Member Article

North East team scoop international building prize

A team from North East England led by BIM Academy has won an international building design competition using cutting edge digital technologies.

The international competition involved teams from 41 countries across the world including Japan, France, Phillipines, Lebanon, India and Latvia.

The competition brief was to design and virtually build a Museum of Architecture, on a man-made island 120 meters off the coast of Doha, near to Katara Beach.

The BIM Academy team were the overall winners of the 48 hour competition. Entrants were given just two days to respond to the design brief using state of the art BIM technologies and submit their entries using a cloud-based collaboration portal.

BIM Academy is a collaboration between Northumbria University and Ryder Architecture established in 2011 as an international centre of excellence for Building Information Modelling (BIM). BIM is a digital process involving the coordinated development of smart data about a building project throughout its entire lifecycle, from design through procurement and construction and beyond, into the operation and management stage. Based on use of 3D models, it allows the testing of a digital prototype in advance of its physical realisation.

The BIM Academy team included a range of design and construction professionals, senior academics and technologists experienced in the practical application of BIM. The team comprised BIM Academy (BIM Execution Planning and management 4D, 5D and visualisation), Ryder Architecture (Architectural Design), Cundall (Services and Structural Engineering) Mott Macdonald (Pedestrian Analysis) NBS (Specification / Data migration), Colour UDL (landscape design) and Turner and Townsend (cost management). The whole team were co-located in the BIM hub at Northumbria University which was a major benefit for communication.

Peter Barker, Managing Director of BIM Academy, said: “We’re delighted with this international accolade. It was a tough and draining competition but to be recognised but such a respected group of judges is a real vote of confidence. BIM is part of the future of the built environment and our work at BIM Academy is at the forefront of research, education and consultancy in this field. It is great to be recognised for that.”

Tony Ryan, Chief Executive of ASite, the cloud facilitating company for the competition, said: “The overall winner goes to BIM Academy, congratulations. A fantastic effort – it was just incredible to watch the team. And the amount of social connectivity and communications was incredible. We enjoyed following your efforts.”

BIM Academy recently had success in a similar international competition for the design of an Olympic-themed museum in London when they received the award for Multi- disciplinary BIM and use of interoperability in Build London Live 2012.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by David Bootle .