"BIM RISE"BIM a Buzz word in INDIAN ACE Industry.
(Arvind.B 12-12-12)
The Design entrepreneurship, particularly in young Architects and Engineers has always been something close to my heart. It is an implementing the BIM process by Indian Architects and Engineers using this developing technology. Both are exploring what benefits does it deliver to the document preparation process and to the project itself? To answer these questions, let me take a brief look at the document process itself and how it evolved in business. The building consultant team, composed of architects and engineers, typically strives to produce complete contract documents, which usually take the form of two-dimensional paper documents. On every typical project each consultant produces their standard set of documents associated with their respective trades. The contract Documents reflect the design and engineering with the results of an extensive coordination process between consultants. It is a design team who strives to provide economically efficient designs within the project cost constraints and fully coordinated with all the consultants. The coordination process takes place continuously by transition of preliminary documents between consultants, culminating in a final package that hopefully reflects and considers the final design of all the team members. Complex projects such as hospitals, stadiums, concert halls, and major high-rise towers require significant effort in coordination to achieve the project goals. Until recently the dominant software utilized by architects and engineers in the development of project documents for building structures was AutoCAD. Although AutoCAD has a variety of three-dimensional drawing tools, it has been used primarily as a two-dimensional drawing device. As such, AutoCAD has greatly expedited the process of drawing production and significantly improved the accuracy of drawings over hand methods, which are basically extinct at this time. However, AutoCAD documents have their limitations, primarily in that they are not “intelligent” documents. Intelligent documents store information about the building systems and/or components. For example, a beam as drawn upon a two-dimensional AutoCAD document would be symbolized as a single line. The beam size information would be shown in text adjacent to the drawn line. Internally, within the computer memory, no information about the beam is known or compiled. In contrast, an intelligent document can also present two dimension drawings and can show the beam as a single line, with the beam size information adjacent to the drawn line. However, this is where the similarities end. The intelligent document internally saves the structural information associated with the drawn beam—the beam size, length, weight, and other relevant information including all the three-dimensional properties. As a result a full three-dimensional picture can be created, if desired. Consequently, an intelligent drawing of the structural, building system, and architectural components would have the ability to draw the full three-dimensional representation of the building. In addition, since the actual geometric properties are available, areas where building components clash can be picked up by the software. Intelligent documents have the ability to provide material quantity data for the project. Relative to the structural components the project tonnage, piece count, and material types can be tracked continuously through the document preparation phase, thereby aiding the budgeting process. The combined integration of the full architectural, building system and structural components into one BIM database for the project is typically not being done for most projects at this time. Although a valuable feature, most consultant teams involved with conventional building types have not developed the knowledge and sophistication to implement this feature on such a global scale.
There are a number of BIM programs available on the market today, and the benefits of BIM are many. Besides the ability to produce intelligent documents, BIM offers the opportunity to create a collaborative building digital model with the complete design of the entire consultant team within one composite model. The use of BIM in the design process changes the methods of team coordination quite significantly. What used to be a tedious computational method working with two-dimensional segments of a building is partially becoming a visual process working with pictorial representations of the structure, building systems, and architecture. Although this new process is taking shape, it is far from being fully implemented in the current building design practice. Many architects and design professionals are now implementing one or more of the available BIM software packages. But there is a significant learning curve associated with any BIM package. Consequently, as architects implement BIM they are usually beginning solely with the architectural components and perfecting their use of BIM before requiring it of the entire design team. It has become somewhat common to implement the structural components within the BIM model prior to incorporating building systems.
“Many Indian offices are seeing that aligning themselves with American architects greatly increases their chance to compete for the best opportunities,” says A. Sagar whose dream to establish a firm “Studios ON-E1” in India, to reflects the pure Indian Design firm with a client and projects will find native professionals eager to be partners up. Local architects can help to navigate India’s complex bureaucracy and shepherd projects through challenging construction phases. Beyond design credibility, Indian clients are looking for American architects to learn the process for executing world-class contemporary buildings. India’s slow-moving bureaucracy can hold projects back, but once the green light flashes, Indian clients expect architects to move fast. The huge potential for development has also led DeGarmo to warn that, in India, “There are a lot of fly-by-night characters. If you get a call from somebody, take the time to check it out.”
India is experiencing a broad need for all building types, but corporate campuses, education, housing, infrastructure, and master-planning efforts are the most active development sectors. Geographically, building activity is equally dispersed. There’s no reason to restrict a firm’s business development to one region. Each American firm is looking to make connections in India. so they can reach out to fill up their additional insights to revenue. Firms that have already landed a project there can use the AIA’s family of International Contract Documents. In either case, establishing a practice in India or any new market is a long-term process. Anil says that it can take two years to build up, a prospect made less intimidating by India’s long-term growth. In a country with double-digit economic expansion, India is bound to pull architects into its borders from every corner of the globe. “This is big,” says R.Kumar “I don’t think people follow or have even scratched the surface.”