by Brianna Crandall — January 13, 2017 — On Tuesday, following a year-long development process, the National Institute of Building Sciences released its new guideline to help building owners utilize building information modeling (BIM). The National BIM Guide for Owners (NBGO) provides building owners with an approach, from their own profession’s standpoint, to create and fulfill BIM requirements for a typical project. Unveiled during Building Innovation 2017: The Institute’s Fifth Annual Conference and Expo, in Washington, DC, the BIM Guide is now available free online.
The National Institute of Building Sciences, with the support of global building technology society ASHRAE and the Building Owners and Managers Association International (BOMA), and financial support from the U.S. Department of Defense – Defense Health Agency, compiled a carefully balanced, integrated team that has worked for the past year to craft the NBGO. The team developed the guide under the premise that BIM, in and of itself, is not the end but rather the means to a number of potentially valuable project delivery outcomes for the building owner.
The 36-page NBGO addresses three broad areas the owner should understand in order to work effectively with the Project BIM Team:
- Process
- Infrastructure and standards
- Execution
The BIM Guide provides building owners with a documented process and procedure for their design teams to follow to produce a standard set of BIM documents during the design and construction of the facility, and for maintenance and operations of the facility upon handoff. Establishing the criteria, specifications and expectations in the design and construction process will help owners capture the full value of investing in BIM, while providing a uniform approach for institutional and commercial building owners to achieve consistent BIM requirements for their facilities, notes the Institute.
The new guideline, which is based on a number of foreign, federal, state and local BIM guides that already exist, is geared to a generic facility with uniform requirements for use by a variety of government, institutional and commercial building owners. It references a range of documents and practices, including those contained within the National BIM Standard-United States.
The Institute expressed thanks to the NBGO team, and said the next step will be to submit the BIM Guide for publication as an industry standard. The National BIM Guide for Owners is available online.
