 
New BIM Standard Could Affect Glass Industry
June 4, 2012
by Erica Terrini, eterrini@glass.com
A consensus-based standard governing Building Information Modeling
(BIM) for use in the United States will be passed along to numerous
other countries including United Kingdom, Ireland, Canada, Korea,
Australia and New Zealand in an effort to share information to allow
for cost-effective building, according to the executive director
of Building Smart Alliance (BSA) and staff member of the National
Institute of Building Sciences (NIBS) Dana "Deke" Smith.
Smith says the standard was the obvious next step in the process
for BIM.
"It's to really get what we were expecting out of BIM by being
able to share information, and, of course, that can be done with
computers and with a standard than what the software vendors can
write to that standard and information in that flow," he says.
The Alliance rolled out the National BIM Standard-United State Version
2 last month during the 2012 American Institute of Architects (AIA)
Conference and Expo in Washington, D.C. The previous edition-United
States National Building Information Modeling Standard (NBIMS) Version
1 - Part 1 (V1P1): Overview, Principles and Methodologies-came out
in December 2007. NBIMS V1P1 primarily established the approach
for developing open BIM standards. Written by a team of 30 subject
matter experts, the NBIMS V1P1 followed an open process but it was
not a consensus standard, according to a BSA press release.
Alternatively, the newly released NBIMS-US V2 follows an open consensus
process set by rules of governance established by the NIBS. During
the development process, anyone was able to submit ballots to the
standard and all members of the NBIMS-US Project Committee (which
is open to any member of the NIBS in good standing) were able to
provide comments and vote on ballots, according to the BSA release.
"If you don't have a standard or if everyone is doing their
own thing to gather their own standard then there's no way to get
the information to pass from one party to the next," Smith
says.
The BIM U.S. standards were separated into the approved ballots
of three main categories: reference standards, information exchange
standards (which are built upon the reference standards) and best
practice guidelines that support users in their implementation of
open BIM standards-based deliverables.
Smith says each nation planning to adopt the BIM standard will add
more content as needed and then share their updates back with the
U.S.
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