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Meeting Room

Board

About: Board
Colleagues at Work

Vision

Widespread use of openBIM to reduce risk, reduce waste and be more productive

 

Our vision is to have an Australasian building and construction industry that collaboratively shares and maintains information about facilities and infrastructure in a manner that optimises the quality and economy of regulatory approval, design, construction and operation of the built environment.

Our mission is to work with key Australian and New Zealand government and industry leaders, to proactively facilitate the use of open standards, collaborative processes and integrated practices that will:

  • improve all built facilities and infrastructure projects throughout their life cycle,

  • increase the value achievable from investments in the built environment, and

  • enhance opportunities for economic growth.

buildingSMART Australasia drives industry uptake of technologies to facilitate these goals, providing promotion, implementation and education programs, while also contributing to the technical standards development work of buildingSMART International.

About: Vision
About: History
Pedestrain Bridge

History

buildingSMART was formerly known as the International Alliance for Interoperability (IAI) and founded as worldwide interest in product modelling for the construction sector expanded.

The IAI started in 1994 as an industry consortium of 12 US companies advising on developing a set of C++ classes to support integrated application development. The founding members were Autodesk; AT&T; ARCHIBUS; Carrier Corporation; Hellmuth, Obata & Kassabaum (HOK); Honeywell; Jaros Baum & Bolles; Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory; Primavera Systems; Softdesk; Timberline Software Corp; and Tishman Research Corp.

In 1995 it became an open, not-for-profit industry-led organisation promoting the Industry Foundation Class (IFC) as a neutral product model supporting the building lifecycle. ‘ IAI’ was a somewhat cumbersome name for the public to use and understand, and in 2005 the name was changed to buildingSMART introducing the next phase of construction industry process benefits through smart model-based collaboration tools.

With the publishing of IFC4 (the latest release of the ISO 16739:2013 standard) a new level of open data exchange collaboration has been achieved. Currently development work is focussed on the extension of IFC4 into infrastructure: roads, tunnels and bridges. This will allow modelling of urban precincts, cities and more complex built environment infrastructures.

Constitution

buildingSMART Australasia Limited is a Chapter of buildingSMART International – a unique, world-wide, not-for-profit organisation driving the development and use of open, internationally-recognised standards and tools to support stakeholder collaboration using Building Information Modelling (BIM) across the construction sector and throughout the life-cycle of all built facilities and infrastructure projects.

buildingSMART Australasia is a not-for-profit public company limited by guarantee and incorporated under the Corporations Act 2001.

Click here to download the current buildingSMART Australasia Limited Constitution (2020)

Advocacy

buildingSMART Australasia (bSA) engages with all levels of government, contributing to the development of federal, state and local policies and regulations by advocating its ‘OpenBIM agenda’. This agenda outlines the main priorities bSA sees as essential to ensuring that the building and infrastructure industry use open BIM standards, collaborative processes and integrated practices.

bSA’s main priorities are:

  • Encourage visionary government leadership on the adoption of open BIM technologies and standards.

  • Encourage development of world’s best-practice building modelling standards and national regulations.

  • Counter any misinformation or poor attitudes towards BIM.

  • Integrate the Australian and New Zealand industry into the global electronic market and improve productivity.

  • Establish guidelines to enable and encourage information sharing and interoperability throughout the building and infrastructure industry.

Recent Submissions:

  • Participation in the ABAB (Australasian BIM Advisory Board) Steering Group

  • Annual participation on the BuildingSMART International Awards Jury

  • ABAB – Australian BIM and Digital Engineering Education Position statement 2021

  • Input on NATSPEC National BIM Guide (2022)

  • Contributions to the development of a National Rail Digital Engineering standard for RISSB (2021)

  • Input and guidance into Infrastructure Australia’s “Digital by Default” Plan (2021)

  • Support for our Corporate Partner, Austroads, including input into a National Digital Engineering guideline (2021)

  • Input into ABAF University Report (2021)

  • National GS1 Traceability Advisory Group (2021)

  • State-wide Digital Asset Policy, Office of Projects Victoria (OPV)  (July 2021)

  • Queensland BIM projects - Data and Information Guideline (2021)

  • Submissions in relation to the Parliamentary Inquiry into Procurement Practices for Government-Funded Infrastructure (2021)

    • Combined submission with Lean Construction

    • ABAB submission

    • Australian Constructor's Association (ACA) submission

  • Joint Letter with ACA to Deputy PM (2021)

  • Joint letter with LEAN to Queensland Premier on Improved Construction Outcomes (2021)

  • Collaborative work with Infrastructure Australia “Data as an Asset for the Public Good” (2020)

  • Collaboration with OPV & TfNSW on “Improving BIM Interoperability in Australia” (2020)

  • Victorian Digital Asset Strategy (VDAS), OPV (March 2020)

  • Queensland Government, Digital Enablement for Queensland Infrastructure - Principles for BIM implementation (2018)

  • Inquiry into the Commonwealth Procurement Framework (2017)

  • Plan to Save NSW Energy and Money Consultation (2016)

  • Meeting government policy objectives through the adoption of Building Information Modelling (2016)

  • Position Paper: Integration of Geospatial and Built Environment – National Data Policy

  • The National BIM Initiative (NBI)

  • NBI Working Groups Formed

  • IFC4 and ISO 16739 Published

  • BEIIC Economic Study

About: Advocacy
Four Gray Buildings

Industry Engagement

bSA hosts technical working groups, webinars, workshops and events, creates standards, recognises BIM practitioner skills and conducts research on behalf of, and for the benefit of, the construction industry. 

 

Subscribe to our newsletter, Join bSA, or check out the Events Calendar below to stay in the loop with what we're up to.

About: Industry Engagement
Image by Joel Filipe

Upcoming Events

About: Events

Podcast

"Digital Supply Chains in the Built Environment" Podcast Series: Episode 1
28:25

"Digital Supply Chains in the Built Environment" Podcast Series: Episode 1

This is the kickoff to our new series of podcasts, and expands on the Getting it Right: Specification event we hosted in Sydney last year. In this first episode of our 3-part series, we'll start the conversation with David Mitchell of buildingSMART Australasia & Mark Fairbairn of Masterspec New Zealand about product specification and how the current system of product substitution isn't up to snuff. David & Mark cover the significant difference (delta) between what's been put forth as the intended/approved building design and the actual delivered asset. There is currently no Australian construction industry standard for how to uniquely identify or digitally trace products accurately through the supply chain. IFC data models should be linking in directly with specifications. Tagging of models and specifications with embedded, standardised, and agreed codes at the design phase would have ongoing downstream benefits for any project. If these components all digitally align, we can accurately capture, add to, and share the information associated with each stage of the build including the ongoing asset management through its lifecycle. This would reduce the risk and the industry acknowledged issue of buildings and building systems being compromised with undocumented substitutions or even products unfit for purpose. To connect with Mark click the link below: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markfairbairn/ To connect with David click the link below: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidmitchell5d/ https://buildingsmart.org.au/ https://www.gs1au.org/ https://masterspec.co.nz/ Resources: https://aibs.com.au/Public/News/2018/ShergoldWeir.aspx
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