Realizing the Shift from BIM Authorship to Lifecycle Data Management

BRENT MAUTI: All right, thank you everyone for coming. My name is Brent Mauti. I'm the global director for design technology at IBI group. I've been with them for about three years. I've been working with BIM for-- goodness-- I want to say, at least a decade, decade and a half. And it's always about this promise. And I loved a lot of the stuff I've heard today about managing data, doing something with data. That's really what I equate this all to.

So what I'm going to show you is just something that IBI has been working on, a little bit of how we're trying to tap into what Revit can do-- and then tapping into a system that we have in place that allows us to bring our information to asset management. Now, the first thing, though, it's all about the people. And I've been in a couple sessions where we've talked about the power of the teams, whether it's your discipline modalities, your BIM champions, your BIM leads.

For us also, it's the corporate structure. I was brought into IBI to say, come and do something with all of this CAD and BIM stuff. And it was very broad and very rewarding-- opportunities for innovation, opportunities to build teams, opportunities to do something with data. So this talk here, we're going to go through-- oops, wrong way.

We're going to talk just two seconds, if that, on what BIM is to me at IBI group. And then the case study is going to be our office building, which is our headquarters in Toronto. We have about 600-plus employees. And it's about managing assets and how do you manage assets in a large corporation and make something that's technologically viable for outside businesses to outside clients?

So from our perspective, we said, we have to make it work for ourselves first. And one of the biggest assets, as I keep mentioning, is our people. Without the people, we can't do what we do. I couldn't do what I do. I've got one of my people right there, if she wants to raise her hand. There we go. So it's about managing and understanding those assets-- the people assets-- as well as the physical assets that we cost and we built. All of that fuses together.

So sorry. I got to get used to the down arrow. OK, so BIM-- all the time in the past, it's all been about these buildings, multi-disciplines, everything coming together in one overall built form-- multiple disciplines, virtual environment, coordinated whole. From that coordinated whole, we get your material quantity take-offs, your class detection, and all the other stuff.

And when I bring this up, I say, yeah, we've been there, done that. We talk about it-- not really been there, done that. Because we talk a lot about it. We got to make it better, make it more efficient. That's why a lot of us are here. But when I say, we do BIM on everything, it's-- for the most part-- these things. We don't always do clash detection.

There's logic around, how do you manage? How do you mitigate? How do you resolve? Who's doing it? Is it costed? Is it budgeted?-- all that good stuff. And that's always in play. The legal aspects around it as well-- those quantities are great. I always say, that's only as good as how intelligent we are when we're modeling.

And I've seen examples of people modeling columns and rotating them 90 degrees and making it a beam. Well, no, it's now a column. It's still a column. It's just a horizontal one. Therefore, all that stuff up there is wrong. And the concept of, everything will fix itself, because I have those clashes-- and getting people to understand, it's not just a push-button concept of BIM to say it'll fix these things.

So all of that is at play. And we're mitigating it. And we're going to get better, as an industry, as well as an organization. Then a colleague of mine from my past-- I used to be at CH2M Hill. I don't know if there's at least one of them in the room here. Worked with a colleague. She would always say to me, no, Brent. Don't forget about my BIM. It's not just the buildings.

I am an architect by education, sort of by practice. But I'm all about BIM. But she would always say, imagine all the things we can do from the civil perspective that brings together BIM. It's all the stuff you do in buildings scattered around vast landscapes. And I always love this, because this is your typical site. And as an architect, I say, remember, our buildings don't float.

So I've never been on a project that's just one piece of software. And people will say, well, what about an all-Revit project? Well, no, because all the stuff has to go into somewhere else. And that interconnectivity of data-- and we're moving more into this internet of things. And everything we design is connected to something else. Therefore, all of this connection into this underground is there, is valid, is true. And we have to account for that.

