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TECHNOLOGY24 ATSEPTEMBER/OCTOBER2011My guess is that there are basically threekinds of reader on this subject. Firstly: the enthusiast; who maybe knows alot about the subject having devoured everyarticle and attended conferences not tomention regularly turning out projects withfully integrated building models carrying allthe data from which drawings,specifications, O&M manuals, projectexecution plans and (lifetime) postoccupancy analysis are derived. Secondly: the disinterested; being perhapsconvinced it is a passing fad that won'taffect them particularly as their stock-in-trade might be relatively small and simpleprojects.Thirdly: the scared.What I want to try and do in this short pieceis reassure the third, maybe convince thesecond and remind the first 'why'.What BIM is and isn't aboutHard though it might be I want you toforget 3D graphics for now. Looking at itfrom this graphical viewpoint is the mostintuitive starting point particularly for thevisually literate such as ArchitecturalTechnology professionals and architects butit risks missing (not getting to) the realpoint. BIM isn't about drawings - they aresomething you produce from it - and itespecially isn't about façade and interiorrenderings and visualisations which can alsobe derived, and undoubtedly to great effect. BIM is about the intelligent interactions ofdata that enables these things so that forexample the information that might createthe interior rendering for a walk-through totantalise a client can be used to help planescape strategy from the building and helpconstruct life saving simulations. This ismaybe an extreme example (and frankly notactually that readily available in proprietaryform yet) which has probably scared thethird group even more, but it is chosen tohelp make the point. BIM isn't necessarily about buying softwarewith 'BIM' on the box and it doesn't haveto be about a single building model in oneplace either but is about having all the dataavailable and interoperable in/from anychosen place. What the system vendors havemostly done is package, software that inmany instances has been around for a longtime before the coining of the 'BIM'acronym, such as to make it easier to use tocreate what has become labelled a 'BIMenvironment'. I'm not one of those whotherefore calls it 'all old hat' however andI'm quite happy to consider it as 'new' indue deference to the enormous amount ofenabling work and development work (andinvestment) undertaken to make it moreuser intuitive and friendly and moreIn May the Government's Construction Strategy set out a firmcommitment to requiring the use of Building Information Modelling(BIM) on all its assets by 2016. Keith Snook HonMCIAT explains whatBIM is and, more importantly what it isn't. What BIM really is...and isn't. Hard though it might be Iwant you to forget 3Dgraphics for now. BIM isn't necessarily aboutbuying software with 'BIM'on the box and it doesn'thave to be about a singlebuilding model