Registration & Reception 5:00PM to 6:00PM

Dinner Meeting 6:00PM to 8:30PM

Mr. M.  Dennis Knight is principal with Whole Building Systems LLC, Charleston, South Carolina, which provides services in high-performance building design, energy modeling, and commissioning.  He has 40 years of experience in the building industry and has owned both an engineering firm and a construction company. To pick a couple of his many accomplishments: Mr. Knight is current Chairman of the ASHRAE BIM Multidisciplinary Task Group (MTG) and the former Chair of TC 7.1 "Integrated Building Design" and its Handbook Subcommittee. 

At the April 7, 2015 dinner meeting Dennis Knight said that we are at a crossroads between working in a two-dimensional project delivery process and transitioning to a multi-dimensional virtual work environment. Building Information Modeling and Integrated Building Design follow the process that designers of real high-performing buildings have used to achieve good design, good operation, and good maintenance. This process is being driven by the need to design and construct buildings faster, cheaper and better and by the need to reduce the building's operating energy cost. 

A Building Information Model (BIM) is a "digital representation of the physical and functional characteristics of a facility. As such it serves as a shared knowledge for information about a facility forming a reliable basis for decisions during its lifecycle from inception onward."  (National Institute of Building Sciences; http://www.buildingsmart.org.)  BIM is a much more fluid and intuitive way to design.  Many of the time-consuming tasks are performed by the computer: drawing sections; creating schedules; sizing ducts; maintenance access and clash detection, etc.  A BIM can be used for advanced analytics such as energy modeling, daylighting, and computational fluid dynamics.  A BIM can also be used for Fabrication.

"Integrated Building Design (IBD) is the interaction among all building disciplines, from earliest concept development throughout the building life cycle, in order to achieve integration of design efforts and operation of the total building." (ASHRAE TC 7.01 2007).  The process does not stop at the end of construction but acknowledges that operation and users' behavior and awareness have a large effect of the cost of owning a building and achieving energy and emissions targets.

BIM can help eliminate the silos that exist in our business today and bring many of the fragments and disconnected processes together into a single, cohesive, integrated and optimized whole.  With the traditional design process, the impact of value engineering decisions are generally unknown by the decision-maker.   With IBM and IBD the design can be iterated early in the process to meet budget as well as the owner's requirements.  In the chart below, the white bell curve represents the traditional decision process; whereas, the blue bell curve represents the ideal decision process enabled by BIM.

Dennis Knight told us that in the future, BIM will be available in the Cloud.  There will be increased interoperability and more integrated applications.  BIM will be used for operations and maintenance; property and portfolio management; and energy management.  Manufacturing will draw on the BIM as well.  However, Mr. Knight stresses that person-to-person communication will remain as important as ever. 

Anne-Marie Bundgard

GGAC Chair 2014-2015

Website & Gazette Committee