From BIM standard to investitions into construction return
Development of BIM technology and work principle application is not unique to Western Europe, the USA or Australia. There is a growing number of design and construction companies in Russia that choose BIM, which may increase Russian market’s attractiveness to other countries’ design and construction associations.
A conference “Practice BIM 2016: Effective Collaboration in Construction Projects” was held in Sankt Petersburg at the beginning of April 2016. This is the largest BIM event in Russia, where a lot of attention was devoted to assessment of BIM projects implemented in practice and development of Russia’s BIM standards. AGACAD CEO Donatas Aksomitas participated in this conference as a speaker.
A considerable amount of visitors has attended the event – according to the organizers, several hundred of designers and construction company representatives have attended the conference. All of them had access to the newest innovative BIM products, could gain experience of executing BIM projects from real examples (for instance, experience of constructing “Dinamo” stadium in Moscow was introduced), listen to relevant reports on BIM topics and participate in discussions, during which the event participants could ask BIM experts some questions. For the first time, those who watched the conference via the Internet could participate in the discussions as well.
Event organizer – engineering consulting company PSS. Konstantin Biktimitov, PSS Technical Director also described situation in Russia: “Currently BIM technology use is steadily growing in Russia. The initiative of regulator development made a significant influence to this growth. However, the very market participants changed as well: designers, constructors and contractors. BIM is no longer an unfamiliar technology, construction industry has moved from theory to practice, and this is pleasing. Such changes reflected in questions, which were given to BIM experts that participated in our conference.”
Most speakers’ performances touched the subject of BIM standard preparation and usage – now this is a very important topic for Russia. In 2016, Russian Federation Construction Ministry is planning to change normative-legal system that is regulating construction. In order to move to information modeling, a legal framework will be created, which will influence all construction market participants.
Juho Kinnunen, BIM Manager at YIT Group, talked about the experience of BIM standards’ usage in Finland, where in 2012 appeared a constantly updated and deepened BIM standard that helps designers to better understand their work and ensures an effective collaboration with other market participants. Speaker believes that Russia should go in this direction.
Anne Urrila, Product Manager at Solibri Inc company, is also certain that maturity level of BIM is growing. BIM technologies are important to construction industry as means of improving business effectiveness and return on investment. However, without a normative-legal base that would be consistent with the Nacional BIM standard development, increasing investment and construction work effectiveness will be difficult.
Donatas Aksomitas, CEO at AGA CAD Ltd, emphasized that designers, as well as musicians, must have a single language. Uniform standard – is a revolution in world of BIM, that allows simplification of project participants’ collaboration and the construction process itself.
Speakers from abroad were not the only ones to speak up in conference “Practice BIM 2016”, Russia’s state construction care institutes’ representatives also had their say. They drew attention to the fact that BIM project documentation checks can be done much faster, errors can be identified and eliminated easier, but the problem is that part of designers and customers are irrationally afraid of submitting BIM models to supervising institutes. Another problem – sometimes BIM models contain excessive information, which aggravates the evaluation.
The striving to create legal framework taking into consideration BIM trends was mentioned as a positive thing. Although legal system of construction industry does not allow changing the usual project documentation to information models yet, Russia is already moving in this direction. It is likely that over the time, BIM development in eastern regions will make Russia a more attractive market for foreign design and construction specialists.
About PSS
PSS is engineering / consulting IT company, established in 1994. Company specializes in automation of design work and work efficiency increase on construction, real estate management and development companies, designing institutes, architecture and design bureaus. PSS training centers provide training for design and construction specialists.
Effective BIM implementation experience for design and construction companies, fast optimization and standardization of their business processes allows PSS company to increase productivity, reduce product delivery time and improve project quality with quick and limited investment.
PSS is an official representative and distributor of TOOLS4BIM solutions, developed by AGACAD, in Russian market. Learn more: www.pss.spb.ru
