I attended a BIM Forum at
Heriot Watt University, Dubai Campus few weeks ago.
Let me start conveying my experience from the very beginning.
How I went there?
Well, the campus is located in Dubai Academic City area. An amazing location for universities. It's very easy to go there.
Start driving on Emirates Road... Once you feel like you are completely lost and you will die soon and nobody will find even your body in the desert, it means you are few kilometers away from the Academic City:))
Taking this trip at night will increase the "thriller" effect with the help of dim street lights. The only missing item was the music however I handled it with the help of my GPS. My dear friend GPS lady constantly signed the song of "recalculating" which absulately worked much better than any other thriller music.
Here I have to admit, I don't have the best sense of direction:)) So there might be some exaggeration on the sentences above:)))
Anyway, after getting lost 38 times, I found the campus.
Let me share the agenda with you.
All the presentations were quite nice and informative but Dr. Ahmet Citipitioglu's and David J. Carey's really caught my attention.
Dr. Ahmet Citipitioglu is the structural design coordinator for TAV. Well Here I need to open a paranthesis and give more information about TAV. It's a Turkish company focusing mainly on Airport Project. They not only built but also operate. For instance, Ataturk Airport (Istanbul) is currently being operated by TAV and works like a perfect machine. They have recently been awarded the Abu Dhabi Airport Project which is "the project" of the region. TAV is in JV with CCC and Arabtec in this project. Himm, I think it's enough of information for now and I can close the parenthesis now:)
Dr. Ahmet Citipitioglu, Structural Design Coordinator, TAV
Dr. Ahmet's presentation was mainly about their strategy on managing the BIM aspect of the airport project. The most striking figure was the BIM Budget.
25 Million USD! Initial team of 30!
This is the biggest BIM budget I heard so far. I would love to see another presentation upon completing the project:)
David J. Carey, General Manager, National Services and Facilities Management LLC
The next one is David J. Carey. He is the GM of an FM company called National Services and Facilities Management LLC and as you can imagine his presentation was about BIM and IFM (Integrated FM). When his kids used to ask him what does he do, his answer was "he takes care of buildings":)) Quite a clear answer I believe. Leaves no question marks:))
Why I liked his presentation?
- His presentation skills! He has the "cool" accent and has an interesting sense of humor. Although he makes quite though statements, you can't stop laughing. So it was a fun to listen presentation.
- He knows his stuff! He has a vast experience of FM and communicates it in a very simple way even people like me who are not very familiar with FM can understand very well.
He also gave some interesting figures. For instance, currently the FM industry alone in the GCC is 6 Billion USD. 4 years ago it was 12 Billion USD!
What does he think about BIM?
Well, he is happy to see that BIM gives a much better platform to architects for visualizing the possible problems their design can cause for FM. Plus, he also likes the idea of storing all the information in a central database like BIM.
So overall, it was a nice conference.
Have a great day!
Diyane Koseoglu
