets with limited competition.

22nd September - An exhibition of the works by the students of architecture in Master Studio 4 at KTH was held at the new School of Architecture building designed by Tham & Videgård architects. The title for the exhibition was 'Another Earth' connoting temporary architecture for our future society. For me, it was also a good opportunity to take a look inside the new building which vividly stands out in the campus with its curvy façade comprising pre-oxidized rust-red corten plates and huge glass panes.

20th September - The Swedish Transport Administration (Trafikverket) had organized a public visit to their railroad bridge project as part of the new commuter train line in Stockholm. Citybanan is 6 kilometers long and stretches north-south, passing through the city center. The project will be completed by 2017. In construction of the Älvsjö bridge, modern techniques such as movable scaffolding system (MSC) have been implemented.

16th-17th September - Stockholm Business Arena was held at Stockholm Waterfront Congress Centre. The event includes tens of lectures and debate sessions on construction and regional and urban planning. Off to the side of the event, major actors in the field present their services at the venue. Due to other occupations at school, I only managed to be there half a day. Yet, I had intriguing discussions with representatives of architectural, construction, FM and real estate companies and attended a few sessions on smart cities, infrastructure and residential architecture.

	Right to left: Fredrik Brunes, Inga-Lill Söderberg and me

9th September , morning - As part of the breakfast seminar series organized by the Swedish Association of Architects, Michael Kazarnowiczs gave a speech on how social media could be deployed efficiently and professionally by architectural firms. 'Contents', 'algorithms' and 'people' were emphasized as the pillars of social media platforms where content is the fuel, algorithms are the catalysts and people are the engine. Different media employ different algorithms for customizing the contents. That of Facebook, for instance, customizes each individual user's interface according to her/his interests, previous posts, interest in the creator of the content, content type and recency of the post i.e. News Feed Visibility=IxPxCxTxR.

In Sweden, people at the age of 16 to 25 use the Internet the most. The highest number of Swedish Facebook users belong to the same age interval of 16-25; while the majority of Instagram users through the country are 12 to 15 years old.

9th September, evening - The seminar on virtual design and construction (VDC) was held at KTH. The organizer was the construction firm, Veidekke, and the main speaker of the event was professor Marin Fischer from Stanford University. He presented the basic principles of the Integrated Concurrent Engineering (ICE) method as part of the Virtual Design and Construction (VDC) methodology. A number of case studies were presented where implementing ICE had resulted in significant reduction of work orders and RFIs (request for information) and budget and time efficiencies.

Advocates of the VDC methodology regard BIM as just one single component of their more comprehensive solution which is formulated and practiced at a higher strategic level than BIM. This battle of terms reminds me of how researchers and practitioners in the field of 'adaptation' consider those affiliated with the domain of 'resilience' lacking strategic insight. While BIM is more tangible for designers and engineers, VDC sounds more intriguing and relevant for project managers. Both concepts could be developed further to also embrace the needs of the actors in the operation phase; whereas the term VDC needs to be rephrased to VDCO (virtual design, construction and operation) for this purpose.

P.s. I just discovered that an adept Florida-based team has already started using the updated term, VDCO! I got to know Birgitta Foster firstly through a former student of her, Francisco Forns‐Samso, whom I met at ECPPM 2012 in Reykjavik. Since I found Francisco's thesis an interesting piece of work, I reached Birgitta via a Skype interview in 2012. I also got the opportunity to meet and talk to her during the international BIM conference by BIM Alliance Sweden in 2014. She is a very passionate, charming, energetic and accommodating person with great ideas!

3rd September - Petra Blaisse, the textile designer and landscape architect, presented some of the works designed in their office ranging from interior projects to park designs in Qatar, the Netherlands, Taiwan, Italy, Germany, etc. 'Two eventful years' had been organized by the Swedish Association of Architects and held at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts. Elaborate use of forms and materials characterizes their work being surrounded by either an individual fully-designed structure or a large-scale urban district.

20th-21st August - Our departmental research and education seminar was held in a conference venue located to the west of Stockholm. Coordination of educational programs at our department, gender equality and pedagogic concerns were the central themes for the event. The corporational vision of the Department of Real Estate and Construction Management at KTH comprises research for a sustainable society, excellent engineering education, and collaboration with industry and society. Research at our department is linked to both policy and practice and covers a wide range of subject areas, namely, urban development, property/facility management, production and logistics.

