Technology

Welcome to theWorld of BIM

Building Information Modeling (BIM) probably won't be The Next BigThing in the electrical market. But it will torever change how architects

and engineers work with electrical products in their designs.

LendLease Corp. used Bentley Architecture BIM design software to incorporate sustainable design techniques in itsnew corporate headquarters in Melbourne, Australia.

Imagine a world where you canclick on any product in a three-dimensional blueprint for a con-struction project to access thatproduct's source of supply, pricing,

maintenance and installation instruc-

By Jim Lucy, Chief Editor

tions, warranty, catalog cut sheet, andother pertinent technical data.

In the rapidly changing world ofbuilding information modeling (BIM),this is a few miles over the next hill formost architects, engineers, electricalcontractors, as wells as the electricalmanufacturers and the distributors

and independent reps that supply theproducts. But with the help of someof the electrical market's biggest BIMadvocates, the groundwork needed toshape and organize the digital productinformation standards that will makethis dream a reality is underway. Someelectrical manufacturers who want to

18 ELECTRICAL WHOLESALING / SEPTEMBER 2011

get a head start on preparing their datafor the supply and product informa-tion aspect of BIM designs are alreadydeveloping the digital CAD icons fortheir electrical products that designerswill use in their three-dimensionalbuilding models. Several BIM expertssay these CAD icons will function as abranded marketing presence in digitalBIM databases of product optionsfor designers. Others companies andindependent product informationproviders, like Trade Service Corp.,San Diego, Calif., and Catalog DataSolutions, San Jose, Calif., are prepar-ing their product data so it's ready tolink into BIM designs.

Building information modeling,which McGraw-Hill Constructiondefines as "the process of creatingand using digital models for design,construction and/or operation of proj-ects," has its roots in the GraphisoftArchiCAD software package launchedin 1987. Today, BIM offers architects,designers and engineers the ability to domuch more than just design buildingsin three dimensions. By analyzing theirdesigns in three dimensions and beingable to see how the various structuraland MEP (mechanical, electrical andplumbing) systems fit together, theycan avoid costly mistakes like layingout a conduit run that would interferewith an air handling system, beforethey become a reality on a constructionsite. According to a 2009 McGraw-HillConstruction research paper on BIMentitled "The Business Value of BIM,"some of the most popular aspects ofBIM are clash detection, as shown inthe example above; avoiding the costlyrework of these problems; productivityimprovement; and reducing conflictand change orders on jobsites.

On the flip side, while the McGraw-Hill report said 50 percent of the AEC(architecture, engineering and con-struction) industry is now using BIM,the usage rate is highest with the largestAEC firms and tails off once you getdown to various subcontractors, whoin many cases don't want to invest inthe costly BIM software or the training

When Utility Engineering, Denver, was designing this gas desulfurization sys-tem with a wastewater treatment system at coal-fired power generating plantin Roxborough, N.C., designs were changed in the model before procurementerrors and installation conflicts were encountered, which helped minimizeinterferences and eliminate redesign and construction rework.

necessary to get their design depart-ments up to speed.

That being said, some intriguingsuccess stories exist with some of theelectrical contractors already involvedwith BIM. Hunt Electric Inc., Salt LakeCity, Utah, says on its website that itused "intense electrical BIM model-ing" on a $300 million data centerin South Jordan, Utah, and that BIMsoftware helps the company "developaccurate 3D interactive models of proj-ects that can be virtually explored andevaluated."

Its website also says, "The latestBIM software allows these preliminarymodels to be easily revised and changed.This assists owners, architects, mu-nicipalities and others to conceptualizemultiple options for their projects earlyin the design stage. Utilizing BIM forcoordinating electrical conduits withstructural steel and available ceilingspace, mechanical piping/ductwork,and all other trades involved in a projectenables us to detect conflicts betweenthese trades automatically and makethe design revisions early on in thepreconstruction process."

Hunt Electric's involvement withBIM showcases the tantalizing potential

of BIM, but the reality is that relativelyfew electrical contractors or other regu-lar customers are very far along withbuilding information modeling. Twonotable exceptions are the U.S. ArmyCorps of Engineers, which requiresBIM on some projects, and the Gen-eral Services Administration (GSA),which manages all federal governmentfacilities, and is also moving quicklytoward BIM.

