This is the creation and management of data, designed to evolve through the lifetime of a building, capturing data in a collaborative manner from a variety of sources.
The concept is not a new one and is generally thought to have it’s origins in the 1970’s. More recently it’s development has been driven, seemingly by software developers, keen to utilise new software and technology developments.
In principle it is a great idea, surveyors, architects, designers, mechanical and electrical engineers all working together with one holistic set of information. This information, can be accessed by all parties and updated as the building develops and changes occur.
BIM may well be the future, however up to this point even agreeing on a definition has been difficult, let alone what or who is included, or how the collaboration will work in practice, across different professions, organisations and software platforms.
We are currently working closely with a number of architects and software developers, to ensure that we continue to provide the data they require in the formats that are needed. This currently means ensuring that our land and measured building surveys are generated in a way that we can provide 3D data for input into BIM packages like Autodesk Revit.