2014 - Miscellaneous

Due to the workload for the course I was engaged in and some other parallel activities during recent months, there was no time left for more posts on this blog. When I went through my archive this evening, I learned that a handful of drafts from the events in 2014 had not got the chance to be developed into organized texts. Some of the contents have though lost their currency now. Besides, it would not be feasible to work out all those items at this moment. Yet, those events of the 2014 that were supposed to be discussed here are shortlisted in this openning post of the year 2015 in a reverse chronological order:

Poster session at SB14,
photo by Professor Keith Hampson

10/12/2014

During the last lunch seminar of the year at our department, Professor Hans Lind clarified the idea behind an upcoming research work of him and some other coleagues. The central arguement introduced by him was that shifting from public to private procurement in construction projects would alleviate the issues with moral hazards. Generally speaking, diminishing moral hazards could be interpreted as eliminating the incentives for not getting the things done in the way that they are supposed to be done by different parts of a contract.

1/12/2014 - 3/12/2014
I participated in a gratifying writing retreat by Professor Christine Räisänen and Dr. Paul W. Chan held at Chalmers University. Common structures of the abstract and the main text, the funnel principle for presenting the research work and the CARS model were some of the topics that were covered by the lecturers.

28/10/2014 - 30/10/2014
During the World Sustainable Building conference (SB14) held in Barcelona, I presented a poster in the afternoon session of the second day.

23/10/2014
Stockholm Business Region Development & Stockholm IT Region organized an intriguing breakfast seminar about Internet of Things (IoT) at cinema Rigoletto in Stockholm. In the final part of the event, a number of startups in the field introduced their products.


20/10/2014
The seminar, 'Insights and prospects' (Utblick & inblick) organized by BIM Alliance Sweden - was held at Clarion conference facilities at Arlanda Airport. In the begining, Dr. Olle Samuelson briefly covered the priorities in BIM-implementation such as introducing best practices, standardizing (setting and promoting standards), engaging all stakeholders, issues with collaboration, BIM education and BIM research. Dr. Rogier Jongeling's brief words about the seminar was then followed by an insightful talk by Dale Sinclair - Director of Technical Practice (in the UK). He, among others, explained the ongoing activities for updating the RIBA Outline Plan of Work and replacing the approximately 30000 existing CAD manuals with a standard national BIM document. As an example of the challenges with engaging stakeholders, he referred to the fact that 80% of the architects in the UK had not seen the Bow-Richard diagram of BIM-maturity levels by the time...

Bow-Richard diagram of BIM-maturity levels 

The kick-off meeting for the detailed design phase of
the project 'Undervisningshuset'

20/10/2014
I had to leave the seminar to join the kick-off meeting for the detailed design phase of the project 'Undervisningshuset' to be built at the main campus of KTH. The meeting was held at Akademiskahus building where the project manager and participating consulting firms discussed the practicalities of the upcoming design phase.

Dr. Antje Junghans (professor in facilities management
at NTNU) and me at ECPPM (source)

17/9/2014 - 19/09/2014
The 10th European Conference on Product & Process Modelling (ECPPM) in Vienna was opened by the host and organizer of the event, Professor Ardeshir Mahdavi followed by Professor Ziga Turk. Keynote speakers expressed  their concerns about the need for a closer collaboration between academia and industry for realizing a greater impact by the research community on the society. My contribution to the event was an oral presentation of my latest article 'An overview of information logistics for FM&O business processes'.

KTH delegation at the welcome reception at Kuppelsaal, right to left: Professor Väino Tarandi, Susanna Vass, Tina Karrbom Gustavsson and Hannes Lindblad

Project Services Forum by Cad-q

11/9/2014
Cad-q introduced their alternative for a lifecycle-support building information management configuration during the Project Services Forum. The seminar was initiated with an account of information management strategies at the sizable construction project of New Karolinska Solna hospital. The following lecturers contemplated on how to coordinate the use of diverse applications for authoring and communicating building infromation e.g. BIMeye, Naviate, Chaos Desktop, Interaxo, Simplebim and Lumion.

8/9/2014

School visit by Professor Peter Gudmundson

The president of KTH, Professor Peter Gudmundson made a school visit and talked to the staff. Routines for evaluating the quality of education and research at KTH, environmental certification of KTH campus buildings,
KTH's ranking (among the top ten best European universities and the top 120 universities around the world at the time of the lecture), publishing policies and strategies at KTH, internationalization and E-learning were among the topics raised by him.

12/6/2014
Graphisoft Sweden held the event 'Highlight' at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts (Konstakademin) in Stockholm. Joakim Werning from National Museum explained how he utilized the capicities of the BIM application, ArchiCAD, for scenography of art exhibitions. Creating a virtual collection of the works of arts prior to shiping, examining different arrangements virtually, examining different alternatives for stands, platforms and information texts, lighting design, locating surveilance cameras, extracting quantity take-offs for procurement of materials such as chipboard and gypsum panels and paint were some of the functionalities facilitated by using ArchiCAD, according to Joakim. The talk was followed by a visit to the exhibition.