And this is where I was always pointed out, you got your existing, your new, the drapery on top. And for all the architects, they say, there's your architecture. And this is the civil environment. All of that is information. All of that has to be accounted for and connected. The vast landscapes of roadways-- actually, when I was in my thesis year, we had one of the projects working on how to design something inside all of the leftover spaces around freeway interchange, because there's a lot of landscape there with potential.

And I don't know if you remember that, Steve. Come on, man. It's OK-- a colleague from U of T. Roundabouts, rail, laser-- all this stuff. I'm just blitzing through this. This could be courses upon courses of all the stuff alone-- it all fuses together. It's all about sources of information. It all comes together. All the data, at the end of the day, is nothing but a collection of components.

That's all that is. If we don't know what we're modeling, there's no hope to do anything with it. And that's the beauty of these BIM-authoring tools today, whether it's your Revit, your Plant 3D, Civil 3D, or any of the other vendors-- apparently Graphisoft, et cetera. It forces you to place your own intelligence. Know what you're doing before you do it. And bring it all together.

BIM is all of this stuff-- everything. And I love some of these examples, especially that one in the middle. That's all BIM-- you're civil buildings. This project-- just very quickly-- this here is a bus rapid transway project we are working on. It's a design build, but complete linear BIM. There's no Revit. But all of those components were cataloged and logged.

And when I show the asset management system, those are infused from here into the system with full tracking of all the landscape, all the light posts, all the telephone poles, et cetera, all through the individual identification of all the components. But to do that, we had to sit down with our electrical designers and say, yeah, this is what you would model across a 12-kilometer bus [INAUDIBLE].

And they looked at us and said, what do you mean? We're just going to put a circle and draw a couple lines. No, no. We're going to do a little more than that. So that was the BIM. When we do this-- and it's all about this data synergy beyond-- this is something that I try to resonate heavily in IBI-- we've got to understand what we're doing. And we've got to plan it out.

So the term EIR comes from the BS-1192, the whole UK task force, and the desire to drive client-delivered requirements into the process. So employer information requirement-- employer equals owner-client, and that's why it applies in North America as well. In the case study I'm going to show, we were the owner. So it was a lot easier for us to just define what we want it to do.

But the gist of that is, to bring stuff like this to market, it's not a matter of saying, hey, technologically, I can now make data dance across platforms. There's got to be the value proposition. You got to understand why you're doing it. Why would a client care? Why would it be an added value that they want to pay for?

Because the flip side of that is-- I've got a lot of architects and engineers at IBI group that says, you know what, Brent? This BIM stuff is going to kill us, because they're expecting us to do all this additional scope for no cost. And I used to stand back and say, hold on. That's one crazy myth right there. It's not a no-cost. We have to plan it in the business process. So let's plan it, accommodate it, and make it work.

So define, look at our capabilities, and then do that plan-- and that BIM execution plan is the Bible. It has to be done, especially when you're trying to fuse into asset management. Or else you're just setting things up for failure.

So first we said, all right, we're going to use buildings as our case study. So the first thing-- I walk into IBI. And I say, BIM is not just Revit. And I've resonated. I'm fighting that battle. BIM is a process. Revit is an awesome tool. And Revit has its goods. And Revit has its challenges. But it's all good, right?

So then we said, let's pick our first project. Let's make the Revit model. So it's fine. We also did the same on the civil side. So I guess, the point of that little story is, anything we do from a data perspective, if it works just with buildings and it doesn't work with linear infrastructure or just with buildings and not with pipes, there's a failure in the workflow in the process. That's the only message that I give internally.

As long as we can accommodate multiple authoring workflows to get that asset geometry plus data to do something with it, we have something. So we took our Revit model. And we said, let's try to enhance our facility management-- so our people assets first. And then we'll look at the physical assets. So what could we do in Revit in order to accommodate that and use it as a data-viewing mechanism, as well as a living management repository for our staff at our head office?

