WASHINGTON — A task force of the National Institute of Building Sciences (NIBS) buildingSMART Alliance™ has launched a new website to offer visitors a glimpse into the not-too-distant future of the building industry.
The alliance is developer of the nation’s building information modeling (BIM) standard — National BIM Standard - United States® (NBIMS-US™). Its NBIMS-US Planning Committee formed the NBIMS-US 2021 Vision Task Force (VTF) last year to focus on defining, forecasting, and in some cases, guessing at the future of the building industry to gain insight into what the NBIMS-US itself will need to be to support that future.
“The initial effort of the 2021 Vision Task Force was to ask subject matter experts from every part of our industry to provide short essays about the nature of their role, profession, or industry as it will be in 8-10 years — a timeframe we believe it is possible to reasonably predict,” said Chris Moor, chair of the NBIMS-US Project Committee, who serves as VTF chair.
The VTF collected close to 40 of these essays, and then spent considerable time researching additional sources about the future of the building industry.
“We then wove this knowledge together into a single, compelling, and tangible vision of how a construction project may be built in the future, including the technologies and processes that would be in common use,” said Moor.
The website, www.nationalbimstandard.org/vision2021, offers the reader the opportunity to download a story delivered via a choice of two vehicles — a short novel and a fictional newspaper article — through which to explore the design, construction, and opening day of a fictional children’s care center in Springfield, USA, and to meet the key players of the team that created the project.
Major findings among the VTF’s essays and research used to develop the story fall into six categories: Sustainability; Facility Management and Operations; Data, Interoperability and Integration; Building Codes, Specifications and Standards; Technology; and Processes, Efficiency and Collaboration. All of the categories are expanded on within the publications.
While these categories identify some of the anticipated progress of the industry during the next decade, the VTF noted that what was more revealing was just how the industry might get there.
“Everything we discovered points to an industry looking for solutions; looking for a better way. And it’s up to the owners, the government, and everyone who wants our industry to succeed to embrace the challenge of finding those solutions,” said Moor. “We have to find a way to get there. We need mandates, investment, a cultural shift, and a brand new educational platform to help the industry become more efficient.”
For more information, visit www.nationalbimstandard.org/visiontaskforce.php.
Publication date: 6/2/2014
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