5,200 BIMS FOR CALIFORNIA //

5,200 BIMs for California                              
John Roach, Foundation for California Community Colleges; Kimon Onuma,  Onuma Inc.                   

Summary

The California Community College System (CCC) serves 2.75 million students at 112 California locations in 5,200 buildings and is the largest system of public higher education in the world. The Foundation for California Community Colleges manages a collection of systems and databases for the CCC with the entire California inventory of 71 million square feet of buildings and spaces, along with the CCC Geographic Information System (GIS) Collaborative of campuses and buildings which is now connected to BIM in the cloud.

The open standards web services based architecture of the system has connected BIM, GIS, building automation and controls, classroom scheduling, and the CCC is looking for others to connect as well. For a statewide system like this it is critical to manage the data in a neutral open format across many tools to allow for data to be accessible to those that need it.

At a very rapid pace a range of projects ranging from master plans, to new construction are supported by this approach. Each building is available at varying levels of development (LOD) and accessible as BIM & GIS in COBie, Web services, IFC, XML and other open standards. It would not make economic sense to wait for all 5,200 buildings to be in a high LOD before the data can be used for decision making.

The CCC welcomes other solutions to connect and add value to this system. Many different teams using a multitude of tools have connected to the CCC data. Some projects are coming in from detailed design/build BIMs. Others are coming in from master planning projects. Several districts have live sensors and automation systems connected to the CCC data for operations and maintenance. It is also not enough to assume that all the data that is needed for design and construction is critical for operations and maintenance. Some districts within the CCC are developing standards of what type of data is needed from BIM for operations and maintenance.

There are ongoing discussions with the utility companies statewide to connect to utility data and work with district data. Several districts have overlaid energy data, devices, sensors and controls.  Real time information enables unprecedented capabilities of benchmarking, sharing best energy management practices to benefit from existing utility incentives. Case studies include the energy management system at Pasadena City College, and examples from other districts. The complexity of data that used to be trapped in disconnected systems made it very difficult to visualize in a coherent way. The new unified interface now simplies this an allows energy benchmarking and assessment information across multiple buildings and campuses from many sources on multiple platforms such as PCs, smartphones and tablets. The AEC industry can help to deliver data to support this type of functionality for the lifecycle.

This interactive session will demonstrate how all of this came together, and that although there are technological, cultural and legal hurdles to overcome, a staggering amount of connections have been made in a short period of time. The opportunity for builders, architects, engineers and others is to use the data that is being managed to start a project and to deliver completed project data back to the districts.

Presenters

John Roach is the Executive Director of Technology & Collaborative Services at the Foundation for California Community Colleges.  He has more than twenty years’ experience collaborating in the study of systems process and information flow to improve business decisions and develop data systems of lasting value.  A personable leader and communicator, John is passionate about building teams and strategic partnerships and nurturing these relationships for everyone’s gain.  Incurably curious about science and technology, John looks for creative ways to recombine available tools.  He has long been committed to the idea that education is the foundational tool to effectively define and fix the challenges facing both local and global communities.

In 2012, in partnership with the California Community College System and Onuma, Inc., Mr. Roach’s team from the Foundation for California Community Colleges was the co-recipient of a Fiatech Celebration of Engineering & Technology Innovation (CETI) Award, which recognizes significant achievements in technology research, development and implementation.

Kimon Onuma has been using BIM since 1993 and is a leader in shaping the building industry BIM tools. The award winning Onuma System is a web based BIM application that merges BIM, Geographic Information Systems and facility data with many applications. Kimon is the creator of the award winning BIMStorm, a 21st century BIM collaboration process. Onuma Inc. is a hybrid company of architects and software developers focusing on BIM tools and processes.