So that's what we did. So the first thing is, we had this model. We developed it. That's our office. We're on six floors of this building, scattered across everywhere. And we said, this is now our central hub. So the beauty of this was, it involved maybe one traditional architectural designer. And we trained a facilities manager. We trained one of our people in HR and a couple other designers that, traditionally, would never touch Revit-- and said, this is now our mechanism to manage the people.

Because what they do-- and it was crazy. We'd look at the process. And we'd say, hey, we got to update a space plan. Well, the space plan is on some server. And it's some DWG file. Somebody's writing in the names and mapping in some things and looking at an HR system. And it's this real disconnected workflow.

So we said, how could we take the people from an HR repository, the information about those people, graphically display it, and do something with it? So of course, the start was the model. The model is the hub of everything, right? Then on the Revit side, we said, OK. Simple Revit-- anybody who's played with Revit, you guys will know how to make color schemes.

So we said, let's build in some very quick schemes on how to represent the data. So we said, first-- so this goes back to your EIR-- what are the owner's requirements for this? What do we want to know? And IBI is great in this building, because you don't know who's boss is where, because our staff is scattered just all over the place, because on one day we may be working on a high-rise building, another day a hospital, another day a transit facility. And everybody's everywhere.

So we said, OK, let's look at the departments and look at what divisions we map to. So it's inside our internal corporate structure-- whether we're full-time or part-time. That's a unique one, because sometimes we just need space for a temporary hire for somebody visiting from another office. So where are all our part-time people? And can we use or utilize their space?

Enter the names, et cetera. Who are they reporting to? Huge-- so when I walk around the space, I have a small group. My group is scattered on three floors. And that's a challenge in itself. Other people have just people plopped all over the place and project teams, et cetera. So we wanted to look at how to manage that and visually and then who the leads are, et cetera.

So that was the concept-- just define the information. Work with our facility management teams, as well as our leads in the office, to see, what irks you when you're trying to people manage? And as I keep saying, people are the number one asset to achieve what we're doing here today.

So then we went and we said, OK. Now, we're going to want to graphically display them. So we went ahead, made a couple of view templates, harnessing the color schemes-- one for each. And you guys can probably see where we're going with this. Once we had the view templates, we're able to portray that information and display it. So we'll show the portrayal after. But now, the critical thing-- all this stuff.

And this is the critical piece. So we said, how do we tie together the data from an HR system, a financial system, just the names of the people and where they sit-- so the spatial planning, and infuse that altogether? So with lookup tables and just basic scheduling, charting that exists within Revit itself, we built the mappings around all of the people.

So when I have a person in this chart, it knows to go look out to the HR system to find out, are they active? Are they part-time? Or are they inactive? Who their boss is-- to go to the financial system to find out what organization they map into-- so what part of the corporate infrastructure they're attached to. It tied that all together.

So once we had this built, we have now this model where we can push and pull information. Usually, we just use the Import-Export to Excel tools. We'd like to automate that a little better. And we probably could-- to the point now where those facility managers can just go to each level. And they're just selecting a person. And when they select the person, it reads from that data. That pulled the data from everywhere, all the other sources, and fills up that information.

So now, the Revit model itself can be used to simply map, as people are moving, hiring, firing, relocations, et cetera, temporary-- whatever it is. Enter the name. Everything fills out. And we start to get the displays. So from a people management perspective, now we have the mechanism. And then we said, well, OK. A couple of things we want to do-- quality check and visualize.

So the quality check perspective-- we just go and look and we run some quick validators in Revit. We see where we have the doubles like that, figure out what's going on, resolve, fix-- Make sure we don't have spaces double counted for. And then we just started giving portrayals of this information. We said, OK, now we can see mapping.

And this is what they wanted to start to see-- was, where do we have clumps of like pieces of data?-- so like data, relative to our assets, which is our people. And where do we have unlike or spottiness? So when we started to develop this, the facilities get their floor plans-- very simple. Everybody comes out. Every one of the ID spaces has a person connected to them.

