Building Information Modelling (BIM)

Sophisticated BIM models enable workflow efficiency on complex projects and lead to a wealth of other insights for clients, during construction and into operation.

At Arup, we also use BIM to enable automated geometry and design, layout and documentation of repeat elements and provide coordination across disciplines. It accelerates the design process and provides a single source of truth for the whole project team.

We build models that enable rapid design iteration and automatically generate solutions and documentations. We use BIM to validate design choices too, helping clients explore the viability of a proposed combination of services of functions.

How we can help

Insights

Drawing on Arup’s breadth of expertise and services, our BIM models are now used as the foundation for analytic models, such as those evaluating energy use and carbon emissions, fire safety implications, acoustic impacts, lighting or airflow.

In order to exploit the data held in BIM we developed the unique and ground-breaking Global Revit and Global Tekla Standards for BIM. These are fundamental building blocks to sharing data, providing a single global standard that transcends boundaries, such as language, measurement units, codes, symbols, and much more.

Given our clients’ growing desire for sustainable operations and outcomes, future spatial flexibility, new digital services, greater energy efficiency or particular user experiences, BIM’s importance as a central intelligence source will also grow.

Standardisation

Arup has long championed the use of BIM on every project and we have been leaders in developing ISO standard BIM Execution Plans and advising clients on best practice for their project delivery. We have worked with open-BIM advocacy group BuildingSMART, to bring industry-wide alignment to the naming standards across buildings and infrastructure that will be needed if the next generation of digital services and functions are to be realised in the built environment. This standardisation is essential and invaluable in many projects, which function increasingly like complex combinations of machines, services and other high-maintenance elements.

It’s our hope that these shared formats will lead to greater consistency and open standards, helping designers and engineers around the world use the same definitions, terms, parameters and approach in their work. We are also a partner to the Open Data Institute for general data standards (and BuildingSMART for open BIM), and are always promoting the value of shared standards and open data formats, to drive industry innovation for everyone. Finally, we are encouraging the use of an independently supported BIM maturity measure across our industry, to establish greater understanding of the technology, among the clients we all serve.

Case study

A100/A115 motorway junction Berlin Funkturm

Berlin Funkturm is one of Germany's busiest traffic junctions. Arup helped optimise traffic flows for this junction that sees over 200,000 cars per day.

Using Building Information Modelling (BIM) software, a team of transport infrastructure consultants, transport planners, designers and traffic specialists are working together to optimise the traffic management and refurbish the route in coming years, while increasing traffic safety and mitigating noise and air pollution for local residents as well as the impact on the environment.

Arup was appointed by Germany’s state-owned project management company DEGES as the overall BIM manager for the project. The use of digital modelling software was enabling the team – comprising fifteen consultants and the client – to work collaboratively on this complex project and to develop a balanced preferred route option, which was further optimised and detailed by summer 2021 as a basis for planning and legislation requirements and for public enquiry.

Collaboration

BIM’s ability to coordinate multiple types of information is driving up expectations in the industry, particularly around the consistency of complex information and the strength of collaboration it supports. Our BIM models are collaborative to the core, allowing designers and engineers to collaborate and achieve the work-from-anywhere approach that is vital on major international projects.

On our most ambitious projects, Arup specialists are often based in many different location, but thanks to BIM, that’s no bar to successful collaboration. Our work on Marina Bay Sands involved a complex, multidisciplinary team, working in different countries. We developed a BIM model at the centre of the project, one that could bring together a team and facilitate cloud-based collaboration.

We used a complex BIM model on the Dr Chau Chak Wing Building. The structural geometry was linked ‘live’ to the architects’ 3D model, meaning updates to the architecture were automatically applied to the design of the structure. The pioneering technique meant seamless synthesis between architects and engineer throughout the building’s ambitious process.

Design and production automation

For buildings with highly functional designs, like data centres, we’ve used information from the BIM model to drive the buildings’ design exploration. Thousands of design options can be generated parametrically, explored and short listed. This offers clients a wider range of valuable insights and design options all of which respond to their operational priorities.

We have developed our own automation tools to reduced repetitive and mistake-prone tasks, automated checking and improving quality of our production models and documentation.

Standardised data management

During the life of a project, huge amounts of data are created, much of which was traditionally overlooked or wasted. Off the shelf BIM tools often require data management to be effective, reliable and consistent. Arup’s BIM models use international data classification standards and are thus able to interface with a variety of non-BIM tools.

Digital asset management

Well planned BIM means assets owners and operators inherit a valuable model, helping them to run an efficient and well maintained building long after completion and handover. This approach also works on existing buildings like 1 Finsbury Avenue in London, with BIM used to integrate older building and occupant systems via a common and up to date standards. As regulation demands increasing efficiency from buildings, this approach brings digital twin and integrated campus operations to almost any real estate client.

Infrastructure uses

BIM plays a strategically valuable role on infrastructure projects, where programme length and team complexity are major issues. We develop BIM models that capture both the scheme’s high level goals down to the design specifics, which may have to adapt as the design develops and iterates.

BIM is central to the digital strategy underpinning successful infrastructure development, strengthening a scheme’s overall efficiency, transparency of communications and reporting, ensuring control and management do not degrade over time.