Advisory Board has another great year driving
Building Information Modelling consistency across Australia

At its 17 November 2021 Meeting, the Australasian BIM Advisory Board (ABAB) reflected on its excellent report card for 2021. “ABAB has played a key coordination and leadership role in promoting consistency in the adoption of Building Information Modelling (BIM) by Australian governments”, Andrew Curthoys, Chair and representative of the Australasian Procurement and Construction Council (APCC) said. “This achievement is particularly important in light of governments infrastructure led recovery process, and the need for every dollar spent on infrastructure to deliver economic and social benefits to local communities”, Andrew said.

ABAB’s report card highlighted its Peak Body status with a 16-fold increase in website hits demonstrating ABAB as the trusted and leading ‘go to’ knowledge centre. As well, ABAB was highlighted in 2021 Australian Infrastructure Plan in respect to the ‘Digital by Default’ through ABAB’s role to drive national consistency. In addition, ABAB’s submission to the Parliamentary Inquiry into procurement practices in government projects followed by taking the lead role in the live virtual Public Hearing on 14 October 2021 is testament to the recognition that ABAB is the authoritative source of BIM intelligence.

To provide evidence of the benefits of BIM, in 2021 several BIM Benefits Metrics pilots occurred on a range of different types and sizes of government projects to help government and industry deliver projects more effectively. “To enable the value of BIM to be measured, meaningful comparison between BIM and non-BIM projects is essential and when it is not collected governments lack the data to learn and improve project outcomes”, Andrew said.

To commence ABAB’s national position regarding consistent BIM education in Australia, the Australian Building Information Modelling (BIM) and Digital Engineering (DE) Education Position was released earlier in the year. A consistent approach to BIM and DE education standards will build Australia’s capability and capacity that is globally competitive.

Another invaluable tool, the Asset Management Digital Roadmap Generator (Generator), is designed to assist business implement digitally sourced data into their asset management functions and systems. The Generator, is now post the successful prototype, seeking partnership support to progress to the next stage of development.

The Australasian BIM Advisory Board established by the APCC and the Australian Construction Industry Forum (ACIF), together with the key standard-setting bodies, NATSPEC, buildingSMART, Austroads and Standards Australia, promotes best practice and consistent approaches to BIM practices, standards and requirements. ABAB guidance materials are available at: www.abab.net.au.