01 December 2009 : Build LONDON Live 2009
Building on the success of Build LONDON Live 2008, AEC3, Bim Products and ASITE are pleased to announce that registration for Build LONDON Live 2009 is now open.
Build LONDON Live is an International design and collaboration competition, inviting teams to take 48 hours to go from requirements to detailed design proposal. Teams can be of any number of people and organisations, from across the architectural, engineering and construction industry.
Itinerary:
- Tuesday December 15th 12.00 GMT Competition commences
- Thursday December 17th 12.00 GMT Competition is closed
- Friday December 18th 12.00 GMT Announcement of awards and presentations
For more information please visit http://www.buildlondonlive.com/
For registration please visit http://www.buildlondonlive.com/index.php/login/ and select "Create Account"
Nick Nisbet www.aec3.com Paul Goodman www.bimProducts.net Nathan Doughty www.asite.com
24 November 2009 : AEC3 Ltd will be presenting at the AEC-ST show in Washington DC in December
Construction and Operation of Buildings information exchange
The "Construction and Operation of Buildings information exchange" (COBie) will showcase the impact that a common data standard for the handover of facility information is having in practice. Vendors of design tools including Bentley, Autodesk, Onuma, Noskyo, Graphisoft, DDS and others will be challenged to show live how their products are used to produce the COBie standard spreadsheet, now in use in the USA, Germany and the UK. Construction and Asset management application vendors including Tokmo, Granlund and TMA systems will show live how COBie can impact on facility management and the value of the asset to owner and operators.
Equipment Layout information exchange
The "Equipment Layout information exchange" (ELie) will show how the adoption of international data standards for facility, systems and control design can be coordinated together to create an overall model of the functioning of new facilities. data standard for specifiers and product manufacturers will have on the industry. Using an existing building and a control system, simple tools can now fed into a common operational view for the owner operator.
Energy information exchange
The "Energy information exchange" (ENERGe) will showcase the increasing importance of building models in the management of energy and sustainability throughout the design process. We will show current work to improve the quality of information available, how BIM can aid in the management of LEED assessments and how interoperability between standards can improve the range of choice that designers and analysts have to choose the best tools for their work.
Specifiers’ Properties information exchange
The "Specifiers’ Properties information exchange" (SPie) will showcase the impact that using a common data standard for specification and product data will have on the industry. Product manufactures including GE Lighting, Eatons, BASF, US Gypsum, Wheatland and others will show how their products can be distributed using buildingSMART IFCs. Both Revit and e-SPECS will be used to show how designers and specifiers can manage their requirements and select and specify products. We will show the comparative costs against conventional practice, proving that we have a win-win-win-win proposition for trade associations, designers, specifiers and product manufacturers.
18 November 2009 : The Technology Strategy Board has recently announced support for two projects using
buildingSMART IFCs focussed on "Design and Decision Tools for Low Impact Buildings"
AEC3 UK Ltd will be leading the "Interoperable Carbon Assessment Toolkit" - iCAT together with RIBA Enterprises, Faithful + Gould, BSRIA, University of Northumbria, and the University of Bath to create a building analysis application that will be compatible with all the major BIM design tools, and standard assessments such as SBEM.
iCAT will be an everyday design tool that will facilitiate carbon assessment bysupporting designers and informing their decisions throughout the building lifecycle. It will lead to zero carbon and low impact building through four principal areas of focus:
- a) Development of a software toolkit that combines the Standard Assessment Procedure (SAP) and the Simplified Building Energy Model (SBEM) with carbon embodiment and building modelling data from mainstream desgin and analysis tools. This will generate a building lifecycle carbon signature at key stages with particular emphasis on the early, feasibility and pre-design stages.
- b) Support for designers to create new construction forms that can be carbon costed, thus removing the constraints of current assessment methods which only support pre-defined construction assemblies.
- c) A carbon cost data service for the end user community that permits impact assessments to be made at key stages of the project with full consideration of the whole building lifecycle.
- d) Improving industry impact with guidance that explains the impact of key decisions and allows them to explore alternatives and determine which decisions drive low impact design.
A second project "Integrated Material Profile And Costing Tool" - IMPACT will focus on "whole-building life cycle assessment and life cycle costing" involving BRE, IES, WholeLife Ltd, Wilmott Dixon, RIBA Enterprises. AEC3 will be advising on using buildingSMART IFC interoperability for product data and building models to expand existing analysis tools and data resources.
IMPACT will set the standard for the next generation in building environmental impact and cost assessment. Based on new computer aided design techniques, this tool will allow users to quantify the embodied environmental and cost implications on a whole-building basis.
