The Digital Building Lab at Georgia Tech is partnering with the American Concrete Institute, the Precast Concrete Institute and the American Institute of Steel Construction to develop universal standards for transporting 3-D digital models among architecture, engineering, fabricator and construction teams.

These Building Information Models (BIM) change hands dozens of times in any given project, between planners, interior designers and engineers; between contractors and fabricators; and between project tasks such as space planning and structural design.

The exchanges often lead to costly miscommunication and labor hours to interpret and re-work information. In fact, the National Institute of Standards and Technology reported that $15.8 billion is lost annually by poor data exchange.

“This has been a major impediment to full adoption of BIM’s full capabilities,” said Georgia Tech Digital Building Lab Director Chuck Eastman. “The Lab is working directly with its corporate members and the above industry groups to develop the technology and information standards that address the challenges that come with segmented business practices and multiple software platforms organizing terabytes of data.”

BIM, a technology pioneered at Georgia Tech by Eastman, is an integrated modeling technology and process for exploring a project's key physical, functional and performance characteristics digitally before it's built, helping to deliver projects faster and more economically, while minimizing environmental impact.

The research team at Georgia Tech is hosting national workshops on campus and co-authoring enterprise-wide Information Delivery Manuals with the three influential organizations. The work on interoperability and standards also is supported by the Charles Pankow Foundation.