Join the revolution of BIM
communication at warp speed.
BIMStorm Featured in April 2008 CADAlyst Magazine
Kenneth Wong of CADAlyst
wrote: "What if one summer — or in this
case, winter — a bunch of idealistic architects, designers,
building
owners, contractors, and consultants decided to do away with the
professional hierarchies, business protocols, and legal constraints
that have long prevented them from working together? " .... read on in:
BIMStorm Featured as Cover Article on JBIM Magazine
The Spring 2008 Journal of
Building Information Modeling from The
Building Smart Alliance, National Institute of Building Science
features BIMStorm LA.
Here is an excerpt from that article:
Integration Today Using
Open Standards
BIMstorm: Rotterdam to Los Angeles and Beyond
I
often get asked: “What BIM platform should we use?”
We all like
simple decisions. Vanilla or chocolate? PC or Mac? Revit, ArchiCAD,
VectorWorks, or other BIM? We like sticking to a brand. For BIM,
“Open
Standards” is the “New Brand” we need to
stick to. Information stored
in proprietary formats will become irrelevant in this information
centric age. Organizations that understand this will flourish like the
internet and those that do not will fade like a Betamax.
BIMStorm
was proof that a stunning amount of collaboration and
change is possible today with many tools. Yet, tools do not matter. BIM
does not matter. Data and knowledge is valuable and BIM is just a
container for data. What does matter is how data is exchanged and the
process. The “New Brand” gives us broader choices
on how data is used
which will liberate the industry to get down to business. Technology is
not the barrier to change, the cultural shift in how we collaborate is
the challenge.
....
BIMStorm was not perfect.
Standards are still evolving. There were
surprises, problems and chaos. What was clear is that even today a
stunning amount of collaboration is possible in a BIG way, one only
needs to accept the new process. Just like the Internet that is never
complete, if you wait for standards to be
“finished” you will watch the
train leave the station. All are welcome aboard, the train is moving
fast.
We
all learned that as a group we can start to tip the culture of
the industry in 2008. BIMStorm demonstrated the potential of
collaboration with open standards. The future of the “New
Brand” is up
to us as an industry to define. The horizon is wide open for all that
are willing to embrace this change.
Comments
from BIMStormsIt
is almost unbelievable what your whole team has orchestrated.
Your BIMstorm exceeds anything one person can even imagine....With
heart-felt appreciation for the historic efforts you have made
Mike
Bordenaro - NF Publishing
Co.
Kimon
and his team have opened my eyes to the possibilities of true
collaboration, outside of the desktop BIM tools that we have grown so
comfortable with and into the world of information sharing. They have
illuminated a path to interoperability with a much broader group of
participants and disciplines than I ever could have imagined - by
starting with simple, yet powerful pieces of shared structured data. I
can now understand clearly the power of archiving projects and client
standards in this way for future use in our architecture practice.
Thanks Onuma Inc. for keeping the juices flowing!
Russ Sanders,
AIA - Orcutt Winslow Architecture
My
BIM world intersected with Kimon's and many others who were
working on NBIMS back in December 2006. My mind was opened to a new
realization, and Kimon was leading the way as a practioner with Onuma.
He was getting it done. What I learned then was BIM isn't a tool, it's
a process. It was great fun to have been given the opportunity to
participate in the process and become "Experienced". Team K (DeStefano
and Partners Chicago/LA) thanks Kimon and Yong and everyone at Onuma
Inc. It was an honor to take part in this historic event.
Timothy Blatner,
AIA - DeStefano and Partners, Ltd.
Special
thanks again for this awesome experience. You are to be highly
commended!
Karen
L. Weber - Earth Our Only
Home, Inc.
On
behalf of familia Corazón, I want to thank you for including
us
in this historic project. Your team has accomplished more than you
could ever imagine.
Terry
Mackprang - TEMAK
Construction
The
BIMstorm was an amazing experience of the wealth of opportunity that is
possible today.
Paul
Adams - Earth and Sky
Architecture
This
charrette has been a historic moment! Master Planning will never be the
same.
Ulises
Araujo - IRWIN-PANCAKE
ARCHITECTS
"Most spectacular, I think, was
the introduction of Onuma; some people
said it should have been used right at the start on Monday! Of course
they are right, but the reality is, no one was interested before the
communication problems showed up. As usual, it takes a crisis to start
a revolution."
Joost
Wijnen - CADVisual, NL
The origins of the BIMstorm™ go back to the mid 90s when
Onuma, Inc.
was using BIM in ways that focused on the "i" or information of BIM.
