BAM partners education client in project to move 6D BIM one step closer to reality
Hemel Hempstead, 8 July 2013 - BAM continues to lead the UK market in moving BIM into facilities management. BAM FM (the facilities management arm of BAM Construct UK) has launched an unprecedented live deployment project at UCL Academy, London, to bring BIM (building information modelling) to every stage of a building’s lifecycle.
In February BAM announced that it had completed the software and data systems to prove that BIM data can be automatically transferred into FM software (CAFM). This collaborative project used FSI’s Concept Evolution along with Autodesk’s Revit and BIM 360 Field products and the combined skills of both organisations together with the entire BAM team from design, construction and facilities management. Now BAM plans to deliver live BIM in operation at UCL Academy (based in Swiss Cottage, north London), which it built and now maintains under a long term PPP arrangement.
The UCL/BAM collaboration aims to deliver an ambitious range of project goals, including detailed data specifications, development of a detailed BIM Protocol for 6D and ultimately the functionality to enable a maintenance engineer to use BIM in his day to day work. Once completed, this will mean that BAM will be able to demonstrate every dimension of BIM, at all stages of the building lifecycle.
Kath Fontana, managing director of BAM FM, said: ‘This project will show the actual day to day costs and benefits of implementing BIM in a real operational FM environment, in an existing building. This will give building owners and managers greater control over their buildings, the assets in them and the costs of these, than they have ever known before. This level of deployment of 6D has never been done. We have to break new ground and still have lots to learn. There is no blueprint for this so we don’t expect this to be simple or easy. The benefits for us as building designers, contractors and operators are so significant that we feel to leave BIM ‘on the shelf’ would be to miss a massive opportunity to increase efficiency and customer satisfaction. We also hope to announce a very special role involving the students at UCL in this collaboration in the near future.’
Ms Fontana added that the UCL Academy project is expected to complete by the end of the year. It forms one of five projects the company is planning as it develops its market-leading position on BIM.