BIM - Experiences of the application of a new method in an engineering company

Consulting engineers Leonhardt Andra and Partners were able to gather extensive experiences in the application of BIM. Not only first and second level BIM was used in practice, but also by contributing to research projects, the method was developed on higher levels. At daily practice, mainly closed BIMs are worked on by using proprietary software with a specific interface. Already on this first level BIM, many advantages are becoming obvious that also pay off on early project stages. It became apparent, that the application of open BIM with data exchange via IFC limits the functionalities of the participating software, as some model parameters can't be exchanged, or interfaces are defective. The participation in research projects shows on the one hand the chances of open BIM, on the other hand what problems have to be resolved. By developing the interfaces and Cloud/Grid computing, highly complex and computing time consuming analyses are made feasible. Web-based platforms allow efficient co-working of different disciplines and an optimized cooperation of different tools.