May 10th, 2015: Canadian University Dubai (CUD) has hosted an audience of architecture and engineering professionals to witness the Middle East’s first live demonstration of Building Information Modeling (BIM) in the cloud.
A developing standard in the process of architectural design, BIM allows practitioners to create a three-dimensional digital model of a building, which can deliver instant data analysis on the specification of a design, and allow simulations to be performed on the future behavior of the building.
The live demonstration, delivered in association with the UAE BIM User Group, revealed how the innovative design process can harness cloud technology to enable it to perform even more efficiently in a project environment.
Planners from South America, Europe, the Middle East and Asia were connected through an integrated messaging system, to demonstrate how design changes can be filed, applied and updated automatically throughout the system, and for all participants.
Mr. Florian Techel, an Assistant Professor in CUD’s School of Architecture and Interior Design, is conducting research in this area of technology, and has delivered workshops on the subject in collaboration with the UAE Society of Engineers. He believes that BIM through the cloud will be of great importance to the future of the industry.
“The capability of this technology is significant across every disciple within the sector,” said Mr. Techel, “It has the capacity to dramatically speed up the design and construction process as each of the professional parties can have access to, and instantly update the model, as opposed to traditional paper plans, which would take time to amend, circulate and act upon.”
The BIM standard has gradually been operationalized in other parts of the world, beginning with the United States in the later 2000s, up to the most recent adoption of the process by Singapore in 2015. While it has yet to be mainstreamed in the UAE, clients, contractors and authorities are becoming increasingly aware of its potential, and as part of his research portfolio, Mr. Techel is exploring how this important shift can be made.
He concluded, “While the technical capability for BIM has been around for a while, the adoption and implementation of the standard is still in the early stages. The challenge really lies in how we make the shift at a sector level, which is why it is important to engage with the industry through events like this.”
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