Thank you to every one who participated in the Toronto Regional Session and Technology Exhibition. The dust is just starting to settle and we are already working on our next event. No time for rest!
We are excited to recap highlights from the Toronto CanBIM Tour, AGM, Regional Session and Technology Exhibition.
On Day one we kicked off with a new milestone of three project site tours! First up was the NEW Autodesk Toronto Office located at the MaRS Discovery District, then Bird Construction's University of Toronto: Centre for Engineering Innovation & Entrepreneurship, and last but not least the EllisDon Construction of the York University New Student Centre. Three great Tours thanks each of the Tour hosts for the great experience!
Next order of business was the CanBIM Annual General Meeting where attendees were treated to an update and progress report from the CanBIM Board and a representative from each of the seven CanBIM Committees. Of special note was the announcement of four new CanBIM Committee Chairs.
Krigh Bachmann, DIALOG - Designer Committee
Tanner Clark, Stuart Olson Construction - GC Committee
Chris Little Modern Niagara - Trades Committee
Raphaël Cayer, Aeroport de Québec - Owners Committee
Immediately following our AGM was the 3rd Annual CanBIM Awards. A spectacular night where CanBIM had the privilege of recognizing so many great companies and their work. Please visit the 2017 CanBIM Awards Recap for a full listing of the winners and to see who made the awards possible please visit the CanBIM Awards Evaluators page for a listing of the 2017 Awards Evaluators. Thanks to all who contributed!
Day Two kicked off with an inspiring introduction from Clint Undseth, VP Innovation, Stuart Olson, with an industry call to action to consider our processes and protocols around information management.
Our keynote presenter Veronica Silva, Director General, Public Works & Government Services Canada, Real Property Branch delivered a presentation on PSPC's BIM adoption strategy. They are championing a unified Federal digital built-environment strategy that addresses Sustainability and Real Property Management and they are focusing on engagement with Industry to establish and maintain lines of communication and collaboration. Thank you to Veronica for the insight into the federal governments approach and adoption strategy, we look forward to keeping abreast of the continued progress.
Dermot Sweeny, President of Sweeny & Co Architects delivered a riveting presentation about the shifts from today to tomorrow from BIM. He noted six thoughts to consider as part of the shift in how we manage our assets and data, all ideas culminating to the central idea that the building model becomes a live, virtual, interactive version of the real building. Be sure to subscribe to our CanBIM channel on youtube to see Dermot's presentation.
Our Government panel discussed the many perspectives and their approach to BIM and technology adoption and what each of the respective panelist organizations are doing to adopt technology. Moderated by Gordon McElravy, buildingSMART Canada the panelists included:
Veronica Silva - Director General, Public Works & Government Services Canada, Real Property Branch
Rafael Lucero - Manager of the Spatial Information Management, Alberta Infrastructure
Andrew Satterthwaite - Manager, Business Solutions at York Region Geomatics Branch
Pierre Boucher - President, Canadian Construction Innovations
Scott Butler - Manager - Policy & Research, Ontario Good Roads Association (OGRA)
Nicole Wolfe - Manager, Capital Projects, Town of Oakville
Mark Chidwick from Scius Innovations presentation drew comparisons on Information Management between other industries to the AEC industry. Mark noted that the AEC industry has two problems; not enough communication between the disparate parties involved in a project and when we do communicate, we are not using the same language. Also noting that what is also common is that others have tried to solve this with technologies solutions - data standards - common databases - API’s - and the like. Inevitably, technology is necessary, but not sufficient. The challenge of collaboration and integration is more of a cultural challenge, which we can to address with technology, but we also need to address the way we do business. Mark further added that we must have a properly defined Information Management Strategy and that the an Information Management Strategy provides the culture, governance, technology, process and information … to support a community of knowledge workers … that analyze and collaborate on shared data and integrated technology … to deliver results on a business project. A great presentation and comparison to the Oil and Gas industry.
Next up Chris Renter, Technology Strategy and Implementation, Stuart Olson, who introduced Project Haystack which at its core envisions a future where buildings are intelligently connected, healthy, environmentally proud and deliver superior financial returns. Project Haystack has determined that a standardized methodology for describing data will make it easier and more cost effective to analyze, visualize, and derive value from our operational data. As construction methods evolve, our dependency on information is increasing, information entered into BIM has continued value beyond the construction phase. Opportunity awaits! Chris sites the opportunities and benefits of Project Haystack as
Practical approach for leveraging BIM dataCoordinate BMS,Metering and performance dataLeverage large time series data that is referential between BMS and BIMApproach for dealing with IoT (Internet of Things)Close (part of) the loop from construction to handover
Benefits would include:
Human and machine readable informationCommon approach from design to implementation for key systemsAdopted by OBIX (OASIS) as OBIX 2.0Adopted by ASHRAE for BACnet XDExtended functionality for next generation BIM (Forge, etc)
Colin Stark, Owner StarkBIM and Akira Jones Project Engineer, HH Angus Associates Ltd. presented an interesting case study on how the Revit API helped to build a Super Hospital - CHUM. At 3.8 million square feet, 5 buildings over 2.5 city blocks. There are 775 single patient rooms, 39 ORs and 7 MRIs. This project consisted of over 60 MEP Revit models alone. Phase 1 design spanned from 2010 to 2016 and the second phase has just begun. For information Revit was mandated as the design software in the project agreement. At the time this project was largest single build project in north America as well as the largest single Revit project known to our presenters. One of the biggest challenges of this project was managing the large number of models and of course the large amounts of model elements and data that came along with them. There were over 10000 terminal boxes alone in phase 1. Having the facility divided into so many models made the transfer of data between them impossible and made it difficult to extract meaningful information in a consistent way. The Revit API was instrumental in enabling a more efficient and automated process to address these big challenges.
