I just got back from the Building Innovation 2014: The National Institute of Building Sciences second annual Conference & Expo, held in Washington, D.C., January 6-10, 2014.

My feeling include equal amounts frustration and amazement.

Frustration:

1. NIBS, NBIMS… has limited “outreach” vs. other organizations.   Outreach requires  reaching out to your targeted shareholders effectively and engaging in dialog to understand what is needed by each disparate entity.  Outreach is a continuous and open process.  What I saw at the Conference, especially from NIBS, was a lecture format with NIBS updating the audience with what they were doing and/or about individual domains.   I further noted that the multiple NIBS teams/projects appear to have little, if any, collaboration and/or interdependence.  There is effort and ability to change, and we must make this a priority.  The Building Smart Alliance and NBIMS (National BIM Standard) efforts fall within/under NIBS.  Is this an issue?   bSa and NBMIS must be dynamic and business focused in order to drive BIM, the life-cycle management of the built environment.  

Amazement:

1. I continue to be amazed of the apparent lack of understanding/education/focus of all participants/efforts, upon the collaborative business best practices/processes… such as Integrated Project Delivery  – IPD, Job Order Contracting – JOC, Public-Private Partnerships – PPP, etc. , not to mention life-cycle management and total cost of ownership.

2. I am amazed the NBIMS is called a standard.  It is not a standard, nor should it be called one.  NBIMS is a “best practice guideline”.  The latter, as well as a robust ontology, data architecture, etc. is extremely important.

3.  I am amazed the NBIMS remains “in the weeds”.   Focus upon technical issues will NOT change the status quo.   Focus upon change management and business issues is the only path to BIM adoption and success.  Focus upon economic and environmental solutions and teaming with Owner and FM professional associations must be razor sharp.

4. Lastly, I am amazed at the amount of dedication and work by all NBIMS volunteers.  I, in no way, wish to minimize the amount of work in key areas such as OMNICLASS, data exchanges, etc.  NBIMS.US.3.0 will be a significant improvement vs. prior documents.  However, is it keeping pace with the world?  Are there enough resources to develop critical business processes for BIM and embed them in cloud-based collaborative technologies?

Are we slowing down versus the rest of world?    Can we act as a catalyst to change we  are not collaborating internally, or with the rest of the world.  Are we are attempting to “push” change vs. “support and enable” change?

Until we all learn to speak the language required at  “boardroom” tables, we will all remain irrelevant.   Productivity, Collaboration, Accuracy, Transparency …. are all of extreme value to any organization… all result from BIM.  Can we get this message out?