06 June 2008 : BIM: Build London Live Growing Fast
Work on preparing the BIMstorm: Build London Live is now happening very fast with the host team located in UK, Netherlands and USA already proving the value of international collaboration.
Getting ready for the live collaboration from 24th June to 26th June, all of the preliminary information about the site on Greenwich Peninsula is now available online including a Google Maps interface, a Google Earth interface using the newly available Google Earth browser plugin, and an excellent video that shows the site context in some detail. A brief for the design work is also loaded to the site and this is being continuously developed.
You can register online for Build London Live and join others from UK, Finland, Norway, Netherlands, Japan, USA and Chile. We want to encourage more! The host team will help individuals and small groups to find larger teams where necessary. Sponsors can also obtain information online.
Watch www.buildlondonlive.com for more information as it happens.
AEC3 UK are working with Asite, CADVisual and Onuma to host the BIMstorm: Build London Live 2008
24-26 June 2008 : BUILD LONDON LIVE
48 hours to make design work for LONDON
AEC3 are collaborating with Asite and CADVisual on BUILD LONDON LIVE. This is a 48 hour design collaboration starting at midday on Tuesday 24th June and running through to a finish on midday Thursday 26th June. The concluding press conference, also broadcast on-line, will be hosted at the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) at 2pm (UK BST) Thursday 26th June. This will coincide with the Second London International buildingSMART conference.
Watch here for more information and connection to the main event web site.
Contact Nick Nisbet on nn@aec3.com for further information.
14 April 2008 : Web Presentations on SMARTcodes
The International Code Council (ICC) are now presenting regular web tutorials on what SMARTcodes are, what they do and how they can be applied. Aimed particularly at the regulatory community in the United States as part of the outreach programme of the ICC, the tutorials are also generally available to anyone wanting to find out more on SMARTcodes. AEC3 project leader Nick Nisbet presents regularly on these tutorials. So, if you want to find out more about how building regulations will be handled in the (near) future, find out more about the next tutorial from www.smartcodes.org
28 January 2008 : COBIE IFC
AEC3 have recently been awarded a further contract to support COBIE developmet by providing a full IFC model of information contained within the COBIE tables and exchange requirements that set out specific information to be exchanged at key business process points. The purpose of the model and exchange requirements is to support software vendors with their COBIE implementation and to provide them with a detailed requirement that lets them build on their already substantial IFC code base.
COBIE is a specifcation for facilities information management that has been developed in the United States. It is progressing towards becoming a standard way of sharing FM information as part of the National BIM Standard. AEC3 have worked previously with the COBIE authors to specify ifcXML based submittals.
9 January 2008 : In the Eye of the BIMStorm™
On January 31st, AEC3 are sponsoring and participating in BIMStorm™ LAX.
BIMStorm™ LAX is a free event that will involve a wide cross section of building industry professionals to design over 30 Los Angeles city blocks encompassing 30 million square feet (nearly 3 million square metres) in real-time. Building on previous BIMStorms for Boston and Rotterdam, BIMStorm™ LAX is 24 hours of collaboration and harmony demonstrating how to change the culture of the industry using web enabled tools, massive real time collaboration and open standards based information exchange.
AEC3 will be in the eye of the BIMStorm™ validating design work, working on environmental impact analysis and capturing building operation data at an early stage.
If you would like like to participate in the BIMStorm™ LAX or if you would just like to watch what happens, visit
http://www.onuma.com/services/LaStormHowTo.php
1 December 2007 : AEC3 selected to support Structural Interoperability for North America
Acknowledging the industry demand for collaborative work among the architectural and structural engineering professionals and the need for seamless transfer of Building Information Models BIM between structural modeling and analysis the Pankow Foundation granted a research project to develop Industry Foundation Classes for Structural Components. AEC3 has been chosen as the strategic technical consultant to work with a team of experts led by the Applied Technology Council.
Project overview - http://www.atcouncil.org/atc75.shtml
8 October 2007 : Test Drive On-line Code Compliance Checking
AEC3 joined with colleagues to demonstrate progress in the development of SMARTcodes at the recent annual conference in Reno, Nevada of the International Code Council, who are "well on their way to achieving the goal of making instant code checking possible in the United States".
read more >
28 September 2007 : IFC for Cultural Heritage
A Royal Decree in Norway now requires capture of inormation about cultural heritage within an open BIM environment. To consider what this means and how the IFC model can support cultural heritage requirements, AEC3 have provided a state of the art report for Statsbygg who will act as the state agency responsible for such information. The key finding of the report is that IFC is well suited for this purpose having all the necessary object definitions. This extends to special date provisions for archaeological and historic places where precise date/time values cannot be provided. Cultural heritage will require additional information that may well be targetted towards different types of heritage and different places. This will probably be rovideby property sets with their specification handled through IDM exchange requirements.
