Comment

Information is the Key!
The City of Helsinki won an award for Advances in Reality Modellling at last November’s Bentley’s Be Inspired Awards in London at their annual Year in Infrastructure conference. The city has created a high resolution 3D model of the entire city – Helsinki 3D – which they share with government, planning, administration and other departments, plus, of course, the public, schools and universities. The model data is supplemented by data from other departments providing information about, for example, the occupancy of individual units, energy usage – elements that can be analysed to forecast trends that will dictate to evolution of the city. On a similar basis, Singapore has also created a 3D model of that city, with the aim of becoming the foremost Smart City.

None of this would be possible, however, without the ability to populate a 3D BIM with appropriate information – which could include government census information, transport and population surveys, besides the standard asset information that accompanies the model. Looking at it another way, the mass of information in possession of the local authorities is useless unless it is placed in context – the BIM. The BIM itself could relate to a single dwelling or a complete City.

This is why we are putting on the COBie or not COBie Open Forum, in conjunction with Vectorworks, which looks at the way BIM will influence all of our construction and infrastructure projects, both small and large, going forward. This will be a highly focussed and valuable event for all who design, build and, critically, maintain structures, where the focus will be on what information we should be looking for, how we should use it and share it with other stakeholders of the model from design, through construction to management of the asset.

The speakers lined up are experts in COBie, the exploitation of the digital model and the issues arising from using Building information for Asset Management. This will be followed by an opportunity to question the experts in an Open Forum.

Held on May 16 at the London Transport Museum, it is an event not to be missed.

Interested in the 2017 Bentley awards? They are calling for submissions, and If you become a finalist, you will have to present your submission in Singapore in October.

For more information please email: josh.boulton@btc.co.uk

David Chadwick

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