After lunch CanBIM presented its CanBIM Certification Update and Ceremony, presided over by Pietro Ferrari, Chair of Education and Research Committee. CanBIM Certified 21 professionals, some of whom were in attendance to receive their Certification package. CanBIM also certified four Educational Courses from SolidCAD a Cansel company, and one Level 1 Company certification was issued to Pomerleau.
PlanGrid's Joshua Progar, and Jim Blair, Project Manager, Partner, Collaborative Structures Ltd. presented an insightful presentation on The Impact of Big Data on Construction, noting that for a long time construction has been among the least digitized industries. The good news is that this is changing. More and more superintendents and engineers carrying tablets on job sites. We hear drones buzzing around that have the ability to read geothermal levels or survey an area. BIM and 3D modeling increasingly guides the design stages of construction for things like clash detection. This is an exciting time for construction as it gets more attention from technology companies. Jim discussed how using technology on his projects has benefited his company and how technology will continue to play a significant role in project delivery also noting the advantages between 2D and 3D and how the technology is bridging the two worlds.
The next presentation, from IBI's team Brent Mauti, Global Director of Design Technology, Tyler Rice, Corporate Development Analyst, Corporate Services, and Melisa Garcia, BIM Coordination Specialist, Design Technology presented Information Fusion - Harnessing the "I" for Lifecycle Data Manipulation. The team talked about how IBI’s Facilities Asset Management solution is a cloud based facilities asset management system that helps users track asset and financial information, manage maintenance events, streamline day to day facilities operations, and use analytics to identify opportunities for cost savings. The presentation cited core features and additional modules, such as
Core Features
Inventory of all interior FF&EScheduled Maintenance ManagementRepair RequestsAsset Inventory and ManagementAsset BarcodingMobile AppBIM Viewer or FloorplanFinancial ReportingPerformance AnalyticsDocument Management
Additional Modules
Smart Systems Integration,Utilization and Space Reservation,Lease Management,Capital and Maintenance Budgeting.
All of which lead to benefits of streamlined operations, improved communication across stakeholders, simplifying asset reporting and analysis, delivering outstanding maintenance management, reduce compliance risks.
David Rekker, , BSc, LEED AP BD+C Sr Account Manager at Bluebeam and Lilia Koleva, , OAA, OAQ, MRAIC, RIBA, LEED AP BD+C Architect NEUF Architect(e)s presented BIM Beyond Design: Leveraging Information Across the Project Lifecycle. The presentation noted that the use of PDF's are enabling the common data environment and how Bluebeam's technology enables collaboration among stakeholders. Lilia presented a case study on the CHUM one of the largest healthcare projects in North America and the need for collaboration between the field and the office and all the different stakeholders and how using PDF for various tasks helps to make the process more efficient.
Evan McNeil, Director Customer Delivery Global eTraining who brings with him a background of 25 years in the Geomatics industry talked about BIM and GIS. To the construction industry GIS a tool that allows large amounts of data to be collected, overlaid, organized, analyzed, and ultimately communicated. Evan notes that GIS and BIM are so closely related, and that we can learn valuable lessons by understanding by looking at the similar drivers of both. Technology as in hardware, software and infrastructure are similar. People, the technicians working in both spaces are similar – Processes within projects were generally similar or at least had a similar nature. And of course, Data – specifically data management. Evan followed up with ideas on what Team BIM can learn from team GIS and some of the lessons learned from the GIS space, the biggest lessons learned would be Social - Communicate, Communicate Communicate! and Leadership - manage systems and lead people.
To close out the event CanBIM hosted an exciting panel discussion with some great Canadian AEC Startups, where we took a closer look at the Canadian tech space and what it takes to launch an AEC tech start-up. Economic, technological, political and sociological constraints that challenge our Canadian firms in reaching their markets. What is the market calling for? and how are our guest panelists addressing these needs with their version of technology for the AEC industry?
We learned about their experience partnering with large companies, what they think would help large companies better work with startups? Moderating the panel was Glenn Smith, VP Corporate Innovation and Client Success, Communitech, panelists included;
Dan Arnold - Founder, Bloom Technologies
Ian Hall - Chief Product Officer, Yulio
Michael Ho - CEO, Bespoke Metrics
Jeff Lyons - VP and Founding Partner, AEC Solutions Inc.
Jordan Janisson - COO, Aerys North America
Thanks to all who attended and participated in the discussion. Be sure to follow us on YouTube for the videos for each presentation and panel discussion. We look forward to hearing from you.