4 June 2007 : Demonstrating Augmented Reality
Augmented Reality (AR) is an emerging technology that enables the combination of real world and computer generated data. World leaders in this field are QinetiQ, a major UK and North American defence and security company, AEC3 is working with QinetiQ as part of the team developing the "TOmorrow’s Building todaY (TOBY™)" product that will enable building information models to be combined with real installations.
read more >
28 May 2007 : IDM Methodology Delivered
The Information Delivery Manual (IDM) Methodology has now been delivered and is available on the main IDM website. This document takes the place of the former IDM Learning Guide and provides much more information and guidance on the basic ideas that have been adapted for use in IDM. The "Quick Guide to the Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN)" is also available and provides a companion document to the methodology and describes the techniques used for process mapping in IDM.
IDM Methodology - http://idm.buildingSMART.com
Quick Guide to BPMN - http://idm.buildingSMART.com
21 May 2007 : Interoperability for Electrical Applications
Working with the Norwegian Electrical Trade Association (NELFO) and Siemens, AEC3 are working with the software providers for electrical information at the new AHUS hospital in Oslo to improve interoperability. Electrical design for the hospital is carried out using Magicad, an Autodesk ADT based application from Progman Oy in Finland and the DDS ElektroPartner. Electrical analysis uses the Febdok software from NELFO whilst product selection and costing is done with Eldata. The project is looking at "as-is" and potentially improved information flows and then setting out precise rules for using IFC capabilities to meet them.
Project development files will be posted at ftp://ftp.iai.no
14 May 2007 : Building Construction in STEP
Led by Dr.Inhan Kim of Kyung-Hee University, a team from the Korean Institute of Construction Technology (KICT) are working on the proposed ISO 10303-241 standard that will, amongst other design intents, provide increased harmonization between manufactured product data represented in the STEP standards and construction product data represented in IFC. AEC3 are providing technical support to the KICT team for modeling and building services.
7 May 2007 : Construction Operations Building Information Exchange (COBIE)
COBIE is a standard proposed under the NBIMS activity to collect and present operation and maintenance based submittals using widely-used spreadsheet technology. To move the standard from a proposal to a working capability, AEC3 has been commissioned by the Engineering Reasearch and Development Center of the US Army Corps of Engineers to assist with the development of applications can work with data to/from a COBIE spreadsheet and handle this data in IFC format.
30 April 2007 : AGCxml - Exchange of Standard Business Documents
AGC has entered into an agreement with NIBS in USA to develop a set of XML templates for standard documents. AEC3 has been chosen to participate within the team assembled by NIBS recognizing its experience in construction related XML developments. We will develop a suite of XML schemas and use cases to support the exchange of messages such as contract agreements, change orders, punch lists and application for payments.
AGC - The Associated General Contractors of America - www.agc.org
NIBS - National Institute of Building Scienes - www.nibs.org
16 April 2007 : New Corporate Logo for AEC3
AEC3 revealed its new logo. In future it will be displayed on all our web based and printed materials.
After nine years run with the previous only text based logo, we decided to have a new logo that better represented our company.
The AEC3 logo has been developed to appear modern, innovative and authentic. The logotype consists of two elements, the wordmark AEC3 and the blue icon.
The icon is a highly abstract sign that conveys a form, a movement, an idea. Inspired by the three "C" - standing for Consultants Collaborative Consortium - it represents ideas, innovations and information in motion.
2 April 2007 : The AEC3 Consulting Team get stronger
In April 2007, Matthias Weise has joined AEC3 as a consultant. He holds an Doctor degree in engineering. In his previous work he concentrated on data management for construction engineering solutions. He adds his experience in structural engineering and model server technology to the knowlegde base of AEC3.
5 March 2007 : Bilbao, Spain, 28 February-01 March 2007 - SWOP Project Meeting
AEC3 has recently be invited to joint the European Research & Development Project SWOP. We work in collaboration with TNO on integrating product models with semantic web applications and on forwarding the results to international standardization.
SWOP - Semantic Web-based Open engineering Platform - www.swop-project.eu
TNO Bouw - www.tno.nl
8 January 2007 : AEC3 strengthen software development capability
From January 2007, Paul Sitoh joins AEC3 as a senior consultant. With a Masters degree in Information Systems, Paul is an experienced systems analyst and software engineer. He has extensive experience in developing STEP/IFC technologies and applications for the manufacturing, process and construction industries and will extend our capability in database, XML and regulations technologies.