This process allowed Onuma, Inc. to collaborate worldwide with teams on
projects. Throughout the 90s the process and tools continued to evolve
within Onuma, Inc. For the most part, the deliverables to clients at
the time were traditional CAD and other documents generated by Onuma,
but not the data itself. Forward looking clients started to recognize
the value of Onuma and Onuma, Inc. gradually started to integrate it
closer with projects and engage the project teams in more advanced use
of the "i" of BIM.
Although many clients saw the
benefits of the output capability of
Onuma, there was one client that stood out among the rest that
immediately understood the full potential. The United States Coast
Guard in 2003, saw and developed a larger vision called "The Framework
for Integrated Decision-Making" at the core of the Shore Facilities
Capital Asset Management Road (SFCAM) Map lead by David Hammond in
Washington DC. Others in the USCG such as CDR Jack Dempsey, Paul
Herold, LCDR Jeff Brockus, William Scherer, CAPT Jay Manik (Ret.), and
many more actively participated in the vision of the SFCAM Road Map and
supported Onuma and BIM being used on projects. The big and early
vision of the Coast Guard has been instrumental in helping to change
the entire industry. We would like to thank David Hammond and the USCG
for this.
BIMstorm™ has been a
vision of Onuma, Inc. since the mid 90s
but until the industry embraces the change required, and follow the
forward looking organizations such as the USCG, GSA, DHS, Smithsonian
and others, nothing will be possible. This is a challenge to the rest
of the industry. Help us raise the bar.
Other leading firms are now
using Onuma on projects in ways that exponentially increase the value
provided to the industry.
Why
are we doing this?
We feel we are on to something that has a direct impact on the
environment today, but we need all the help of everyone in the
industry. The built environment consumes a majority of the fossil fuels
and has a direct impact on global warming.
Placing your hand on a hot
surface and you recoil immediately to avoid
severe burns. Make this mistake a few times and our brain gets wired to
avoid hot surfaces. The communication network in our body transmits the
signal in an instant to our brain. We register it in our brain, learn
and evolve. If it took even a minute for this message to travel from
our fingers to our brain, we would be covered with a lot more burns.
The building industry on the
other hand moves in slow motion. We
typically take much longer than minutes, hours or days to get a message
back to the brain and change course. The limitation has been a
combination of technology and embedded processes. As messages are
delayed we cannot truly predict the future impact of decisions we make
today. As an industry we are not only burning our own hand, we are
burning the planet.
BIMstorm™
links buidlings to locations on the earth to be able to
more accurately simulate and make decisions that will drive down the
impact of buildings on the environment
Before any construction starts,
it is proven that up to 30% of time and
effort is wasted. This is a waste of resources and has a trickle
effect, when a building that should have never been built breaks
ground. What are the larger implications of these compounded mistakes
of communication?
Real
Time
A BIMstorm™ proves that communication and decision making can
happen much closer to real time. We want to make a lot of mistakes very
early on in the process to reduce the chance of severe burns. Being
able to simulate and predict the future allows greater confidence in
making the proper decisions. Granted this is a complex process that
involves much more than a decision to “build.”
These complexities
require proper communication and a network of integrated systems that
can talk to--and listen to each other. In many cases the answer would
be “not to build.” Not being able to visualize the
implications of
building, is the biggest mistake we can make. The technology now exists
to start making more intelligent decisions about our environment and
heading toward an early implementation of carbon neutrality.
Testimonials “BIMstorm enables us
to work with real-time scenarios and "the
scenario accountant" makes sure we do not get carried away and forget
about utilization and cost.”
Lars C. Christensen
Senior Vice President Technology Outlook and Competence, Selvaag
Gruppen | Oslo, Norway
"Onuma
demonstrated that software based on open standards can
provide an amazing amount of collaborative assistance for complex
design problems – today."
Mike Bordenaro, NF Publishing Company
“We
were not aware these type of solutions even existed. Best of
all, we are now able to keep the relationship between our financial
estimates and the design, since both drive us in our decision making.
Onuma involves us, as a client, within the BIM process, where we didn't
have this relationship before.”
Wim Scheele, Director of Project Development, City of Rotterdam,
Netherlands
What
is a BIMstorm™?
A BIMstorm can be used for many scenarios for example:
Real time cost and area /
program calculation linked to 2D and 3D models.
Web enabled tools to allow
for multiple users to collaborate in real time.