Several executives and trade asso-ciations in the electrical market whoare already active with various BIMinitiatives have little doubt that it willplay a much bigger role in the electricalmarket's future. The National ElectricalManufacturers Association (NEMA),Rosslyn, Va.; IDEA, Arlington, Va.;Datagility, a Chicago-based provider ofdata management services; and TradeService Corp.; are already helping elec-trical manufacturers and distributorsget ready for BIM. Sources from thesecompanies contacted for this articleagreed that a key reason most distribu-tors, manufacturers and reps haven'tbeen more active with BIM is becauseto date, the primary focus of BIM hasbeen the design and evaluation of 3Dbuilding designs and there hasn't yet

www.ewweb.com / SEPTEMBER 2011 19

Technology

been major demand for their digitalproduct-level data to be integratedinto BIM designs.

That's all changing with what'scalled 5D BIM, which integrates thesupply chain directly into BIM designsat the product level, and requires exactlythe type of digitized product data thatIDEA is collecting for the Industry DataWarehouse (IDW) and that Trade Ser-vice develops for its electrical productdatabase and its suite of related servicesfor the distributor and end user marketsegments. Mike Podaris, Trade Service'sdirector of product management, sayshis company has been busy over thepast year building up its library ofdigital documents that will supportBIM objects in a project design. Thesedocuments include hut are not limitedto a product's operation and mainte-nance, installation instructions. Mate-rial Safety Data Sheets (MSDS), thecatalog page itself, and other technicalspecifications. "We have seven differentdocument types that we are capturingthat all could be associated to that BIMobject," he says.

Podaris adds that the pricing dataTrade Service has provided for yearsin an electronic format meshes wellwith what BIM software developersneed, and that the company is nowworking with several large developersto create the dimensional product data(size and performance characteristics)that 3D BIM designs require.

John Henry, the company's director-business development, says Trade Servicewill support any BIM standards forelectrical products that NEMA and abroad coalition of construction industrytrade associations develop through thebuildingSMART alliance, Washington,D.C. But because Trade Service wantedto start working with some high-profileBIM software companies that neededassistance with the product content, thecompany is moving forward before anyindustry-wide product standards are de-veloped. "That requires building-specificcontent to contain certain schmas thatare going to meet those needs," he says."We are definitely going to recognize any

BIM BASICS

Interested in learning more about BIM? Here are four things youneed to do to get started.

Spend a little time on the websites on the most popular BIM soft-ware programs. Two of the most common BIM design packages are Re-vit (usa.autodesk.com/revit-architecture), which is owned by AutoDesk,the producer of several popular CAD software programs, and Archicad(www.graphison.com/products/archicad). These websites will give youan idea of just common BIM already is in the design community.

Familiarize yourseif with the buiidingSMART aliiance. While electri-cal distributors and reps don't need to memorize every excruciatingdetail of the SPie standard that the buildingSMART alliance, Washing-ton, D.C, is working on, the consortium's website, www.buildingsmartal-liance.com, has a lot of good information for BIM beginners.

Find out which manufacturers are already into BIM. Those funny-looking little CAD objects that represent products in BIM designswill one day be some of best marketing tools manufacturers have tomake sure their products are represented on the ground floor of BIM.If their products aren't represented in BIM designs in the early goingand designers have to rely on generic CAD objects for those products,chances aren'ttoogood their products will be in the job when it comesup to bid, which costs distributors and reps potential sales.

Get local. Learn which local architectural and engineering firms andlarger electrical contractors are already into BIM. You may be surprisedwhat you learn, as several construction industry surveys show thatBIM is already commonplace at the larger, more sophisticated firmsin the design community.

standards and reflect standards that arecreated through those organizations likethe buildingSMART alliance, because wealways want to be onboard with what theindustry is doing. But we just want to beable to move ahead when opportunitypresents itself. We are taking those stepsnow to build content that will be BIM-centric for these companies."

Working on these BIM standardwith the buildingSMART allianceare Jim Lewis, manager of NEMA'sHigh Performance Buildings, andDeke Smith, executive director of thebuildingSMART alliance. Smith, whogave attendees at last year's IDEA E-Business Eorum an update on progressin BIM standards, is one of the build-ing community's leading advocatesfor BIM and the Specifiers' Propertiesinformation exchange (SPie), an openstandard now being developed forproduct data utilized by architects.

engineers, specifiers, contractors, sub-contractors, procurement personnel,operators and maintenance personnel.Once a base-level standard is devel-oped for how product data needs tobe organized to be imported into tbeSPie database, manufacturers and thetrade associations for their industriescan build out the data to suit theirmarket's particular needs.

