Robert Merry, an independent stone consultant and priject manager who ran his own company for 17 years and now also runs training courses on priject management, gives his personal slant on the stone industry this month.

I went to a lecture on Building Information Modelling (BIM) this month… and fell asleep. Only briefly. The subject was dense, the room was hot, it had been a long day, the speakers had voices like Daleks and I drifted, momentarily, into the land of nod.

There was no awkward shuffling from the other attendees when I woke, so I assumed I hadn’t snored. The chin was dry and I hadn’t slumped on a nearby shoulder. All was OK. It took all my powers of self-harm to keep myself from falling back to sleep. I ended up bent double, pretending to take notes. This way I could keep stabbing myself in the arm with the pen without drawing too much attention to myself or spurting blood over anyone else.

In this column last month I filled up a paragraph with acronyms. This month I bring you BIMspeak.

BIM federated model road map; the “corridor of aspiration” diagram; data rich 3D O+M manuals; augmented asset visualisation; collaborative connections; clash detection; responsibility of data drops and interoperability (take it one syllable at a time – there, easy). Anyone still awake?

It was hard… very hard. There were three lecturers and they kept this up for two hours.

BIM will be part of the future in construction. It has been developed and used in North America to good effect. There have been reports of disputes, but we were assured these were normal, run-of-the-mill construction disputes on a project that just happened to use BIM, not as a result of BIM.

The government is so enthused by the process it has mandated for it to be part of all government construction by 2016 in a drive to reduce costs (of course) by 20%. The first trial project starts this month.

Building Information Modelling uses 3D representation of each building component to ensure integration into the whole building with other components.

This supersedes traditional building design tools that, although they use 3D, do not use the same level of product information.

Components are generated from a product library, which contains every conceivable piece of information about the product imaginable, from U-value to carbon content.

‘Clash detection’ can help iron out design issues before construction. At Level 3, the highest level for BIM, there are even more sophisticated 4D and 5D models.

I wasn’t sure entering the fourth dimension (let alone the fifth) was possible. I thought they must be affectations of a construction industry hell bent on over complicating a process so no-one could use the model. But I was wrong. I am a dinosaur. 4D and 5D have been around for a long time, I just haven’t managed to stay awake long enough to understand them.

In construction terms the fourth dimension is the timescale (fair enough). It links to construction planning software. The fifth dimension is money (I always suspected as much). It links the building design and the timescale to the project cost plan.

The final part of the lecture was more interesting. It involved watching some paint dry.

Not really. It was filling in the evaluation form. You know what it’s like when you’re too hot, bored, and have spent the best part of two hours covering your forearms in red wealds with dark blue ink stain centres trying to stay awake. It’s not the time to give you an evaluation form.

It had that A = Excellent to E = Poor scale and asked you to circle a letter for the venue, the lecture, the content and each lecture.

I tried to be fair. I did give something a D. The form then moved on to comments and, finally, ‘Any further comments’.

I wrote: “Any chance of using plain English – augmented reality asset visualisation?? I know it’s not the fault of the presenters but…

Oh yes, and could I have a pillow next time, please?”

Robert Merry ran his own stone company for 17 years and is now an independent Stone Consultant and Project Manager. He also delivers training programmes on all asepcts of Estimating and Project Management – details and dates on the website: www.stoneconsultants.co.uk

Tel: 0207 502 6353 / 07771 997621