Massive Real-Time
Collaboration
A series of rapid-fire live
charrettes or a BIMStorm™ to design projects at warp speed.
When decisions happen in
real-time, and are linked together
through open standards based exchanges, potential errors are spotted
faster, and a proper trajectory is created
Sustainable decision making
Open standards based
exchanges
Watch the on-line
presentation or participate
Useful Tools: Archicad,
City GML, DDS, Elite CAD, Google
Docs, Google Earth, Go To Meeting, IFC, Knowledge, MS Excel, MS Word,
Navis Works, Onuma, Onuma BIMXML Converter, paper, PDA, pencil, Revit,
Skype, Webex, OGC WFS, 3G cell phone (listed here, but not all are
necessary to have a full working knowledge of)
In a traditional design and
construction process, a developer must
find an appropriate property and program for a project. Let's say for a
hotel and office building in Los Angeles. They must then run through
multiple scenarios of what to build to support the changing market and
their bottom line. At the same time they may need to negotiate with
city agencies and a broker for the various properties they are
reviewing. They may bring on an architect at an early stage of
development to study several scenarios and create an early plan. All of
the above activities and many more are dependent of each other. In a
traditional process much of the early planning and design and is very
linear and disconnected. The architect prepares early plans and
documents and submits to the developer in a few weeks. By that time the
requirements may have changed. There is a constant back and forth
between experts, engineers, cost estimators, city agencies to review
and approve the next step or in many cases to backtrack and redo work.
This is just for the early design process.
BIMstorm™ allows all
the experts to collaborate in decision
making in real time. This real time collaboration allows you to spot
problems and identify patterns and trends as the project progresses and
make corrections on the spot. You can bring in other experts to view
the project data while the design evolves. There is no need to be an
expert at any software in order to participate. For example cost
estimates and area calculations can be viewed in real time on the web
or exported out to Excel. The numbers in the reports and Excel file are
directly linked to the graphics and 3D. There is no need to manually
confirm that everything in sync because it is in sync by design.
Imagine if the airline industry
published a paper catalogue of
airfares every month and mailed this out to us. Or if the published a
CD with the same data. Then we would have to call the airline or have
an agent manage the reservation. Today with Expedia or Obitz, you can
do this in real time. The construction industry is in many ways
functioning like the first scenario of passing static project
information around. There are better and more efficient ways to do
this. Welcome to BIMStorm™.
A
BIMStorm™ is:
Strategic
Tactical
Organized
Real-Time
Management
Linking
knowledge to process and tools using BIM and data hasresulted in a process referred
to Onuma, Inc. as a BIMStorm™.
Connect
Teams and Consolidate Work
An organization that works with
consultants and multiple
disciplines on global, domestic or local scales, knows that managing
project information and content is not an easy task. Efficiently and
effectively organizing, documenting and communicating is the backbone
of business. Developed and used by our own team to collaborate within
and with other disciplines on real architectural projects, Onuma, Inc.
wanted a way to collaborate globally. The answer: a web-enabled
management solution. Being web-enabled allows users to maximize
existing hardware for collaborating and eliminate the concern for team
members and consultants to all be using the latest agreed software and
version. With an Internet connection, teams can quickly and securely
work together on development processes and exchange information at one
central point.
Web-Enabled
Project Sites Promote
Uniformity regardless of
hardware platforms
Real-time information
collaboration
Central project information
and content location
Error reduction
File attachment management
Integrated practice
Creative
and Powerful Employment of Open Source Tools
A BIMStorm™ is not
bound to using only Onuma, Inc. developed
tools. The strength of the BIMStorm™ lies with a team that
can be
mobilized to utilize a wide range of tools that directly address the
specific needs of the project. For example, if a particular project
deals with larger master planning issues, then the focus of the tools
used might gravitate towards leveraging project data in GIS or CityGML.
Design
Process at Warp Speed
Using traditional methods,
current design processes are
inefficient.
BIMStorm™ creates a framework for putting the process into
warp speed
and maximizing the value of a design charrette. Onuma, Inc. trains and
provides on-site support or we can support your team virtually from our
BIMStorm™ command center. Bring your projects into the 21st
century.
Tools
Used
Building Information
Modeling
ArchiCAD, Revit,
VectorWorks or other IFC Tools
Onuma
Internet Browser
Internet connection
Computer
Benefits
Your knowledge-experts are
actively engaged
Data and knowledge are
instantly retrived and translated into an understanding format
