Member Article

North East construction firm win national BIM award

Independent North East construction firm, Howard Russell, has won ‘Best BIM Project’ at the RICS BIM4SME Awards 2015 for their £3 million redevelopment of Mash Purveyors’ warehouse at Park Royal Business Estate in London.

The event, which took place at the Westminster Boating Base on Thursday 18th June, was hosted by Stefan Mordue of NBS (RIBA Enterprises).

Stefan said: “The judges liked Howard Russell’s approach of trying to determine how BIM met the client’s drivers. It was a really well articulated presentation which simply and effectively described their achievements on a wide range of BIM uses. Although I am not a native Geordie, it is great to see a North East business pick up an award”

BIM4SME is one of the voluntary working groups set up by the BIM Task Group, which itself was set up by the UK government to help with the implementation of BIM in the UK Construction industry. BIM4SME’s special remit is to support small and medium enterprises, which make up over 80% of construction companies in the UK.

Craig Muldoon, pre-construction manager at Howard Russell said: “We’re delighted to have won this award. It is a fantastic achievement for the team at Howard Russell and proves that BIM is not just for large national contractors and benefits the contractor as much as the client.”

The award follows Howard Russell’s recent announcement that they have become the second contractor in the UK to become BIM Level 2 accredited, well ahead of the Government’s 2016 deadline to make BIM mandatory on all government-funded projects. The only other contractor in the UK to be accredited to the same level so far is Interserve.

Howard Russell’s BIM management systems and processes were put under scrutiny over a period of 14 days by Ocean Certification, a UKAS certified accreditor, before being certified PAS1192-2 compliant.

The firm says it has invested over £70,000 in software and training as well as dedicating considerable time to adopting BIM practices and they believe the investment will attract new business and create new jobs.

Mr Muldoon added: “Becoming BIM Level 2 compliant and winning this award puts us at the forefront of the BIM working environment not only in the North East but on a national level. We have had numerous enquiries from London based companies and we firmly believe that these will lead to further new instructions and in turn create new jobs within the company.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Rebecca Taylor PR .