24 August 2009 : AEC3Korea
AEC3Korea is a software consulting company specializing in Building Information Modeling technology. As a partner of AEC3 in Korea, the company was established to provide reliable and high-quality consulting services for organizations such as public institutions, design groups, construction and CM/FM companies. The services that AEC3Korea provides for developing BIM projects include :
- Consulting for BIM Model Quality Checking
- Consulting for BIM Application
- Development for Building Code Application
- Government R&D for BIM Standards
- BIM-related Software Sales and Marketing
04 July 2009 : Jeffrey Wix
We are very sorry to record the sad and untimely death of Jeffrey Wix on Saturday, 4th July 2009.
After a short illness, he died peacefully in hospital in Oslo with his family with him.
All his colleagues and friends worldwide will join us in expressing our deepest sympathy for Jan and his family. Please respect their privacy at this difficult time.
Nicholas Nisbet, Thomas Liebich
12 June 2009 : FM Handover Aquarium
A major initiative to create new IFC model views to support information handover to facilities management has been announced. Using the buildingSMART International "Aquarium" procedures for open information development, developments from the US led COBIE project in the US (Common Operational Building Information Exchange) and from the buildingSMART FM10 project (data exchange project for "FM Bestandsdaten") will be brought together along with other international inputs. AEC3 will provide resource to the coordination team for the Aquarium.
The "FM Handover Aquarium" proposes:
- Basic FM Handover View as a subset of the existing coordination view that will focus on space, furniture and MEP equipment identification and location data to CAFM/CMMS applications
- Extended FM Handover View that will include all of the information within the Basic FM view together with additional information enabling operation and maintenance planning, risk assessment, and condition monitoring plus links and references to product data sheets, approved submittals, and other similar items.
Software vendors and end users are being invited to participate in the Aquarium. The full request for participation can be obtained from the Aquarium coordination team members Thomas Liebich [tl@aec3.com] or Jeffrey Wix [jdw@aec3.com].
In addition to the Views, the Aquarium will also develop ideas for resource requirement and maintenance planning, continuing FM information from operation activities that may need to be exchanged to enable a change in operation and maintenance activities, operating and maintenance (O&M) information.
05 June 2009 : Public kick-off presentation of Mefisto Project
Berlin, Germany : Mefisto, selected as the lead research project in the construction IT areas by the German Ministry for Education and Research, invites to the kick-off meeting in Berlin. Mefisto stands for Management, Leadership, Information, and Simulation and attempts to strongly improves the collaboration between the building owner (client) and the construction company (contractor). AEC3 Germany is a partner of the project consortium. Thomas Liebich will present the relevance of "Mefisto in the context of Building Information Modelling" at the kick-off.
29 May 2009 : IDM Standard reaches DIS Status
The proposed international standard for the Information Delivery Manual Methodology moved a step further on May 23rd when it was announced that it had achieved "Draft International Standard" (DIS) status as ISO/DIS 29481 part 1. Convened by Jeffrey Wix with secretarial support from Standards Norway, this standard formalises an approach to the capture and specification of information exchange requirements in business processes. Effort will now focus on moving to full International Standard status in 2010 taking into account comments from voting and from the many projects around the world that are already using the IDM methodology.
22 May 2009 : Specifiers Property Sets
AEC3 has been engaged to support Huntsville, Alabama based DA-Inc in ensuring IFC compliance for property sets developed to meet specifiers needs. Several thousand property sets have been prepared by the Specification Consultants in Independent Practice (SCIP). These will be developed by DA-Inc., an Alabama with guidance and tool support from AEC3.
Further Information:
Specification Consultants in Independent Practice > http://www.scip.com
Defence Acquisition Inc. > http://www.da-inc.com
20 March 2009 : Extending COBIE Development
Following successful development and demonstration of the IFC-COBIE specifications in 2008, AEC3 have been awarded a significant contract to extend the developments in the areas of energy analysis, sustainability (for LEED compliance data in IFC), IFC-gbxml transformation and plant/equipment layout to connect to the ISO 15926 standard.
17 March 2009 : Specifications And Product Data
AEC3 have entered into a technology sharing agreement with RIBA Enterprises in the UK. RIBA Enterprises are responsible for development of the UK National Building Specification and the Scheduler Plus product information system. The sharing agreement rotates specifically to the AEC3 developed rule checking technology used in the XABIO testbed. It also emphasizes growing interest in IFC at RIBA enterprises with AEC3 providing input and guidance to accelerating awareness.
12 March 2009 : Two German research projects, funded by the ZukunftBAU Initiative, are successfully completed
The Federal Office for Building and Regional Planning, under the Federal Ministry of Transport, Building and Urban Affairs, had awarded two research projects to develop and test more efficient methods for data and process integration for the facility management of public building. AEC3 Germany had been a partner in both projects.