It's a massive undertaking thatwill require the close cooperation ofseveral dozen construction industrytrade associations. But if Smith andthe buildingSMART alliance can pullit off, SPie will serve as the foundationfor the next generation of BIM designsand will tie electrical manufacturersand their products directly into thedesign process. Smith says that whileBIM was initially used as a visualiza-tion process for construction projectdesigns, the focus has now shifted to

20 ELECTRICAL WHOLESALING / SEPTEMBER 2011

the "I" in BIM information. Hebelieves BIM has the potential to offerbuilding owners an incredible amountof information about the operationand maintenance of their buildings,but that if the product-level informa-tion is either missing or inaccurate,then they won't be able to see wherea specific product was purchased, orfind out about its annual maintenancerequirements.

"We have some cultural issues thatwe have to overcome," he says. "Ar-chitects, engineers and contractorshistorically have not been very goodabout providing data that was of muchvalue to facility managers. Now thatwe have the ability to produce higherquality value in a better timeframe,they don't have to recollect the data.Right now what ends up happeningis that information from the AEC sidedoesn't get really delivered to the facilitymanager until a year later. What we arelooking at is how can we use that infoduring commissioning and provide itto them immediately after so they canuse it for operations."

Steve Horton, IDEA's director ofproduct portfolio management, saysIDEA'S role in BIM will be to supportthe industry standard NEMA developsalong with the buUdingSMART allianceand to then work with manufacturersto ensure their product data in the IDWhas the necessary BIM-related informa-tion. Melissa Longnecker, IDEA's busi-ness analyst and project lead, says thatmuch of the data they already providefor the IDW will be what's needed forBIM. She says IDEA is watching the SPiestandard development very closely. "It'simportant to keep up where that sitsand when that will become a businessneed," she says.

Datagility is another electrical playeralready working with BIM, which itexpects will have a major impact onthe data management and preparationservices it provides for electrical dis-tributors and electrical manufacturers.Angela Baraks, the company's managerof data synchronization, and MartyBrett, NEMA's BIM Task Force manager

and marketing manager for WheatlandTube, wl be doing a BIM presentationat the upcoming IDEA E-Biz Forumentitled, "A Practical Guide to DataSyndication in the BIM Environment."Datagility also developed a workbookfor NEMA electrical manufacturers tohelp them get started with BIM.

Denise Keating, Datagility's presi-dent, believes 80 percent of what'salready been defined in the electrical in-dustry's existing product data standardwill be also required by a BIM standard,and that the other 20 percent is relatedto the 3D modeling that's needed for

(Continued on page 40)

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(Continued from page 21)BIM objects. She says that gives the electrical industry abig head start over other trades within the constructionbusiness that in many cases don't yet have product datastandards. Keating also says there are some commonalitiesbetween the BIM attributes that may be required and thetransactional product data already required in the electricalmarket for web-based selling.

"There is a lot of overlap," she says. "Part of the go-forward plan is to look at those BIM templates that arein the process of being developed and see how they arealigned with the current standards and where we have tomake the enhancements. Where the templates on the BIMside haven't been built out yet is the 3D modeling and thephysical and performance characteristics that need to bedeflned by product type."

Summary. Several industry executives contacted forthis article said while electrical distributors may not feelthe impact of BIM right away, they should be proactive andstart learning about BIM (see sidebar on page 20). Electri-cal distributors have two other things going for them withBIM. As mentioned earlier, having a product data standardin place puts them ahead of many other distributors ofconstruction supplies. And on the distribution softwarefront, users of the Eclipse and Prophet 21 ERP .systemswill be happy to know that their systems will probably notrequire any additional modifications to tap into BIM data,according to Aung Latt, director of sales operations, EpicorSoftware Gorp., which recently merged with Activant."BothProphet 21 and Eclipse have embedded functionality toallow document linking, including images, URLs, that sortof thing," says Lang. "We also have standard functionalityfor data imports and creating user-defined data elements,giving our systems the flexibility to maintain this data."

While there hasn't yet been a groundswell of demand inthe construction community for the product-level digitaldata that electrical manufacturers, distributors and repsalready have in place, if the SPie product standard thatbuildingSMART alliance is working on becomes a reality,it should go a long way toward creating this demand. Untilthen, several BIM experts said it's important that electricalmanufacturers start developing the GAD icons used onBIM designs.

Says Mike Podaris of Trade Service,"lf your object is notin that BIM model, there is a less likely chance that you aregoing to be in that job. Designers are going to look to thetop object in the model. When it comes down to spec it orbuy it, they are going to say, 'I want the exact stuff that isput into this BIM model' And if the distributors want tohave some influence on or ability to keep involved with orsupport BIM, it's to make sure their brands or manufactur-ers have the BIM libraries out that they will need. That'sgoing to put them in a better position to win the businessdown the road."

ELECTRICAL WHOLESALING / SEPTEMBER 2011

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