BIM - Beyond Building Construction?

To make this a common practice it has to be part of the clients quality culture. It is very hard to describe why commissioning is needed or why you should pay for 3rd party inspectors and testers (although it helps to show them a vendor startup where five minutes into a gen burn the whole engine comes apart due to harmonic imbalance), I digress. They have to believe that by doing so they will inherit a product that is better, will last longer, and will have much less downtime due to being installed and tested in a quality workman like manner and that checks and balances have been put into place to ensure this from the manufacturer performing factory witness and factory acceptance testing, to the installer performing inspection and startup, to the 3rd party inspectors and commissioning agents, and finally to the client. While knowing that you can track that lifecycle and it is archived for operations to review and take that information forward into their preventive maintenance plan. This should include all drawings: as-built and redline, all submittals, RFI, Design changes, VENDOR testing, NETA Testing, inspections and Cx checklists, any design or engineering review, as well as all SOO’s , KIRK KEY Schemes, TAB reports, etc.

I have seen this in action as well as after turnover to facilities its being done on a large scale and being done successfully. So far I believe there are 19build sites in flight and we are really starting to see the metrics drive efficiencies as well as helping to grow a quality culture due to the success that are being felt across the program. This is the future of lifecycle management but it is already in play among Big Data. It took time and large scale teams focused on analytics, interpretation, design, implementation, and lessons learned for it to finally come together and take on a life of its own.

Andrew, This is prevalent in the Datacenter Design & Construction lifecycles already. Most big data companies use one form or another that ties in with their operating system. I have managed commissioning as well as QAQC & Construction and I have run across maybe two that could tie these together well and they are very cumbersome systems. BIM 360field management and PMWeb. PROCORE says that it can do it as well and this may be true I haven’t had enough time utilizing for these items typically we use it for the construction documentation workflows. Latista field management is a useful tool but again there is so much more that could be done to refine, automate, and scale these architectures for particular tasks. For instance BIM 360 is great but there are too many apps and the system once loaded with a projects documentation tends to run so slow and glitchy that it takes too much time to be efficient. I’ve created a lot of commissioning, QAQC, FAT, FWT, Isolation Plans, functional test pans, workarounds, & checklists that used to be job specific but now it seems that most firms are globalizing them and they tend to get cookie cutter. Once this happens individuals without over site or an audit system tend to N/A and penci whip.

Andrew, these are good questions for not only the industry, but also academia. One major challenge that I have seen towards the goal of BIM for FM, is that there is still no clear definition about what information should be included in the BIM to support the different scenarios and functions of FM. Schema like COBie or IFC only specifies a template, but does not provide detailed information requirements, and how these information requirements can provide values to FM. Hence, no clear ROI for owners to invest in implementing a FM-ready BIM. In many projects that I have seen, the so called BIM from design and construction mainly serves clash detection and coordination. Most of the cases, only the 3D models are needed (and are actually delivered). Unfortunately, detailed geometrical information is not the only thing needed in FM. But if owners want to include more information in the as-built BIM to support FM, they usually will be asked for more investment, which cannot be easily justified without an FM-ready BIM and a platform that can take it to the daily FM practice. Then it becomes a chicken and egg situation. However, with more and more focuses from the industry and academia, I think we are getting closer and closer to the goal of BIM for FM.