A BIM Community in the UK

Last month I attended a meeting of the UK BIM Community group at Autodesk's head office in the UK.

The group owes its origins to the UK ADT Community group which was formed back in December 2000 when ADT (Autodesk Architectural Desktop - later renamed to AutoCAD Architecture) was in its infancy - and a good two years before the term "BIM" became part of common vernacular with Jerry Laserin's famous article. The original group was the brainchild of the late Dave Clarke of Autodesk - one of the big guys in the industry who is still sadly missed. Dave was keen that the group shouldn't be a traditional user group which would grow into an unmanageable size, but should be an independent community of like minded people willing to contribute and to share experiences openly. One of the key aims and objectives identified at that first meeting was "to specify and promote industry best practice using the product".

The first meeting of the ADT Community was held on 12th December 2000 at Laing's offices in Hemel Hempstead where Mervyn Richards (then working within Laing Technology Group) was elected Chairman and I was elected Secretary. Mervyn is a well known consultant in the industry and has become a good friend over the years. His experience includes, amongst other things, involvement in the BAA Terminal 5 programme, Avanti and BS1192 - you can read more of his biography on the CPIC website.

Since those early days the group has met on a regular basis and in 2007 we changed its name to the AEC Community to reflect the broader scope that it had adopted based on the complete range of Autodesk's AEC technologies including Revit.

In March of this year the latest name change (to "BIM Community") occurred and under the continuing chairmanship of Mervyn Richards "it was agreed that the community should move its attentions from a discussion on tools and features to a strategy focused community. The focus is to understand the implications of Building Information Modelling to the individual practices and businesses and the holistic construction activity including the project lifecycle model." More details are on the group's website.

It was interesting to note that seven of us who were at the latest meeting in June had also been at the very first meeting of the ADT Community back in 2000. It was good to see more senior business managers attending and joining in the discussions, despite acknowledging that they were "BIM virgins"!

Future plans for the group include continuing to increase the focus on business issues rather than proprietary technologies and to encourage more senior managers to become involved. If you are interested in joining the group you can contact Mervyn Richards here.


My next post will be about the recently formed Newforma UK User Community which aims to follow the successful formula started by the original ADT Community nearly nine years ago!