Chapter 35 — Further Reading

Everything below is a real organization or a real publication, described by what it does. This is the fastest-moving reference list in the book. Frameworks are revised, standard-form exhibits are reissued, and software changes under all of them. Always work from the current edition your contract actually names, not from memory and not from this chapter. Where I am not certain of a document's current title or numbering, I describe it instead of naming it — you should do the same in a specification.

Open exchange and information management

buildingSMART International, and the Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) data standard. IFC is the vendor-neutral open format for exchanging model data between different authoring and review platforms, and buildingSMART is the body that maintains it. Relevant the moment six trades are modeling in five applications and somebody has to federate them. For: anyone writing a BIM execution plan or a modeling requirement into a subcontract. Read it as: a question to answer in your BxP — is an open format required, for which deliverables, and what survives the round trip? An IFC export is not a lossless copy of a native file, and knowing what it drops is the whole skill.

The ISO 19650 series — information management using building information modelling. A multi-part international standard family covering how information is specified, produced, exchanged, and handed over across an asset's life cycle, with roots in earlier UK practice. It is increasingly named in contracts outside the United States and occasionally inside it. For: anyone working internationally, and anyone who wants a rigorous vocabulary for what a BxP is trying to do. Caution: its terminology (information requirements, common data environment, appointing and appointed parties) does not map word-for-word onto U.S. practice. Read it for the framework, then translate into the words your subcontractors actually use.

The National Institute of Building Sciences and the National BIM Standard–United States, where COBie is defined. COBie is the standardized, spreadsheet-shaped information exchange for non-geometric facility data — spaces, zones, systems, equipment types, components, warranties, spares, and maintenance jobs. For: the owner conversation in §35.8 and the closeout package in Chapter 40. The point to carry: it is about the data, not the geometry. An owner who asks for "BIM at turnover" and means a pretty model has asked for the wrong thing.

Level of development, and the accuracy of what you measure

BIMForum's Level of Development Specification. The element-by-element reference behind the LOD numbers this chapter uses, organized on a classification structure and revised periodically. It defines, for each element at each level, what may be relied upon and what may not. For: whoever writes your LOD matrix. Read it as: a menu you build a project-specific matrix from — not a document you cite in a spec and then never open. Get the edition your contract names.

The U.S. Institute of Building Documentation's Level of Accuracy specification for building documentation. The reality-capture counterpart to LOD. Level of development tells you how far you may rely on an element somebody intends to build; level of accuracy tells you how tightly a captured measurement represents what actually exists. You need both vocabularies the moment you scan an existing building. For: anyone specifying a laser scan or a scan-to-BIM scope, which is most people on any renovation job. Deeper treatment of the hardware in Chapter 39.

Execution planning — the document that decides whether it pays

The BIM Project Execution Planning Guide and template set from Penn State's Computer Integrated Construction Research Program. Freely available, widely used as the basis for project BxP templates, and the origin of the "model uses" framing in §35.3. It walks a team through selecting uses, mapping the process, defining the information exchanges, and specifying the supporting infrastructure. For: anybody staring at a blank page thirty days after notice to proceed. Practical tip: use it for structure and then delete ruthlessly. A nineteen-page plan that decides things beats a sixty-page plan that describes things.

Owner-published BIM guides and requirements — for example, the U.S. General Services Administration's BIM guide series. GSA's 3D-4D-BIM program publishes a freely available series covering modeling, spatial program validation, laser scanning, energy performance, and facility management. Several other large public owners and health systems publish their own. For: two audiences — owners writing a requirement, and contractors who want to read a good version of the specification section that ruined Stonebridge in Case Study 2. Read them as: evidence of what a sophisticated owner asks for, and of how much of that is genuinely enforceable.

Contract and risk

Standard-form BIM and digital-data exhibits: the AIA digital practice documents and the ConsensusDocs BIM addendum. Both families publish instruments meant to be attached to the underlying agreement, addressing model ownership and licence, reliance and disclaimers, level of development, who manages the information, and what happens to all of it at termination or turnover. For: the five contract questions in §35.10, all of which you should settle before the first coordination meeting rather than during the first dispute. Read them as: a checklist of decisions the parties must make. Use one rather than drafting from scratch, read the version your project actually adopted, and have counsel confirm how it interacts with the rest of your agreement — this is unsettled and jurisdictionally variable ground, and nothing in this book is legal advice.

AGC of America's contractor-oriented guidance on building information modeling. The Associated General Contractors publishes practitioner guidance written from the constructor's side rather than the designer's — how a general contractor scopes, staffs, and buys a coordination program, and what to put in a subcontract. For: the argument in §35.9 that $369,000 of a $643,500 program is money paid to trade contractors, and the buyout conversation in Chapter 16.

The work the model is about

OSHA 29 CFR 1926 — Safety and Health Regulations for Construction, particularly Subpart CC (cranes and derricks in construction) and Subpart R (steel erection). This chapter's flagship finding is a crane that could not leave a building, and its safety callout is a pick-path study. Subparts CC and R are the regulatory frame around both: assembly and disassembly, ground conditions, power-line clearances, hoisting personnel, and the erection sequence. For: anyone building a 4D crane study who wants it to be a safety product and not a movie. Freely available from OSHA and more readable than its reputation. See also Chapter 21 and Chapter 24.

The Lean Construction Institute and the Last Planner System literature. Relevant here because the most-used 4D product on Northgate was not the erection study that saved the most money — it was the monthly look-ahead visualization by zone and trade. Pull planning turns an argument about memory into an argument about the building, and a 4D on the wall is what makes that possible for people who do not read network diagrams. For: everyone who runs a six-week look-ahead. Full treatment in Chapter 27.

SMACNA duct construction standards, and the trade associations that publish fabrication standards for the other systems. Your coordination model at LOD 400 is only as good as its fittings, gauges, seams, and hanger spacing — and those come from fabrication standards, not from a modeling guide. For: understanding what a detailer is actually representing when they model a duct main, and why the insulated, hung, serviceable envelope is roughly 21 inches when the drawing says 16. Coordination context in Chapter 10.

Inside this book

• Appendix H — Software and Tools Directory: the tool landscape, named honestly and without vendor claims.
• Chapter 10: the coordination problem this chapter tools up for.
• Chapter 12: the quantity discipline behind every extraction stamp.
• Chapter 14: the schedule a 4D visualizes — and cannot replace.
• Chapter 39: reality capture, prefabrication, and robotics as hardware.
• Chapter 40: turnover and the owner's data package.

One habit worth more than this whole list: whenever somebody hands you a BIM return-on-investment case, find the RFI line and ask what it is compared against. That single question tells you how seriously to take the rest of the page — including mine.