Design of an art exhibition in ArchiCAD environment

Professor Martin Fischer kindly accepted my request for a selfie
together just before his speech ensuing the conference

20/03/2014
The buildingSMART international conference was held by BIM Alliance Sweden and hosted at KTH. The event was preceded by a number of technical sessions starting on March 16th. Market-based initiatives for operationalizing bsDD, the new concept of FMie (developed in Norway), application of BCF for transferring portions of IFC files, developments of COBie US and UK, implications of different classification systems such as Omniclass and Uniclass, engaging part manufacturers in developing product data templates and fi2-compatible applications such as Solibri were among the topics discussed during the week.

Miscellaneous Diary

Time flies and my posts become more sporadic. Having some hours to spend at Helsinki Airport on my way back from a short trip to Budapest, it is perhaps the right time for writing a summarized retrospective diary comprising the highlights since I wrote about Stockholm Student Fair:

On 7th February, I made a visit to the conceptual exhibition, Light Houses, at the Museum of Architecture in Stockholm. Thirty two young architectural firms from Sweden, Norway and Finland presented their ideologies and methodologies through "objects" and "words". Works were ranging from utterly abstract and conceptual ones to building models and even a book of technical drawings. My favorites were the works by the Finnish firm, Lundén Wikar Österlund and the Mirror Cube by the Swedish firm, Tham & Videgård.

In the afternoon of the 9th February, I joined the introduction ceremony for foreign students in Sweden held at the City Hall. The event was opened by Margareta Björk, the chair of Stockholm Municipality. Then, it was time for talks by the head of education, the CEO of Stockholm Business Region Development, director of Staf (Maria Fogelström) and the vice president of SSCO (the central student union organization in Stockholm). Maria left a 2-minute portion of Staf's time to me for introducing our NGO, SIRAP, and its activities.

This is now a while that I have been participating in information management meetings of a construction project for building an educational facility in the campus which is located just a hundred meters from my office. This exquisite building is designed by the Danish architectural firm, Cco, and is a unique project from different aspects: the building itself is a study object by making parts of its structural, mechanical and electrical components visible to the users; it accommodates flexible education and exhibition spaces with an interior layout that allows quick shift between different education modes. The building will be ready for use by 2016.

Something even more important about this project for us at the Division for Project Communication is that we will be able to use all digital models of the building for educational and research activities. In order to get updated about information management and digital modelling status of the project, I will be participating in two categories of the meetings: BIM-coordination sessions and BIM-development session. On 11th February, the very first occasions of the two meetings were held, BIM-representatives of all participating firms as well as the participants from KTH research group were introduced to eachother, and the overall principles of information management for the project were announced by the BIM-consultant firm, Plan B. In the following BIM-coordination meetings on 25th February and 11th March, more details about modelling routines, information sharing and exchange formats were discussed.

Lunch seminars are part of a share-and-discussion tradition at the Department for Real Estate and Construction Management. On 12th February, Prof. Hans Lind presented his new book together with Prof. Thomas Kalbro and Prof. Göran Cars, "New regulations for increased residential construction and better infrastructure". The book is mainly a critical overview of prevailing planning autonomy of municipalities in Sweden which, in the absence of efficient and sufficient motivations and incentives, has resulted in an increasing gap between the supply and demand of residential buildings is Sweden. Authors also propose new legislative approaches with a stronger role for both the central government (forcing municipalities to plan) and also a stronger role for the developers when it concerns the details of the plans and buildings as a remedy for this problem.

14th February, I had an stimulating conversation with Sara Eriksson, planner at KTH, as part of an ongoing study on requirement management. It was amazing to hear about the way the client (here Akademiska Hus) and the prospective tenant (KTH) collaborate in jointly providing the consultants with descriptions, criteria and measures of the building they will operate and use.

During the previous session of a series of discussions on qualitative methods at our department, I shared my recent experiences from a paper submission with others on 17th February. First, I went through different sections of my work (now submitted to CIB W070, W111 & W11 in Copenhagen) and asked the audience about their opinions on the overall layout and structure of the paper. Then, we discussed the comments I had received from the reviewers and how things could be enhanced prior to the final submission.

My afterwork session in the evening of the 28th February was a talk on intercultural communication and Swedish culture organized by us at SIRAP and given by Karin Knutsson. The talk was followed by a broad contribution and challenging questions from the audience mostly trying to better comprehend complicated social codes and norms of the Swedish society.

