enabling adjustments to suit individual task needs and preferences.”
Building Information Modeling (BIM)
Building information modeling (BIM) software has been around for many years now, but use of the systems has seen a surge in adoption for construction and management of all kinds of buildings. The technology holds the promise of bringing substantial improvements in efficiency, not just in the construction process but throughout the whole lifecycle of a building.
The “Real Prospects for Energy Efficiency” study mentioned earlier points out the energy-saving potential of improved information flow in the design and construction process: “The main difference between high performing buildings and conventional buildings is essentially an attention to integration, interaction, and quality control throughout the design, construction, and operation of the building.” BIM systems are a tool for making such integration possible.
The electrical industry is playing a key role in shaping the next generation of BIM applications. The National Electrical Manufacturers Association (NEMA) has been working with the buildingSMART alliance, a council that's part of the nonprofit National Institute of Building Sciences (NIBS), which is working to develop open standards for data transfer among building industry software applications. The alliance's goal is “to advance open interoperability and full lifecycle implementation of building information models.”
The focus of this development is on the “Specifiers' Properties information exchange” (SPie) standards designed to improve the information used by BIM systems in the design-specification-procurement-construction process.
Through the SPie standards, NIBS hopes to make product specification sheets a thing of the past. “A new, easier way to select products, the Specifiers' Properties information exchange (SPie), is helping manufacturers to deliver product information to specifiers and designers in an easy-to-compare, digital format,” said a NIBS press release.
Among the benefits of having more and better data in the specification of products is that designers can better match the systems to make better use of energy, and building managers can make better decisions on maintenance and upgrades, says Jim Lewis, NEMA's manager for high-performance buildings.
The next generation of BIM applications, “will contain very specific information about manufacturer products at the heart of the solution. Having more information than exists today, so that not just the architect and designer but the building manager and owner will have the information to build the building, to operate and maintain it, and also to dispose of it at the end of its useful life,” Lewis says. “It will allow them to match specific needs with specific products. For example, we understand that many building owners and designers use outdated formulas so that they tend to oversize the air-conditioning units because they don't really know the heat output of the lighting system. So if appropriate and useful data is provided then they can more accurately select the air conditioning unit based on the specific output of a product — a motor or a light or whatever. This has huge ramifications for construction and retrofit projects if it's handled in the right manner.
“Our goal is to make that data available in a standardized format so any of the estimating or specification tools, BIM design tools and costing tools can access it through a standardized format via a common interface. We intend to work very closely with those folks in order to design a world-class template for electrical industry data,” he adds.
IDEA, the joint venture NEMA and the National Association of Electrical Distributors (NAED) created to enable electrical manufacturers and distributors to standardize, synchronize and exchange electronic product data, has been working on preparing the electrical industry's data to meet the SPie standards.
NEMA and IDEA were among several groups presenting a demonstration at the NIBS annual meeting, held in conjunction with the Ecobuild Ameri