We document buildings by constantly ‘reinventing the wheel’ (RTW);

How do we document buildings? By constantly ‘reinventing the wheel’ (RTWo distinction is made between ‘mundane tasks’ (that can be automated, controlled and performed cheaply) and ‘important tasks’ (unavoidably risky but manageable);

In the case of the ramp and overbridge: A brief was written; A consultant designed it; Design was approved and documented; Consents were given, building constructed;

Using a RTW approach, each stage would have taken a loooong time with little results. Each party handling the documents would have needed to interpret, understand, assess the information and make a decision;

There is an alternative BIM approach:

I like to look at any building as a ‘kit of parts’.

Generally, the terminology is applies to modular and prefabricated buildings – I extend it to building parts and assemblies that are also ‘typical’ over a large range of buildings but are neither prefabricated nor fully standardised;

The consultant designing the ramp would have previously developed the intelligent kit of parts containing: Numerous versions of complying ramps (straight, circular, concrete, steel..), the bridge’s elements, the stairs; Each element would have carried non graphical parameters as well, like materials, cost, availability... Multiple options of design could then have been prepared in minimal time, presented, documented and checked for compliance simultaneously.

In the first case, valuable time is spent on the mundane, in the second the mundane is automated.

Download this file: (related question will be published tomorrow)

https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B4GF8MRLb0DAMTUwMzlkZWUtYWYxNS00ODVhLWIzMGItZjg3YTMwYzZmZGFj&hl=en_GB&authkey=COG1r_cB