BIM in your pocket

BIMs are incredibly valuable and incredibly underutilised. Buildings or developments last between 30-50 years, but BIMs are used in the first couple of years mainly in the design phase, and occasionally as reference in construction phases. Downstream teams like projects, marketing, sales, operations, and facilities historically do not use BIM due to access restrictions. One commercial developer believes in making BIM handy to it's project teams to get stakeholder approval to speed up decision-making.

Today's BIM review/coordination meetings are generally long-drawn and cumbersome. The meeting consists of three categories of expensive softwares and diverse skillsets:

1. Engineering BIMs to draw and capture architectural, structural, mechanical, electrical and plumbing information.
2. Aesthetics - the structurally sound BIM needs renders that show how the finished building looks like - where lights are placed, how light bounces off various materials, etc.
3. Digital elevation models (DEMs)- this is a recent requirement to counter climate change and make projects resilient.

Each of these groups carry a couple of workstations, project on the big screen for stakeholders to review and comment. And this means, stakeholders are expected to participate physically in-person for a few weeks while feedback is incorporated to achieve alignment.

The approved drawings and renders are widely distributed to operations teams as PDFs for day-to-day operations. Changes are communicated through PDFs, but may or may not reflect back into the BIM causing challenges further downstream.

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Fabrik has consolidated three sources of data onto a single view. And each of these layers have separate pipelines from source software to running on lightweight devices through browsers.

1. Engineering BIM & CAD - engineering accurate files are converted to neutral file formats without loss of data. In the event the files are large (more than 150MB), we split them into smaller files - typically floor wise and load them on Fabrik.
   
   1. BIM -> IFC.
   2. CAD -> STP/IGES -> GLB.
2. 3D designs and renders - GLBs. Maya/3DS Max/Blender designs and renders are exported as GLB with materials, lights, and shaders for accurate aesthetic representation.
3. DEM data - GeoJSONs ingested at they are (10m).

The user sees these layers clubbed together with intuitive UX on tablets or regular laptops without the need for workstations such that stakeholders can make meaningful contributions on design, progress, and subsequent actions without in-person meetings.

Greatly reduce turnaround times - upto 25% reduction in turnaround times in collaborations and stakeholder alignment. The reduction includes:

1. Reduced rework
2. Better quality decision-making
3. Higher alignment between project teams
4. Better audits to match timelines

All of these leading to reduced cost overruns associated with these factors.

Future developments in Fabrik’s platform will further enhance its capabilities by incorporating:

• AI-powered clash detection – Identifying conflicts and suggesting resolutions automatically.
• Augmented Reality (AR) integration – Enabling stakeholders to overlay BIM data onto physical structures for more intuitive problem-solving.
• Enhanced mobile interfaces – Making complex BIM data easier to navigate on tablets and mobile devices.

The success of this project highlights the need for a unified interface, not only for buildings with BIM, but combine that with DEM, CAD, and field IoT - connected with root cause analyses and decision making. The scope extends from buildings to city blocks and public infrastructure with digital twins providing better solutions for day-to-day operations, new infrastructure planning, and overall quality of life improvements for people.