On 28th February, after months of correspondence and constructive discussions with the co-author, Johannes Dimyadi, I finally submitted the final version of our paper to the CIB conference for facility management. Our work is an analytic description of a progressive example of implementation of BIM-based applications for administering FM&O activities. The project was executed in Auckland (new Zealand) for a campus area. Johannes is the system architect of the BIM-FM solution.

On Sunday 2nd March, I watched "Wolf of Wall Street" which I did honestly not find as splendid as I had heard it to be. There is no doubt that the acts were great and the extravagant and flashy scenes were compelling; but it was really difficult to believe that the movie served in the first place an edifying purpose and was actually not a glorification and celebration of power, wealth and American life as common to the mainstream of cinema in the US.

On 4th and 5th March, our department hosted a Ph.D. workshop with participants (both Ph.D. students and supervisors) from the Swedish universities of Chalmers, Lund and Luleå. Discussions on theories, methodologies and research structure raised during the workshop were greatly instructive and informative.

From 12th to 14th March, I attended an intensive training course on "Enhanced Personal Leadership & Effectiveness" in Norrtälje (North of Stockholm). Other than useful lectures and experiments on presentation skills, advocacy and enquiry techniques, inter-cultural communication, etc. the course was a timely opportunity for self-reflection and self-evaluation. The course was organized by departments of transport and computer science of KTH.

During the last week, a lot happened here in Stockholm in the subject area of standardization of information modelling and management of the built environment. The plenary sessions of the buildingSMART week were held at Stockholm City Conference Center and KTH main campus 17th to 19th March bringing together the world's highest-level experts from academia, industry and national and international organizations. The main conference session was held on 20th March. This was in fact the very first international presence of the newly-born BIM Alliance Sweden. I will hopefully write more about this event in a separate post soon.

Miscellaneous updates

In this post, I will briefly report on some recent events of different scales in a reverse chronological order:

1.

Magnus Svantegård clarifies how data queries on properties
is facilitated by an integrated web interface

Last Wednesday, Väino, Hannes, and me had a visit to Datscha company who procure information and analytic tools on commercial properties mainly in Sweden.

Magnus Svantegård explained their business plan for gathering, developing, packaging, and fitting data into user-friendly and customer-specific interfaces. Their business is mainly grounded on the demand of the actors in the Swedish real estate market for certified, customized, and easy-to-retrieve data on properties. It was then discussed how knowledge management systems implemented at urban and regional scales could be integrated with their counterparts at building level so as to maintain a holistic approach towards knowledge management of the built environment.

2.

Prof. Väino Tarandi intoduces an effort for extending use of IFC to
urban and regional scale

Last week, one more step was taken towards establishment of BIM Alliance Sweden. OpenBIM's meeting that was held at KTH main campus also included a visit to XPRESS lab and a presentation by us from the BIM Collaboration Lab about our latest research activities and interests. Väino, Örjan, and me briefly showcased two proposed solutions for life-cycle-support, and integrated knowledge management of the built environment:

The first example demonstrated a basic renovation project where the original model of the building was retrieved from an open format BIM repository (Share-A-space) possessing versioning functionality at building elements' level. Planned changes were made to the retrieved model in open standard (IFC) using a proprietary modelling software (ArchiCAD) and the output was sent back to the BIM repository again in IFC format. The information system proved to be capable of recognizing modified elements (here four walls) as newer versions of the elements already existing in the database. This approach will facilitate further use of previously-created building models in future projects inasmuch as it obviates the need for iterative transfer of sizable building models for the purpose of minor renovation and alteration projects.

The second example showcased a methodology for also capturing urban and regional features such as properties, infrastructure, and roads in the same data format as that of the buildings (here IFC). Such an approach can facilitate executing all-inclsive data queries at large spatial scales while having access to detailed elements that eventually constitute the building environment far beyond building blocks and residential units.

3.

Design team of White Architects explain their plan for
"moving" the city center of Kiruna

Finally, I would like to provide a summary of a one of the sessions at the Business Arena held at Stockholm Waterfront Congress on 17th and 18th September. The topic for this session was Collaboration among the municipality, construction firms, companies, and energy experts.

Representatives from Vattenfall, Sweco, Fortum, Siemens, and The City of Stockholm discussed how environmental concerns should be dealt with in a close collaboration among public and private actors at different levels. Collaboration among politicians, construction firms, consulting companies, and people, the importance of visualization of energy consumption for customers, and the significance of the soft aspects of the problem were among the topics that were raised. What makes the soft (behavioral) aspects of energy consumption optimization even more important is the fact that despite availability of the required technology for minimizing energy consumption, no major change is realized yet. Devising great visions that do not clearly specify how to achieve their articulated objectives was one of inefficient environmental policies that was criticized by the speakers.

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.