What is Civil BIM?

Dewberry's Cody Pennetti, Meagan Judge, and Cyndy Davenport explain how site/civil engineers are using civil BIM to showcase complex information in a familiar way.

http://www.dewberry.com

Transcript:
Cody Pennetti: "One of the things that's important to understand about BIM, or Building Information Modeling, is that the word "building" is really referencing the verb of constructing anything within the context of the environment. In the same way that our architects use BIM processes to model everything on the inside of a faculty, we're modeling everything on the outside."

Meagan Judge: "By using a BIM model, we can better understand the utility networks underground that you can't necessarily see and therefore allows a civil engineer to provide more accurate or more enhanced design of those said utilities."

Cody Pennetti: "We're able to work with GIS professionals and data to create a model of an entire city. This means that we're looking at the context of the project not just as a single property but what it means to the entire built environment, the community around it. We're able to provide a much more familiar prospective to the client and to the community then they would see on a black and white paper sheet."

Cyndy Davenport: "In the old days, we used to create our plans based on things that were hand drawn or CAD drawn. The elevations and profiles and plan views were drawn separate from each other. They didn't necessarily match. You'd have so many versions of these paper plans, you'd never know which one was the latest version. Sometimes, you're not even aware that there was a later version. What we can do is we can mind GIS databases and build and visualize a model based on that historical data. What the BIM Model does is it enables us to create a three dimensional representation. When there is a conflict or something you need to work around or a special structure that you need to build in order to make something work, it's there. You can see it. You can show it to him. You can spin around in all different directions."

Cody Pennetti: "In the same way that we can model an entire city, we can use LiDAR surveying which allows us to model even the smallest details. With traditional surveying, we would go out and collect a single point for each object, whether it was a sign or tree, and with LiDAR we're collecting millions of points instantly. This means that we're able to go out there and capture everything we can physically see in the environment. We’re creating a very rich model of everything that exists today with minimal effort in terms of production. This information exists and we've developed BIM processes that allow us to take that information and provide it in these large three-dimensional models with a lot of really, really good data embedded into those models."

Meagan Judge: "As a person that lives in a community, they're not necessarily going to fully understand say, engineering plans or a 2D picture. By utilizing the BIM models, we can provide 3D pictures so they can better visualize where exactly say, for instance, that pipeline or that road or that building or facility is actually going to go and how that's going to affect their daily lives."