And when the different templates are applied, we can now see who leads the people. And when we see stuff like this, we can start to analyze, OK, why is it so spotty? Why can't we rearrange, refine? Is it project teams? How can we arrange our people to make them more efficient or to allow us to do better work?-- leading into the latter part of this presentation.

So with these mechanisms, it allowed us to just bring that data together, optimize that information, and create the foundation for getting this information to somewhere else. And that's the critical piece. This is the full-time active. You can see, we don't have very many open spaces, which is the other problem too-- space management.

So from an asset management perspective, managing a space that's occupied by people can only be done if we understand the underlying issues or the underlying opportunities around how to arrange and accommodate the people. So once we did this, we said, OK. Good on Revit. We can do something. So now what?

So when I talk asset management, I always say, we're going to author information in multiple systems. And now, I need to get that information out. So I do a lot of work with the Canada BIM council, Building Smart Alliance-- and to get the information out via the IFC file. So the critical thing about this was that it was all IFC compatible.

We used to have those AutoCAD drawings. Getting an AutoCAD drawing into IFC doesn't really work. So we're trying to get something neutral to then be open format, to then do something with-- was always a bit of a challenge. In the BIM environment, I now have data open or data neutral. Everything is there. Everything that was in Revit is here.

It's all relative or representative in the IFC file. And once it's in this format, I can do absolutely anything with it. And I say [INAUDIBLE]. I should put quotes on that-- if you learn what to do with it. I'm not a software guy. But I was able to hand this down to IBI software people. And all of a sudden, they said, oh, wait a minute. This is open. I can do this, and this, and try this. And the world, all of a sudden, became pretty interesting. And I'll touch on that in a second.

With the IFC file, again, we have the spatial representation. So now, when we think about space planning in the asset management world, our spaces are represented-- the people spaces, as well as the actual building room spaces as well-- so a very critical piece. So then, in the IBI world, we said, great. That's helpful for us. But now, what does that mean in the overall facilities and asset management?

So one of the intriguing things about IBI Group-- I haven't said-- IBI stands for Intelligence, Buildings, Infrastructure. Buildings-- pretty straightforward, right? It's your architects, building engineers. Infrastructure is the linear projects, so transit, pipelines, waterways, stuff of that nature. The intelligence side was something that is so phenomenally attractive for me. It's the innovative side of IBI, in my opinion.

When I got there, I remember saying to the CEO, what opportunity is this?-- an entire group building business around the selling of solutions and services. I can do a lot with that in BIM. And he goes, OK. Just come in and make sure we can still print from Revit and solve all of these problems first. And sometimes, we do struggle, just pressing Print from Revit. But it's OK. We'll get there.

But yeah, it's all good. On the intelligence side though, it was just exploring-- what are the things we have? And what I discovered is that we actually had a full-on asset management system here in the United States, down in Florida, for the Department of Transportation, managing linear assets, active and passive assets along the toll routes-- so cameras, tollways, all the signaling devices-- bringing in all of these capabilities, except for that-- no BIM viewer.

So when I looked at this and I said, OK, hold on a minute-- so I can do quite a bit with this already. With the BIM piece, I said, because it's open format IFC, can this be built into the asset management system, as it existed, and start to fuse the information together? And they said, I don't know. So the fact that it was open-- again, open BIM.

I'm going to keep stressing that. That was the most important factor, because I could have done that modeling in Revit, [? Ecosym, ?] ARCHICAD, Vectorworks, Catia-- I don't know. Go on. It doesn't matter. As long as I can get to IFC, I have hope. So with all of these abilities-- and the one that was particularly of interest was the repair and the scheduled maintenance.

This system has the ability for users to track problems, to enter problems, and advise on them. So the concept, for me, was to be able to fuse the BIM-- the digital representation of these assets-- together in one system. How could that not be a value? So then our CEO said, well, what are the overall benefit? Brent, I hear you techie talk. What are the actual benefits?

