ACI BIM manual for cast-in-place concrete in development

A working group of the American Concrete Institute’s (ACI) Committee 131 on Building Information Modeling (BIM) is actively developing an Information Delivery Manual (IDM) for cast-in-place concrete. The IDM will capture in written form the interaction that occurs in the design and construction of concrete structures by identifying the parties involved in information exchange, what information is exchanged and when, based on a typical construction project timeline.

This IDM project is the outcome of ACI’s Strategic Development Council’s (SDC) initiative to focus the concrete industry on developing interoperability standards, and represents the first step in the development of data exchanges into the buildingSMART’s Industry Foundation Classes (IFC). IFC is an open and neutral data exchange format that covers construction information related to procurement, design, construction, and operations. IFCs will allow project information to be entered once, and then to be available and usable by every project team member across any software platform. The improved communication, coordination, and collaboration afforded by BIM implementation have already been shown to save time and money in projects.

A $60,000 grant from the Charles Pankow Foundation accounts for the majority of the $90,000 funding for this IDM project. Remaining funding is provided by Bechtel, Tekla, Bentley, Applied Systems Associates (aSa), RMC Research & Education Foundation, CRSI Education & Research Foundation, ASCC Foundation, Post Tensioning Institute, and two of the ACI Foundation’s Councils – the Concrete Research Council (CRC) and the Strategic Development Council (SDC).

A team from Georgia Technological University’s Digital Building Laboratory headed by Professor Chuck Eastman will assist the ACI IDM working group. The group’s first meeting took place during December of 2011 in Atlanta and its expected to complete the IDM by the end of 2012. The next meeting will be held in conjunction with the ACI Spring 2012 Convention in Dallas, Texas. BD+C

Earlier this month, my colleague and I presented a session to a group of civil engineers and transportation agencies about the tech trends in the AEC space. Along with advice on how to prepare your plan for controlled collaboration, we also talked through some practical use cases. One such use case was especially interesting, as it outlined a challenge not unfamiliar to government agencies who are contemplating the leap from paper to digital processes: how to securely migrate workflows.

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