Bim And National BIM Standard

As the building process transitions to BIM, the use of true performance criteria for and design of higher performing buildings will become possible “This will allow our moving beyond the non-codified performance measures that have to a large extent depended on manufacturers' claims and warrantees that address building performance in many different and typically non-standardized ways. In the future, through the use of BIM, we will greatly increase our ability to analyze the life-cycle value of many more design alternatives and options

NBIMS (the National Building Information Model Standard project), is a committee of the National Institute for Building Sciences (NIBS) Facility Information Council (FIC). Since 1992 the FIC mission has been to "improve the performance of facilities over their full life-cycle by fostering common and open standards and an integrated life-cycle information model for the A/E/C & FM industry

The NBIMS will provide the diverse capital facilities industry with a vision of how to support and facilitate communications throughout the facility lifecycle, from project inception through design and construction, even past demolition for improved operations, maintenance, facility management, and long-term sustainability.

This open standard will allow us to take full advantage of worldwide BIM developments The National BIM Standard establishes standard definitions for building information exchanges to support critical business decisions. Implemented in software, the standard aims to form a basis for more accurate and efficient commerce within the capital facilities industry. The National BIM Standard is also intended to help participants in facilities-related processes achieve more

The work of the National BIM Standards Committee (NBIMS) is to knit together the broadest and deepest constituency ever assembled for the purpose of addressing the losses and limitations associated with errors and inefficiencies in the building supply chain. NBIM standards will incorporate several elements but the focus will be on standardized processes which define "business views" of data needed to accomplish a particular set of functions.

Define a minimum BIM :

Provide for information assurance for BIM throughout the facility lifecycle. As an initiative under the building SMART® Alliance, it is garnering support form the widest spectrum of associations, agencies, organizations, vendors, and individual practitioners ever assembled

The scope and planned products are much more practice-oriented rather than data-centric. Both the organization of and representation on the Committee reflect this intent.

The Charter assumes and encourages participants from, and value propositions for, all phases of the building process lifecycle.

A primary goal is to maximize value for all process participants involved in the building lifecycle.

A primary strategy is to maximize existing research and development through alliances, cross-representation, active testing and prototyping, and an open and inclusive approach to both membership and results. NBIMS will, through memorandums of understanding, recognize and harmonize its work with other standards-development organizations.

The Committee has significant representation from government owners, private and government practitioners, vendors, and specialist professionals. It is actively seeking more involvement from, for example, private owners, A/E/C practitioners, property and facility managers, and real property professionals.

The Committee supports the view that a building process lifecycle is not a strictly linear process but is a primarily cyclical process with feedback and cycle-to-cycle knowledge accumulation. The best representation of the building process lifecycle is therefore believed to be a business process helix with a central knowledge core and external nodes representing process suppliers and external consumers. Between these three elements exist information interchange "synapses" which require exchange rules and agreements (see Figure 1).

One of the principal products of the Committee's work will be process standards describing parties to a process and the contracted information exchange requirements between the parties. It has been estimated that about 250 process definitions will eventually be required to support an interoperable building supply chain. NBIMS plans to release developments in packages that will be immediately useful even as each release adds additional and more mature concepts and practices (see Figure 2). The first packages are scheduled to be available in late 2006.

NBIMS will support the development of content taxonomy standards such as CSI OmniClass, which provides organized classification of elements important to the building process lifecycle.

NBIMS will recognize and facilitate the harmonization of software implementation views as they provide necessary "machine interpretable" data sources to the building information exchange process. buildingSmart, ifcXML, BLIS, AEX, CSI/2 and others are examples of software implementation views.

Vendors are actively participating on the Committee because they see value in having consistent and predictable processes to which they may apply their technical solutions. Having to develop, market and maintain products to support multiple, inconsistent processes is expensive and complicates the product development cycle.

Though not a CAD standard, NBIMS will address non-graphic information and processes as well as phases both before and after design and construction. However, the National CAD Standard will continue to be important as, for the foreseeable future, building processes will continue to need standards for 2D drawings as well.

NBIMS Committee Mission Statement :

The mission of the National BIM Standard Project Committee is to improve the performance of facilities over their full life-cycle by fostering a common, standard and integrated life-cycle information model for the A/E/C and Facilities Management industry. This information model will allow for the free flow of graphic and non-graphic information among all parties to the process of creating and sustaining the built environment, and will work to coordinate U.S. efforts with related activities taking place internationally

The NBIMS Project Committee seeks to facilitate integration by providing a common language for describing facility information, common views of information based on the needs of businesses engaged in all aspects of facility commerce, and common standards for sharing data between businesses and their data processing applications. Use of common language and practices is expected to reduce building costs, insurance liability, construction schedules, and operating expense while increasing building performance, safety, building life and occupant efficiency.