Open BIM Alliance Activities

• Act as a conduit for the delivery of accredited industry courses.
• Provide media for member’s information exchange – e.g. web site/forums, conferences.
• Deliver regular informative seminars with specific focus of Open BIM in practice – e.g. live demonstration of vendor interoperability.
• Communicate and promote the activities of the alliance to the wider industry via media, articles, advertising, partners and members.
• Write and distribute a regular newsletter containing application features and case studies.

Open BIM Alliance Objectives

• Represent the views of the international OPEN BIM groups particularly in U.K. and Norway.
• Engage with the Aust. Construction Industry as the neutral voice of open communication process and protocols.
• Support the Australian Government Innovation strategy for the Construction Industry.
• Represent the views of alliance members to industry and government.
• Inform the industry of Open BIM process/technology developments and applications.
• Offer non-proprietary implementation guidance.
• Work with academia on the development of Open BIM education.

The OPEN BIM Alliance is open to all stakeholders including clients, consultants, designers, contractors, vendors and operators of assets – providing that they meet the simple criteria of endorsing OPEN BIM as the internationally accepted ISO16739:2005 standard for collaboration.

BIM is essentially a means of sharing information. It therefore needs a means of sharing, which in turn needs a:

• A common language.
• A platform to communicate the common language.
• A willingness to communicate the common language.

There are three ways that BIM can be applied, Bespoke, Single (Closed) and Common (Open).

 

Everyone learns everyone else’s language.

 

Everyone, bar one, has to change their language.

 

Everyone uses their own language with a common interpreter.

 

Why is it important? 

• Open BIM supports a transparent, open workflow, allowing project members to participate regardless of the software tools they use.
• Open BIM creates a common language for widely referenced processes, allowing industry and government to procure projects in transparent commercial engagement, comparable service evaluation and assured data quality.
• Open BIM provides enduring project data for use throughout the asset life-cycle, avoiding multiple input of the same data and consequential errors.
• Open BIM enables small and large (platform) software vendors to participate and compete on system independent, ‘best of breed’ solutions.
• Open BIM incorporates product supply, enabling product data to be imported directly into the model.

Why will Open BIM succeed?

• Best in Class, Fit for Purpose
• Competition
• Application

SUMMARY

• BIM is a business process that enables all stakeholders’ access to the information they need when they need it.
• To deploy BIM successfully, a means to exchange data between software tools has to be found.
• IFC already exists as a free at the point of issue data exchange protocol.
• It is currently the only viable means of universal data exchange that works.
• There are a number of compelling reasons why it will succeed as described above.

 

Download the Submission prepared by the ‘OpenBIM Alliance’:

OBAAGovtSubmissionJune2012

Download Minister Kate Lundy’s response:

Letter to OBA 2013-04-15 – signed