IHBC and COTAC as supporters of the BIM4Heritage initiative have welcomed its launch conference – titled ‘How can BIM help to understand and preserve the historic environment?’ – held at the Royal Academy on 14 September, with COTAC Chair Ingval Maxwell co-presenting, and case studies that explored the impact of the new Building Information Modelling (BIM) methodology on heritage practice.
Delegates also received courtesy copies of Historic England’s newly issued guidance – ‘BIM for Heritage: Developing a Historic Building Information Model’, introduced on the day by author Paul Bryan.
IHBC Director Seán O’Reilly said: ‘We’re delighted that as supporters of the BIM4Heritage programme – and by working with COTAC – the IHBC can help play a positive role in promoting heritage perspectives on BIM to wider, mainstream construction users and developers.’
‘Especially useful has been the opportunity to highlight to this forum specialist considerations in BIM’s application to heritage conservation, from recognising both the value and the uniqueness of each element in the historic environment, to appreciating the inevitable impacts attached to future redundancies in hardware and software.’
BIM4Heritage writes:
BIM4Heritage is a special interest group established within the BIM4Communities to champion Building Information Modelling (BIM) within the Historic Environment. The group is formed by various specialists, including those from within the AEC industry, Conservation, Heritage Organisations Academic Departments and end-users.
The vision of the BIM4Heritage Group is to provide a forum for organisations and industry professionals to share knowledge and lessons learnt on BIM applied to historic structures.
The purpose of the BIM4Heritage Group is to promote the learning, awareness and understanding of BIM within the conservation and heritage sector of the built environment, and to influence and integrate this with wider industry needs.
Involving a range of disciplines and conservators who have the current stewardship of the existing building stock, it will also aim to enable industry to understand the importance of information relating to conservation requirements.
Group Goals
- Develop consistency of messaging, support and standards of BIM Implementation within the Historic Built Environment. Provide opportunities for communicating best practice, and debating issues concerning the adoption of BIM in both private and public sectors, and with increasingly advanced applications of BIM.
- Collaborate with other BIM4 Communities to advance knowledge and influence understanding in the broader context of the industry and built environment, and to initiate the culture change necessary to fully benefit from digital and information technologies and processes
- Provide leadership in establishing how BIM can be used for heritage conservation, repair and maintenance processes.
- Promote historic structures BIM case studies to demonstrate best practice.
- Establish collaborative links to academia.
- Ensure that the group activity and outputs are coordinated and integrated with the other BIM4 community groups and CIC regional hubs.
Download Historic England’s ‘BIM for Heritage’ publication
See more on COTAC and COTAC’s HBIM papers
See the BIM4Heritage initiative