So we looked, from our own end. We sat with our facilities managers. We said, OK, what can we do? Or how would it improve? And this is what we came up with. So streamlining the operations-- so starting that, that's why I started with the Revit piece, to streamline the operations of our people assets and to streamline the operations of the physical purchased assets.

Communication across the stakeholders-- user reports, the ability to enter trouble tickets, enter issues, and have something happen around that information. Our asset reports-- once everything's in a system, all the data is together. That's the biggest thing. Take away those filing cabinets of information. And I know that's older old school. But even take away going into-- it's all on the server. I don't even know what that means when I hear it. All the stuff is on the server.

And what am I supposed to do with it? Search and find and-- I don't know. Maintenance management-- we're able to connect to-- and I'll show that-- external entities and help bring in the required external repair people, for example, to come in and schedule to fix the assets. And then the risk with compliance, by being able to represent and show that we're meeting the needs of specific programmatic issues or security or safety or whatever would be the compliance requirement.

So before we were in our building in Calgary, we did a similar office reconstruction. And we said, OK-- this is just a quick example. We had a mass amount of money spent on the physical assets as well as the people assets, to manage them. So we said, how are we managing this? And we analyzed our Calgary office. And we said, we could have done that better. Why aren't we using the systems we have in place plus the technological information we have about that data?

So let's do that better. And also, when we're leasing or going into financial agreements-- arrangements-- to procure the assets, how do we track when the leases are up? When the warranties are up? How do we manage all that information, other than having it all thrown on a server somewhere?

So conceptually, we said, in this asset management system, we're going to fuse our BIM data with where it is, with the asset information. Now, the where it is-- the spatial location it is intriguing for me, because that touches upon just what we heard at the keynote. And I love Autodesk and Esri coming together. How beautiful is that, right? But that's your GIS information fused in.

The system, when I found out that we had it, already has the ability to have mapping. So in a building, it's a little different, because-- well, the building's in one spot. Hundreds of assets are together. So where the assets are inside the buildings are something worth thinking about right now. But in the linear environment, your assets are scattered across kilometers.

So we said, OK, we have possibilities here. And then we went on to say, OK, well, what are we actually going to do? So this is the workflow that we came up with. And the very critical piece is at the beginning-- getting out of the BIM authoring tool into the open BIM standard, so that that information is exposed and available for something else.

So a simple workflow of-- make sure the stuff is in the model. Make sure it's modeled right. Make sure the data is there. Get it into an importable format. Fuse it into the asset management system. And then we have the orientation and user awareness, which is what we did with our facility managers.

Now, the interesting piece here-- the asset spreadsheet. So the concept there is to tie together where the asset is in the BIM model to where the asset is in the real world. And that's what that system said. It laid the framework upon which it guided us on how to fuse this information together.

So we had our initial model-- validated all the assets. And this is a critical thing, because we had a lot of dialogue with the architects and the interior designers. Well, we don't want to model all that. We don't need that. We're not liable for that. That's outside of my scope-- et cetera. And we get it. So that's why it goes right back to the beginning of the planning for this type of a project.

I'm an architect. When I'm doing an architectural project, if I'm not specing, if I'm not designing, if it's something that's fit in afterwards, I may or may not have that in my drawings. But I certainly won't have it to the level of detail or development that's required for asset management. So knowing that we were going to do this, there was a general understanding that, for design purposes, to get our permits and all of that, something had to be done.

For this purpose, it's the additional scope-- the definition of what had to happen. And we planned for it and executed it. And that's where our BIM team came in to make sure that there was an understanding that what had to be in the model was in the model, that it was coordinated with what was being installed and what was being constructed, and that it didn't conflict with any of the design intent.

Once we had that-- validate that everything goes through to the open BIM format. And then we have something. And that something is the validation of all that information, to make sure the data is there, the data is accurate, and the data can then move into the asset management system.

Now, a quick sidestep here-- when we were doing this, our CEO said, well, what if we don't have a BIM? Is this completely dependent on us doing the design and having a Revit model? And I said, well, no. But it's dependent on a model. But it's not really dependent on us doing the model.

