BIM, BIM, BIM.. its fast becoming the hot topic..everyone is seemingly scrabbling around trying to understand what it is, what it looks like, and how its tastes. The world has to date been focused on BIM as a tool for designers and i guess that’s down to the big CAD vendors who to pay them their dues, are the only people managing to effectively communicate to a wide audience through their advertorials.

Why should anyone think BIM is anything other than design centric.. its not as if there is a plethora of other BIM app’s out there is there?

Well perhaps that is changing; step forward great solutions like Nomitech’s CostOS estimation tool, it reads BIM and brilliantly connects the design to rates to generate cost estimates as gracefully as i have ever seen it done before. Then there is the highly commended BIMserver; an open source design merging BIM server (think database) that by combining design and managing change offers a great platform to deliver value in ways traditional document management systems could only dream of.. (so that’s 2 solutions than demonstrate tangible value!)

The third solution i must declare an interest in. Check out the Vicis design validation engine.. you have a bunch of design information, you combine it into a single model and run clash detection; the results ensure that no 2 objects share the same space (which if you have ever tried to make two objects share the same space does not result in success!). Your fix the issues and re-run the test.. Yeah! its all coordinated.. but is it? The reality is somewhat less celebratory.. just because stuff doesn’t intersect doesn’t mean its right, far from it.. ever wondered why a ceiling access hatch is on the other side of a room from a duct access panel it is supposed to provide access to?..it didn’t fail coordination.. but it would fail design conformance validation..

So like a sandwich the really fundamental part is the quality of the filling (i just happen to like jam..). No filling.. no flavour.. no appetite.