Toward a National BIM
Standard
Organizations work on developing a unified standard for data exchange
T
he buildingSMART alliance of the National Institute
of Building Sciences (NIBS) continues to progress
toward publication of Version 2 of its National
Building Information Model Standard—United StatesTM
(NBIMS-US). NBIMS-US is built around a core of
international standards, technical publications, and best
practice guides. Version 1 of NBIMS-US was published in
December 2007, and Version 2 is scheduled to be released
in December 2011. Version 2 of NBIMS-US will include
best practice guides, such as the “BIM Project Execution
Planning Guide” (available at www.bim.psu.edu).
What is NIBS?
NIBS is a nonprofit, nongovernmental organization that
brings together representatives of government, engineering
and design, industry, labor and consumer interests, and
regulatory agencies to focus on identifying and resolving
problems and potential problems that hamper the construc-
tion of safe, affordable structures for housing, commerce,
and industry in the U.S. Authorized by the U.S. Congress,
NIBS provides opportunities for candid discussion among
private and public sectors within the built environment.
NIBS serves the public interest by supporting advances in
building sciences and technologies for the purpose of
improving building performance while reducing waste and
conserving energy and resources.
The NIBS mission is accomplished through the work
of its various councils and programs. Security and
disaster preparedness programs include the Building
Seismic Safety Council, which develops nationally
applicable seismic design provisions through the
National Earthquake Hazard Reduction Program. Facility
performance and sustainability programs include the
High-Performance Buildings Council, which strives to put
standards in place with performance goals emphasizing
life-cycle issues rather than initial costs. Information
resources and technologies programs include the
buildingSMART alliance, a council that provides
industry-wide support for the development of building
information modeling (BIM) technologies to provide for
full automation of the entire life cycle of buildings.
26 September 2011 Concrete international
What Connects ACI to NIBS?
ACI recently signed a Memorandum of Agreement
with NIBS and the buildingSMART alliance. The agree-
ment, to work on furthering open BIM standards, builds
on an initiative taken by the Strategic Development
Council (SDC) (a council of the ACI Foundation) and the
goals of ACI Committee 131, Building Information
Modeling of Concrete Structures.
SDC organized its BIM Accelerated Technology Implemen-
tation Team in 2010. Chaired by Robert Risser, President of
the Concrete Reinforcing Steel Institute, the team released its
BIM Strategic Plan in February 2011. ACI Committee 131,
chaired by Peter Carrato of Bechtel Corporation, will have the
task of fulfilling the ultimate goal of the plan—the develop-
ment of consistent data representations that can become part
of NBIMS-US or other BIM standards and allow exchange
between architectural, engineering, construction, and building
management software applications with specific applications
related to cast-in-place concrete construction.
The first step in the plan is to develop an Information
Delivery Manual by bringing together a group of experts
to discuss data transfer points in a project schedule. The
experts will help to determine the pieces of information
that must be transferred (and what is not needed) at each
of these transfer points. The attributes of the information
must be defined in very detailed workflows.
The goals of ACI Committee 131 also include presenting
case studies of successes on concrete BIM projects,
developing concrete BIM short courses, developing
standard test models for BIM software, and understanding
legal implications of BIM projects.
Why Worry about Data Representations?
If everyone were to use the same software, it would be
the responsibility of the software vendor to ensure that
applications (used through design and construction) could
exchange the correct data at the correct time during a
project. It’s not, however, realistic to expect one software
program to do everything in design and construction.
To be effective and allow information exchanges
among the disparate parties involved in building design,
construction, and maintenance, the building industry
must first agree on definitions and rules for commonly
used terms and calculations. Many terms, such as space,
units of measure, product data classifications, and object
element definitions, have already been developed. The
terms are supported in specifications for the things used
in building construction, allowing representation of those
things (and relationships between them) in a model.
The primary data model standard that has gained accep-
tance within NBIMS-US is Industry Foundation Classes (IFC).
Detailed information on IFC and BIM terminology and
processes can be found at www.buildingsmart-tech.org.

Why Would Information be Exchanged?

Let’s consider a rectangular concrete column in a
soon-to-be constructed building. In the virtual world in a
computer, the information needed to define that column
will include physical and performance characteristics,
such as outside cross-sectional dimensions; location and Ronald Burg (left), Executive Vice President, ACI, and Henry L.
rotation relative to the building grid; clear height; concrete Green, President, NIBS, sign a Memorandum of Agreement
mixture proportions and qualities, such as density and between the two organizations on June 30, 2011 (photo courtesy
strength; number, locations, bend type, size, and strength

Read
of NIBS)
of longitudinal reinforcing bars; locations and types of
bar splices; type, size, spacing, and strength of transverse
reinforcing; elevation of the first tie above the floor
elevation; finish quality; and chamfer size.
The architect (and the architect’s software) will
probably need only those parameters that define the
geometry, location, orientation, and finish of the column.

Ci online
The structural engineer’s software will need almost
everything but the finish and chamfer information. As
long as the parameters are agreed upon early in the
design, there is actually little need for ongoing data
exchange between the architect and engineer.
A large amount of data must be exchanged, however,
during the bidding and construction phases. For example,
the reinforcing bar detailer will need to know almost
everything about the column geometry and the reinforcing
bar types. The detailer will not need the specifications for
the concrete finish quality or strength, but the general and
concrete contractors and the formwork supplier certainly
will. Over the life of the building, the building may
undergo changes in use, so future design and construction
teams will need, at least as a first step, information about
the column as it was designed and built.
The interested parties will have software tools for
analyzing, stocking, fabricating, assembling, or locating
components and material, and those software tools need
to be able to access the mass of data in an efficient
manner. Loss of data (or getting lost in the data) will
not be acceptable, so a great deal of coordination and
planning is required now to ensure the software American Concrete Institute ®

applications will be able to communicate effectively and Advancing concrete knowledge

capture the full potential of BIM.

Concrete international September 2011 27

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