So we started working with scan-to-BIM technologies. And it doesn't matter which outfit did this. The point was, you can go. You can scan. For me, the critical thing to make this successful is to have a scan that scans to BIM. Don't give me the point clouds that I'm just going to see, yeah, I have point clouds.

So the result here was a full Revit deliverable, complete with asset-rich-- and we didn't even know they were going to model us the ductwork and everything, because that wasn't in our model. So the scanned model has actually got a higher amount of assets than our actual one that we used for the project. But this was the output from that.

So when I showed this to the CEO, I said, look, this is something we can do. So this is a service that's available. And the beauty of this is, these types of service-- I was in a class yesterday-- and you may have experience-- they do it with linear infrastructure as well as vertical. So scanning inside buildings, scanning your roadways-- doesn't matter-- so always.

Can it can work in the full realm of BIM? Are you stuck to just buildings? Know where your solutions have those barriers and go forth. So the asset management system-- once everything was there, the IFC filed the asset data refuse together. This is what the system was. It's just a quick list of assets. We built in the BIM viewer.

So previously, it would show a Google map or nothing. So we said, we need the BIM viewer. All of the information was there, ready to be filled out. But the ability to interact wasn't. With the IFC viewer built-in, I now, as a facility manager, can take my asset list or traverse the model itself, find the asset or the location I'm looking for, have direct linkage or direct connection to all my data.

And that direct connection-- that's a huge piece. Because not only is it shop drawing information, ONM manual-- whatever we received upon delivery of the asset-- validation of where it is-- the financial and warranty data is filled in as well. And then I can report on it. And that financial data-- we lease our assets-- 5-year lease. This is my cost.

I can now analyze the cost of my assets, when those assets are scheduled to go. Do I renew my leases? Do I let them go? Enter into new leases? What's the cost impact if I do that? Do I buy-out my asset? What's the lifespan of my asset if I buy it out?

What will be the cost to replace it five years after the lease is scheduled to be complete? Or what's the cost impact if they all fail? Is there an operational cost impact? Do I have to pay for it to be disposed? And will I have a higher cost of replacement down the road?

All of that is just information. It's in there. It's in there, built into the system. So I thought, wonderful. So this was how we're now managing our office space. In addition, now, as a user, as a facility manager, I now have real and virtual side-by-side. I can walk around with my tablet, laptop-- whatever-- validate and ensure that the asset information is maintained and kept current.

That's a service. That's something that has to happen, because this asset information lives. Our CEO does a graph where he says, when we're working in design, we're about a speck. Construction is a much larger speck. And then there's this large realm of operation that goes on and on for decades upon decades.

This asset information will change and the services to maintain currency and validation. Or else, the system will outdate itself. So we have that manager role for the asset data. And it's no different than what a facility manager would do today without this, only they're putting it in filing cabinets or putting it on the server-- somewhere-- and hopefully being able to find it.

And then when they change, and they go, here, Brent, I don't know where it is. The other thing we do is, as a user-- so how do I interact now? I'm not the facility manager. I'm just the user. I've got an issue with an asset. So it happened to come with a mobile device too. So I can go, scan a barcode, and bring up the asset information-- Android, iPhone-- doesn't matter.

And I can modify the information or start to enter my issues with it. The TV doesn't work. The microwave doesn't work. The chair is squeaky. The table is crooked-- whatever it is. So when we were building in, the bar code had to be aligned with the GUID from Revit, as well as the asset entry.

Those were our three adjoining points. As long as that data was glued together, it's accessible from all of the systems. And that was just a thing of simplicity and beauty. They're just all connected. That bar code could have been the GUID from Revit. It didn't matter.

But we said, let's make it something a little smaller. So the bar codes are a little smaller and whatever. But we have that synergy of data. So unique identification-- backbone software identification, asset management entry fused together-- beautiful.

