What we can do for you – 240 Blackfriars

If you're the head of a property developer and you have the chance to make a £4.5m saving on a project, would you investigate further? BIM offered exactly that sort of reduction in cost to Great Portlands Estates on its recently completed 240 Blackfriars development. And by recruiting BIM.Technologies, Space Group's BIM consultancy division, GPE had someone to guide things along.

Blackfriars was one of BIM.Technologies' first "mega-projects". It's a mammoth 19-storey office block in London which is already renting its nine top floors to United Business Media. Designers AHMM have achieved a genuine one person per eight-square feet floorplan, creating a building that looks good and works well.

BIM.Technologies was faced with some unique challenges during the course of their work. There was, for instance, a rooftop plant room to consider - backward compared to most buildings. But because BIM.Tech are specialists in their field, they were able to create the architectural BIM that was subsequently aligned with the structural and services design models to form a coordinated project BIM.

Great Portland Estates estimates that for every pound funnelled into BIM, they saved two pounds in the contract sum.

Part of this can be credited to the 4D time-lining features of BIM, which effectively gives construction firms the ability to "rehearse" their work, checking in advance for errors in logistics or sequencing.

The completion of 240 Blackfriars is one of BIM.Tech's biggest milestones to date, but we have other mega-projects still to come, such as Google's London Headquarters.

More information on how BIM.Technologies helped shape the Blackfriars project can be found on the consultancy's website.

BIM.Tech's Olly Thomas to speak at the Constructing the BIM Team Conference

In our profession, disseminating complex information and explaining it to an audience takes real talent. This coming Tuesday, the 9th of September, one of BIM.Technologies' Information Managers will be demonstrating that flair with a talk at FutureFit's "Constructing the BIM Team Conference" in Crawley.

At the Arora Hotel, Olly Thomas is to give a concise account of the "Information Delivery Cycle” section of PAS1192-2:2013, the specification for information management on the capital/ delivery phase of BIM-enabled construction projects.

The presentation focuses on the information exchange and decision point requirements of the BIM process, breaking down the Information Delivery Cycle into manageable chucks to aid understanding of how operates.

Olly will be on stage twice over the course of the one-day event. After his 15:10 lecture, he'll appear again as a guest speaker at the closing Q&A panel.

BIM.Technologies sets up shop in the Midlands

On Friday, our BIM.Technologies division edged closer to becoming a truly nationwide practice with the official opening of a new office down in the Midlands - Rugby, to be exact. This one's a real beauty.

 

The Victorian era Regent Court must be the oldest property we've ever resided in. It's a handsome three-storey building, not far at all from the town's beloved Caldecott Park. It was once owned by the De Rokeby family, from whom Rugby gets its name.

Altogether, the building comprises of eight suites and a basement meeting room.

As was the case in Edinburgh, we're renting one of one of the suites within Regent Court after an increase in work within the region and neighbouring areas.

Olly Thomas, Information Manager at BIM.Tech and office lead of this new Rugby department said: "This move allows us to service existing clients whilst building new relationships over the coming months with a mind to expanding in the near future".

Case study updates now live on site

Keeping the official site of BIM.Technologies up to date is, logic dictates, a never-ending process; we take on new projects all the time, and are dogged in our perusal of new tools. Warboard, for instance, is a game-changing utility that we developed in house. We really ought to talk about that soon.

As part of our on-going effort to provide visitors with comprehensive case studies of our past and current projects, we have added photos to our Greenwich Peninsula, City Road, and Vauxhall Sky Garden pages. These case studies are our most effective method of conveying what BIM consultancy actually consists of, and photos of BIMs help to contextualise the field.

Check back soon for more incremental updates to the site.

BIM.Technologies starts tinkering with Google Glass

BIM.Technologies has recently come into possession of a Google Glass developer kit, which has been as coveted as you'd expect. In a period of three hours after its unboxing it was worn by at least six different people in the office. The phrase “OK Glass” ricocheted around the building, only falling quiet when it was stashed away from prying eyes.

The reason for our new acquisition is that we're capitalising on Google’s wearable technology by developing an app which will help in facilities management and operation. The unique augmented vision features of the device have immense potential in helping architects and construction workers.

On site, as an example, facilities management operators will be able to identity pieces of equipment instantly, and pull up relevant data. As an information business, this is incredibly exciting for us.

Our Technology director Adam Ward, who attended this year's Revit Gunslingers, is leading Space Group’s research into Glass’s many other potential uses in the construction industry. Over the next few weeks, he’ll be getting to grips with the device’s eccentricities.

We’ll be sure to update the outside world on our experiments with the development kit, so check back with us soon.

BIM Show Live Scotland this month

The UK’s leading BIM conference is heading to one of Edinburgh’s most prestigious arts venues for an evening of dialogue, thought, and visions of the future.

 

Founded by Space Group in 2011, BIM Show Live attracts delegates from across architectural & construction spectrums for a lively exchange of ideas and experiences. Past events have taken place in London and Manchester, and now a leaner BSL is landing in Scotland to help galvanise the country’s construction industry towards full-scale adoption of BIM.

Extra impetus for this has been provided by the Scottish government, who have mandated that all new-build construction projects across the public sector in Scotland should be BIM level 2 compliant by 2017. It is therefore crucial for the industry in Scotland to have access to the same level of invaluable networking opportunities as exists in England.

BIM.Technologies, who earlier this year established a new office in the capital, have partnered with BIM Hub Scotland to organise this agenda-setting event, to be held at the Scottish Storytelling Centre on Edinburgh’s High Street. Over the course of the evening, the conference will examine the current adoption of building information modelling within the UK and the potential challenges and benefits to Scotland.

BIM Show Live Scotland will be held on the 24^th of July, from 4.00-8.00pm.

With numbers limited, we advise heading to the registration form right away.

BIM.Technologies jets off to Boston to test Revit

This week, our Technology Director Adam Ward is back in America, taking up the Revit Gunslinger mantle.

Gunslingers is Autodesk‘s way of soliciting valuable feedback from Revit’s most advanced users on its work-in-progress features. The invite lists are tiny, at around 15 attendees per event, so for Adam to be invited along testifies to his great expertise with the software.

In fact, Adam’s a regular at Gunslinger events. After November 2011′s gathering, we asked him to write about his impressions of what went on: “It was great to meet with some of the biggest Revit geeks on the planet,” he wrote, praising Autodesk as “fantastic hosts”.

That’s about all he could write, though. Because the software on show at Gunslingers is in such a nascent stage, Autodesk impose numerous NDA agreements onto the event, allowing its developers to discreetly eliminate any bugs or design shortcomings before the newest updates go public.
Back in the UK, the rest of BIM.Technologies are hard at work on their on-going projects.