The first project, Model-based data exchange of alphanumeric asset data using the open standard interface "Industry Foundation Classes (IFC)" explored the possibilities of using the IFC product model to hold all facility management relevant asset data of an existing facility. The appropriate subset of IFC, the Model View Definition "FM Handover View", had been developed, the implementation in several commercial FM tools supervised and a testing framework created. The second project, "Optimization and evaluation of 3D BIM (based on IFC) for facility management", concentrated on supporting the continuous assessment of project data for facility management. It shows how to use an IFC export of current BIM applications to filter and use the FM relevant data and how to import it into CAFM applications. A benchmark of several existing BIM applications for architecture and MEP had been executed and results published.
Results will be presented to the public authorities and all interested industry groups in a final workshop (date to be announced).
01 March 2009 : Build London Live 2009
Build London Live was established in 2008 as a way of providing an opportunity for teams to test their BIM and collaborative working skills. With more than 300 participants, it was a major success. Now, AEC3 in conjunction with Asite Ltd and BIMProducts, are pleased to announce Build London Live 2009. For 2009, the site will be a proposed mad made island in the Thames Estuary to the east of London. Adjacent to a planned tunnel under the Thames, this years event will look to create a series of designs that can be merged together into a single vision. For 2009, greater emphasis will be placed on analysis of design and on whole life performance and sustainability. For further information and details of how to register a team to www.BuildLondonLive.com
21 February 2009 : STAND-INN Handbook Available
AEC3 were a major participant in the recently completed STAND-INN project which looked at the use of BIM and IFC for sustainable design. A key final deliverable for the project was a Handbook which brought together the lessons from the project and guidance resulting from the work. Beautifully produced by the EU Innova team and the buildingSMART International team, the Handbook is now available as a PDF download from http://standards.eu-innova.org/. A limited number of hard copy versions of the Handbook have been made available and this is provided with a CD of presentations made at the EU Innova conference in Lyon in October 2008. Amongst these is a major presentation on Build London Live 2008 by Jeffrey Wix of AEC3.
14 February 2009 : BSI Executive Guide To BIM
A major block in the take-up of BIM within industry is the availability of good advice for industry executives in simple, non technical terms for industry executives. This was the conclusion of a recent workshop on Rethinking Standards for Construction hosted by the British Standards Institution (BSI). To overcome this, BSI have commissioned buildingSMART UK to produce a short book outlining BIM, its features, benefits, implementation and training costs. Most importantly, the book will focus on economic benefits, the ‘what’s in it form me?’ question. The work is led by Nicholas Nisbet at AEC3 on behalf of buildingSMART on behalf of buildingSMART International. The book, consisting of no more than 64 A5 size pages, will be freely available for PDF download later in 2009.
27 October 2008 : STAND-INN project wins EU Innovation Network of the Year award
At a gala dinner held in the city of Lyon, the STAND-INN project was awarded the Innovation Network of the Year award. The gala dinner was held in conjunction with the 'Accelerating Innovation in Europe' conference hosted by the EU Enterprise Directorate. STAND-INN is a significant project that has been promoting the idea that, for sustainable construction, the application of open standards driven Building Information Modelling and digital collaboration is vitally important. AEC3 has played a significant role in the project both in the core technical committee and also in delivering project results. These have been particularly related to the use, application and importance of ICT standards and methods for sustainable construction.
Ahead of the awards, presentations related to STAND-INN were made at the conference. A key presentation made by Jeffrey Wix was about the Build London Live event co-organised in June 2008 by AEC3 and about how it supported the sustainability and ICT objectives of the STAND-INN project.
02 October 2008 : Information Delivery Manual Standard completed
Over the past one and a half years, Jeffrey Wix has been working with colleagues in an ISO committee to develop a simple, normalised way of developing Information Delivery Manual documentation. This includes guidance on creating process maps, exchange requirements, functional parts and business rules. The standard also shows how to relate IDM developments to IFC views for software certification. During the course of the work, ideas within IDM have been expanded firstly in discussion with developers of the buildingSMART Model View Definition approach and also with the developers of the VISI/COINS transaction based development in the Netherlands. The result of this work has been the production of the Draft International Standard ISO/DIS 29481-1: Building Information Models - Information Delivery Manual - Part 1: Methodology and Format
23 September 2008 : Master Classes
The IFC Master Class is a development initiated by AEC3 that is intended to help industry practitioners and students gain an understanding of how to use the IFC model to develop support for a particular business process. The aim is to take an example business process that is reasonably small and well defined and whose information exchange requirements can be supported within an existing view of the IFC model (currently focussing on the coordination view) and/or by property sets. The workshop will go from the initial identification of the process map and the required information exchanges, specify the information content of the exchanges at the non technical and technical levels and show how the process can be supported by software 'ot of the box'. The aim of the Master Classes is to show that creating real world solutions to real business problems using IFC is not so difficult. They will. also prepare people for working in more detailed development projects and buildingSMART Aquariums, providing them with valuable technical insights that they can use to make project results even better.
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.