So the result was a system that's portrayed uniquely, depending on who's coming into the system. And I'll just focus on User for a moment. Users are unique in that it's not just me, the asset user, but it's also the asset fixer. So they want to be able to access the system. So something breaks down-- my HVAC. One of the cooling units-- broken. What do we do?-- or a heater or whatever.

We list it as broken. We connect it to the mechanical repair team-- whomever the external entities are that we go to. They can then peer into the system, which is cloud hosted, and see the assets they are required to fix and repair. So it has the security around groups of who needs to see what-- so lighting, versus HVAC, versus finishes, versus furniture, versus interior users that are actually using the office.

I get to see all the assets. Our facility manager gets to see, maybe, all the financial information and the stuff that, as a user, I shouldn't see. Plus, we have the mobile device that allows us to connect and interact with the data live. And it's those bottom two.

So as a user, I can look. And I can scan the TV and say, oh, yeah. That's the right TV. That's fine. But I can scan it and say, it's not working-- so what they called the trouble ticket. So trouble tickets and maintenance tickets were two features that are built into the system.

The trouble ticket is my social interaction with the asset. And for me, this is a realm of starting to get into the IoT end of things where, if I want to now analyze, how are the assets being used? How are they performing? Are they right or are they wrong? What am I basing that on? I would base that on everybody's interaction with the asset.

Is a microwave always breaking in a certain location? Was it a certain manufacturer? Is there a temperature issue? Do I have to analyze the instance of the asset and how it's interacting with everything around it? Is it particular to a manufacturer, to a design, to things beside? What are the issues?

And I can start to see that social data start to feed and impact the design of these interior spaces. And then I can do something with that. Well, without this system, there's no social information. Same with the maintenance tickets-- again, live, connected to the asset itself.

And the best example-- because I get asked often, why? Just what's the point of this? So what if I am the electrical guy we call in to change our lights and change the lights in this room. And I pull up the asset. I look very quickly. And I say, yep. I can't reach that without a good step ladder or a scissor lift or something. What are the rules?

I know what to bring. Versus-- I come and I show up. Oh, I can't fix that. I go away, re-schedule. I come back. All of a sudden, how much time has gone by to change some lights? So there's that type of thing. The other one is the concealed space.

So if something goes wrong in an area you can't see, the model will show you where that is, what it is, and give me the information to schedule and manage and make that repair as optimal and efficient as possible and, hopefully, as quick. I'm going to hop to the linear example we did.

But the example-- comes up a lot is, what if I'm changing something that's in a concealed space, buried in the ground, in a confined space, and I have to know how to get there? Buried-- I need rope and harness to go down into a manhole. You can plan all this stuff without going, going back, analyzing, communicating. It just makes all of that more optimized.

So when we were happy with this proof of concept, in-application functioning, we said, great. Now, what about linear? So how do we make this thing work in the linear world? So we took that rapid transway project. So two things I'm showing here-- the mapping capability.

So every asset can be mapped along lat-long, so that it shows up where it's supposed to be-- ties into the backbone systems. If you're using a tool like Civil 3D or Inroads, et cetera, we know where the assets are. So in this example, we coupled the assets. So it's not just thousands of assets scattered across. So we put them into lat-long groups-- same concept-- into the IFC-- into the BIM viewer. It allows me to connect with the asset, see it in place, and have all the relevant asset information at my fingertips.

Now, to achieve this, you could imagine the challenge here with models that are 12 kilometers in length-- it was this project. So it's a little bit of a different story than doing a room or a collection of rooms in a building, but equally as feasible. And I think that's the critical message, that any one of these BIM solutions-- you see, the difference was right there.

The project was in Civil 3D. The assets were there. And it was building-- it's all about the right workflow and why are you doing it. And we looked at the use case of the building. And we said, it's very similar in the horizontal realm, because we still have to manage those assets-- just a little more complicated sometimes to get to these assets.

