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Government organisations can provide leadership to encourage the untapped opportunity for savings and benefits of digital design and construction, and in turn, provide better public services and better value for public expenditure. The vision is to build a BIM process consistency framework, together with the private sector, that sets the national standard. Encouraging BIM process consistency represents the construction sector’s greatest opportunity to realise the benefits of BIM.

This Overview Report by the Australasian BIM Advisory Board (ABAB) Technical Working Group 1 is a first step towards developing BIM process consistency for the digital design, construction and operation of an asset – A Common Framework.
The Report reflects the collective experience of a limited number of public capital works delivery agencies, public policy makers, and asset operators from across Australia. Their experience, learnings and knowledge are critical to shaping BIM common practices and standards to be applied across Australia. Proven practices will establish the benchmark for BIM adopters, thereby enabling greater levels of BIM process consistency in the application of BIM across the construction sector and the supply chain. Ideas were also sought from leading practitioners.

A Common Framework will help governments and industry adopt, implement and align the use of BIM on public projects. In doing so, government and industry will have greater control over quality and achieving financial and strategic expectations. A Common Framework will drive savings and efficiencies, and support small to medium enterprises (SMEs) transition to the BIM environment – the new way of doing business in the construction industry.

This Overview Report should not be read as a technical guide to BIM technology, its applications or standards as this information can be found in some other informed sources, including NATSPEC and buildingSMART resources. The use of other reports and documents from related BIM initiatives (such as the BIM Knowledge and Skills Framework from ACIF and APCC and the National Guidelines for Infrastructure Project Delivery from the Federal Government) is highly recommended in pursuit of a consistent approach for industry. This document points to, and encourages, the use of these standards and applications to encourage wider benefits across the supply chain from a public client perspective.

ABAB BIM Process Consistency Report [1.17 MB]     Download

The OBOS is a free resource to assist in the creation of BIM objects, for use by all construction professionals – from designers and specifiers to manufacturers and BIM content developers.

NATSPEC worked with Masterspec (New Zealand) to develop a BIM object standard. The result is the Open BIM object standard (OBOS) intended for use by all construction professionals – from designers and specifiers to manufacturers and BIM content developers, to assist in the creation of standardised generic, manufacturer and project-specific BIM objects.

Having a standard for BIM object creation in place in Australia, New Zealand and elswhere will provide confidence to object authors and, importantly, to product manufacturers that their BIM objects will be acceptable to the end users of the objects, allowing them to manage their BIM content in a consistent and structured manner. Standard-based content means that authors and manufacturers do not risk wasting their time, money and resources creating BIM content that may not be accepted by industry.

With the aim of harmonising BIM practices internationally, an extensive review of existing global guides, standards and protocols relating to the creation of BIM content was completed as part of the research and preparation work.

The OBOS complements and aligns with the recently released NATSPEC BIM Properties Generator - both are mutually supportive tools. The former sets out the rules for applying properties to objects, specifies their format and provides requirements for the graphical modelling and functionality of a BIM object. The latter is a compendium of properties - conforming to the standard - for common architectural and structural objects.

OBOS V1.0 [1.5 MB]     Download

One of the most commonly cited benefits of Building Information Modelling (BIM) is its capacity to deliver the information, captured during the design and construction processes, about a built asset to those responsible for its ongoing operation and maintenance (O&M).
However, several problems stand in the way of realising this benefit, including:

• a lack of clear understanding by design consultants and construction/project managers of the information needs of asset managers and facility managers
• an inability of clients to articulate their information requirements early enough in the project for these requirements to be well-defined contractually, or to allow for effective planning of their delivery
• misconceptions about BIM and, in particular, how it should be used to deliver asset information
• the huge volume of information generated during the design and construction phases, much of which is not relevant to the operation phase.

The purpose of this Australasian BIM Advisory Board (ABAB) Guide is to assist clients and their consultants to define their Asset Information Requirements (AIR) to take advantage of BIM’s capacity to capture and deliver asset data.

The primary audience of this Guide:

• clients, their agents and lead consultants who have relatively limited experience in using BIM to deliver information for operational purposes
• clients who do not have well-developed statements of organisational information requirements (OIR), asset management strategies, AIR, existing data standards, etc.

This Guide focuses more on decision-making about the information required, rather than on providing detailed coverage about the information itself.

It also focuses on defining the information deliverables required at the handover between the construction and operational phases of an asset, rather than on the requirements at each stage of a project. The intention is to focus attention on the outcomes of the AIR definition process.

ABAB AIR Guide [2.8 MB]     Download

BIM Value Benchmarking is a free online tool for collecting contract information and calculating the value of benefits delivered by BIM. It was developed by the Sustainable Built Environment National Research Centre (SBEnrc) and is hosted by NATSPEC.

SBEnrc's BIM Value Tool and BIM Value Benchmarking are complementary tools - BIM Value assists its users at the beginning of a project to identify which metric and enablers of BIM have the most potential value; BIM Value Benchmarking can be used to assess their actual value when the project has been completed. Over time, BIM Value Benchmarking will provide historical data to refine decision making regarding BIM implementation.

What does it do?
By comparing your project with data collected from many BIM and non-BIM projects, BIM Value Benchmarking will make it possible to benchmark the benefits delivered by BIM. By using BIM Value Benchmarking you will be able to identify the value delivered by your project in comparison to other BIM and non-BIM projects.

Who is tool for?
BIM Value Benchmarking is for use with construction projects in Australia and New Zealand. Clients, project managers and contractors are invited to contribute data and to benchmark their project(s) against other BIM and non-BIM projects. BIM Value Benchmarking focuses on main construction contracts that have achieved Practical Completion, as this is when the benefits of using BIM will be most obviously seen and measured. BIM Value Benchmarking can be used with many forms of contract including Construction only, Design and Construct, partnerships and alliances.

How safe is my data?
All information is treated as confidential and is kept secure. KPI and benchmark reports do not identify specific projects (other than those belonging to the user). The SBEnrc may use nonidentifiable data for improving the tool and the production of research reports. From time to time SBEnrc or NATSPEC may contact users to clarify data.

How much does it cost?
BIM Value Benchmarking is free to use. The Demonstration module can be used without creating an account, just click the link. To use the full version of BIM Value Benchmarking you must create an account. You can only produce reports after you have added a project to BIM Value Benchmarking.

To find out more and access the online tool, click here.