BIM Interoperability: What Do We Do in the Interim?

One of the biggest challenges for today’s architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) industry is that of how to share information effectively.

After all, building information modeling (BIM) puts a fair bit of emphasis on the importance of information—and for a project team to collaborate effectively, its members need to have up-to-date information all the time.

We’ve seen several tools cropping up that promise this global collaborative workflow, many of which have the ability to interoperate with competing software options. There are initiatives to create a single standard between these various companies, but it could be quite some time before we reach full interoperability.

So what’s the best way to solve this issue of interoperability today? It could well be what Ian Howell, CEO of Newforma, calls the hybrid solution.

 

What Does the AEC Industry Need?

Although this might seem like a monumental question, there are really three basic things that the AEC industry needs in terms of its workflow.

Individual productivity, as Howell explained, is the fellow who needs to have reference material on the job site or who needs to have quick access from the boardroom in order to answer a question from the project’s owner.

“Empowering individual productivity is all around accessing information; most…