Fifteen European countries sent delegates to a meeting in Brussels last week of the EU BIM Task Group, a group working towards Europe-wide convergence on BIM standards.
Representatives of public sector client organisations, policy units and national task groups for the UK, Italy, Portugal, Norway, Iceland, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Slovakia, Austria, Germany, the Netherlands, France and Iceland all attended the meeting, held at the European Commission’s conference centre.
The meeting was co-chaired by Adam Matthews, head of EU and international for the UK government’s BIM Task Group, who told BIM+: “We’re looking to collaborate, align and converge best practice for the introduction of BIM to achieve better value for public money – that’s the central theme of the group.”
He explained that the group has previously met three times on a voluntary basis, but this time it was facilitated by the European Commission, which provided the conference room and interpreters. Further meetings are planned later this year and up to the middle of 2016.
The UK was also represented by Mark Bew, chair of the UK BIM Task Group, and Task Group member Barry Blackwell from the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills.
Germany’s delegates included Arup’s Ilka May, recently appointed as chief executive of its industry-led “Planen-Bauen 4.0” BIM Task Group.
Matthews added: “The group is currently defining how it will share best practice and converge on the adoption of BIM into the European public estate."
He identified three areas of interest: technical best practice; client leadership; and cultural and people issues, such as skills development and change management.
Two delegates from Hong Kong were also present as observers, with Ada Fung representing the Ministry of Housing and Ivan Ko the local Construction Industry Council. “It shows the level of interest from the Asia Pacific region to collaborate and help create a global common market – it’s becoming a global conversation,” Matthews said.
Dear Sir,
Last week the EU BIM-task force was gathering in Brussels. Will the outcomes or progress be published somewhere?
At 21th of May we organize a Big BIM event in Antwerp and in October a BIM event in Holland (BIMopen 2015)
Perhaps there’s an interest from one of your members to speak at these conferences and tell something about the BIM taskforce or its outcomes.
As you noticed Belgium wasn’t delegated at your meeting. Perhaps we can create some kind of synergie.
I’ll be glad to hear from you.
Kind regards
We must ensure that the efforts of the BIM Task Groups don’t just concentrate on the easy wins such as getting BIM to be adopted by main contractors and consultants. BIM must engage the entire project team and supply chain so that sub-contractors and their supply chain partners can help deliver the benefits and efficiencies that can be gained through BIM processes. BIM models produced during the project must not just replicate the kinds of models produced by the consultants and must allow for fabrication and ordering information to be derived directly from the model. This information also needs to be freely exchanged between project stakeholders so that models can be coordinated and works sequenced between subcontractors under the direction of the main contractor.