First BIM Valladolid BIM Congress

From the 19th to 21st of November Modelical attended the First International BIM Congress in Valladolid under the slogan “from BIM to Big Data”. The congress gathered together high professionals on the BIM field from all over the world.

The three day’s congress was really intense full of discussions and exchanging points of view about BIM matters. We attended a variety of presentations, oriented to architectural design and success cases as well as managing a BIM project on its lifecycle (BIM + FM). Moreover, we had the opportunity to hear real cases thanks to the contest where two of our fellows here at MODELICAL got the third prize within the UPC team.

We would like to remark and congratulate the event organizers for the international ponents that participated on the congress. Thanks to them Preeti Bellani talked about real cases developed in Chile, Pablo Cordero explained the new National BIM Plan in Cuba and Giuseppe di Giuda, a representative from Milan’s University joined us with a very interesting talk about a comparative use of BIM between European countries. You can take a peek and enjoy their speeches on the following link. (It requires registration) [ES]

One of the most interesting topics in the conference was the standardization process using OPEN BIM, brought up by a Eduardo Torroja Institute’s representative, who told us that they are currently working on checking the new BIM Users Guide to make sure it follows all the CTE standards. To summarize, the OPEN BIM has three standards, IFC (Industrial Foundation Classes), IFD (Industrial Foundation Dictionary) and IDM (Information delivery Manual). About the IFD he said they are working on a new database, Open Dap [ES], which within a 6 digit code will classify all the information with a new feature, the environmental impact data.

There will be no doubt that in this kind of events, the most interesting parts are the spontaneous debates that emerge during the conferences. And in this case the main topic was the interoperability of the IFC format. Each software representative assured that it works on their programs, but the truth is that it is not always like that at the moment. They talk about the existence of an IFC 4.0, which implies great improvement over the current IFC 2.3 software, but for now, just few software export to that format.

During breaks we could see the influence this technology is having on the architectural field. We met people completely out from the BIM environment, who came to have an initial contact with this subject, also students seeking to understand the advantages of BIM, and professionals discussing about their success and also the problems they went through when they started using this new methodology. They all agreed on how difficult it has been for them changing their way of thinking and also on the benefits of that change.

Overall, we agree that this kind of events are highly positive since BIM is fundamentally a collaborative work tool, there is nothing better than meeting with professionals on our field to share experiences, and learn from one another to improve all together.