To achieve this-- same concept with preparing the model. We just had a bunch of DWG Civil 3D files. And there's our light-- I love the light posts. I just love them, because I remember just sitting with the team and saying, guys, you could do this. You don't need the circles. Just do it. Make it work. It's there.

And the landscape as well-- so here, it was just, bring them all together. So we merged them. So the workflow was to make everything one. And the landscaping was intriguing. Because even from the BIM world, we were able to analyze clashes of fully-grown root bulbs relative to proposed piping and actually make what I call a temporal clash change, because you would have a clash in 10, 15 years. You may not have it when you cut the hole and put the little tree in the ground.

So it was interesting to be able to analyze clashes on stuff that won't quite be there until things grow through natural cause and effect. Once we had the Civil 3D merged together-- IFC file. Now, IFC and Civil are becoming a lot friendlier, which is great. So we were able to achieve this. And once we had that, again, it was about data validation, analyzing the asset spreadsheet, making sure all of that data was present.

And the trick here was validating the lat-long coordination of every single asset that we wanted to be portrayed in the mapping instance of the asset management system. But again, it was doable. I guess, I should pause here and say, this is where I say, BIM doesn't happen for free. This stuff doesn't just happen-- click of the button-- you have something robust and managed.

And we have a project manager that heard, once-- I say, it's almost a push button. It's like, oh, just push a button and all of this stuff happens-- biggest mistake, I think, ever saying push button. I was referring to one little function. And all of a sudden, BIM is push button. I said, no, no. The function was push button, not BIM.

So again, having this-- the ability here then was to define, where do I have clumps of assets? Now, we could have had assets scattered around. We have station stops, where that's your vertical. So I now have buildings and civil fused together. And that's a thing of beauty for me. And again, we were able to select the assets, select the information, and go forth from there-- similar data.

So I'm going to close with this slide. And I've used this on many, many presentations. And for me, when I came to IBI, I said, this is what I want to do-- and actually achieving this or partially achieving this. Now, this solution is not the only way. Who knows what this would be like in six months time-- in a year's time.

But for me, when I made this slide-- it's always because we're stuck with BIM authoring. We're in there. We're in the world of Revit, the world of Civil 3D. And we get stuck. And I hear oftentimes, well, what you can do with BIM is defined by the confines of Revit. And that's so not true.

Revit is powerful. I'm not anti-Revit. I'm not anti anything. But no software defines what you can and cannot do. So in the BIM authoring piece, the whole concept of the building smart alliance with open BIM is to say, do whatever you need to and whatever you can do in the authoring software, but do it in a mechanism that it can be taken out and furthered.

And that's what we exercised in this whole routine. The fact that the power of the IFC file can take that information and bring it out-- now, there's other examples. Bentley has their [? i-model. ?] That does something similar, but it's proprietary. Anything that's proprietary and not infused into an ISO standard has that potential of software-based limitation. IFC is completely open.

And as it grows, its whole entire mission, via the ISO standard, is to ensure that it maintains its openness, and its openness and validity, to ensure that we can move information in and out. That's my generic BIM. Then on the asset management side, the concept-- everything we touch-- everything-- will live for a very long time. It's not just in the confines of my design or in the confines of a construction project.

I do lecturing at Algonquin College. And I'm excited. It's the first year of Lifecycle BIM Management. It's a great course. It's all about this. Get out of the confines of, today, I'm designing. Today, I'm the architect. It's my information. You can't have it. I can't share.

Cries of negligence-- cries of liability-- they're all convenient excuses to not share. If I give you my model, what am I going to be negligent for? Because I gave you a model? I may be negligent if we didn't have a conversation about why I'm giving you my model. But this whole fear of, I can't share data, because I might get sued-- sue me.

I'm going to share my data with you. And this is why. If you don't like that, don't take it. But don't take it based on my constraints and then sue me. That'll get laughed out. And I do presentations with a construction law lawyer. And she laughs, because I do the BIM side. She does the construction law side. And we have that dialogue about, well, what can you actually be sued for?