Level 2 to Level 3 Collaboration- a Culture Shift or a Process shift?
According to (NBS, 2014) BIM levels are a government adoption process from a level to the next level for moving the construction industry to ‘full’ collaborative working in a progressive, distinct and recognisable way. (Mills, 2015) states these levels run from 0 to 3 and are used as measures of BIM maturity; that is the construction supply chain’s ability to operate and exchange information.
Where is BIM Level 2 is a partial collaborative process in the form of how the information is exchanged between different parties using their BIM author tools through a common file format. Which enables any organisation to be able to combine that data with their own to make a federated BIM model, and to carry out interrogative checks on it. Hence, any BIM author tool that each party used must be capable of exporting to one of the common agreed on the file format. This method of working that has been set as a minimum target by the UK government to be achieved by 2016 for all work in the public-sector work.
With ongoing development of the processes and tools available, and feedback from early adopter projects and other industry experience, the UK Government in 2014 refined its definition of level 2 BIM as containing the following seven components (BIM Talk, 2015):
1. PAS 1192–2:2013 Specification for information management for the capital/delivery phase of construction projects using building information modelling
2. PAS 1192–3:2014 Specification for information management for the operational phase of assets using building information modelling
3. BS 1192–4 Collaborative production of information. Part 4: Fulfilling employers information exchange requirements using COBie — Code of practice
4. Building Information Model (BIM) Protocol
5. GSL (Government Soft Landings)
Level 2 sees the progression to building information models and the federation of those models between different parties in the project team. Federation takes place within a single shared online area known as a common data environment. In broad terms, Level 2 is defined as “file-based collaboration and library management”.
There’ll be clear Employer’s Information Requirements or EIRs, either issued by the Employer or developed by the service provider, with the Employer, using plain language questions to interpret their needs accurately.
Each supplier’s ability should be evaluated before contract award, and in this sense ‘Supplier’ refers to all professional service providers in the project team.
There’ll be a BIM Protocol, a BIM Execution Plan, and information exchanges will occur within that shared area we described earlier, known as the common data environment.
All of those elements will result in the delivery to the employer of a coordinated graphical and non-graphical project information model to the Employer for use in Asset Management. While these represent core principles, the constituents of a Level 2 BIM project are still evolving so as to ensure that keeping up to date with the latest developments.
On the other hand, BIM level 3 (open BIM) is a full collaboration process enabled by web services and compliant with emerging IFC standards between all disciplines using a single, shared project model which is held in a centralized repository and in real time. All parties can access and modify that same model, and the benefit is that it removes the final layer of risk for conflicting information. This level of BIM will utilise 4D construction sequencing, 5D cost information, and the model could then be passed to the Employer for use in lifecycle management as an ‘Asset Information Model’ which is called 6D project lifecycle management information.
