WASHINGTON — The National Institute of Building Sciences (NIBS) has announced that Salla Eckhardt, director of transformation services with Microsoft, will serve as chair of the National BIM Program Steering Committee.

“There’s a lot of work ahead,” said Lakisha A. Woods, CAE, president and CEO of NIBS. “The program’s next steps include establishing a governance structure to broadly engage diverse stakeholders through targeted workstreams and developing a business model for the initial three to five years of the U.S. National BIM Program. Salla’s leadership will steer the program toward a comprehensive plan to serve all sectors of the industry.”

The U.S. National BIM Program kicked off early February with a BIM executive roundtable to discuss the need for a coordinated program to advance collaboration and innovation in the building industry. The goal is a solution at a national scale to enable digital process standards that will streamline business, accelerate the effectiveness of the supply chain, provide predictable processes, improve project outcomes, drive efficiency, and foster innovation.

The roundtable included partners from the U.S. Department of State, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, U.S. General Services Administration, and U.S. Federal Highway Administration along with private sector partners from Google, Microsoft, Amazon Web Services, Autodesk, Bentley, Epic, ESRI, HDR, Kieran-Timberlake, and more.

Eckhardt said she hopes to bridge industry innovators to create a U.S. National BIM Program that will unite the industry.

“We need a standard that supports the entire digital building life cycle from BIM-ready planning to BIM-based design and digital construction all the way to BIM as a component in built environment digital twins,” Eckhardt said.

For more information about the NIBS Building Information Management Council and its mission to help the North American real property industry become more efficient, visit www.nibs.org/bimc.