Little yellow stickers

Have you noticed them yet?

They are turning up en masse on consultants’ drawings these days!

Little golden stickers, shiny and holographic, a real candy for the eye.

They carry a message:

The consultant that provided this drawing is a CMBC (Certified Model Based (AEC) Consultant) and all the information within the marked drawing is guaranteed to be based on a 3D digital-model.

No need to check the alignment of grids and consistency of floor levels between views. Sections, elevations for discrepancies between each other or the plans.

You know I’m dreaming, no such certification exists.

And no other industry logo on drawings (AIA, RIBA, NZIA etc) will provide anything similar either.

Currently, there is absolutely no guarantee that officially issued AEC documents make sense spatially.

With all the blurb out there on small BIM – BIG BIM, pretend and real BIM, why are there no little steps taken to get over this bridge first?

Many consultants do work model based these days, however, even they aren’t always able to ascertain, just how far they’ve gone with it?

Was the model broken up while they developed IFC drawings? Can they certify the integrity of the model throughout the process?

You’ll seldom get upfront answers to these questions, even if you are a proposed client dangling a huge contract in-front of them.

Something for buildingSMART to tackle?