Sources: American Concrete Institute, Farmington Hills, Mich.; CP staff

To ensure concrete keeps pace with steel in an increasingly common technology platform among architectural, engineering and construction professionals, ACI has scheduled the inaugural Building Information Modeling (BIM) of Concrete Structures Technical Committee 131 meeting during the Fall 2009 Convention, Nov. 8–12 in New Orleans. “In projects that use multiple building materials, like steel and concrete, all materials need to be included in the BIM model. The steel industry has been using BIM consistently for about a decade, so there’s a definite need for the concrete industry to step up,” says committee chair Peter Carrato. Charter committee members include engineers, architects, software developers, academia, contractors, and government entities, he adds, “proving there is tremendous interest for BIM across all fields of the concrete industry.”

BIM deployment in concrete has ranged from Meadowlands Stadium in New Jersey to a remote housing complex in Fort McMurray, Alberta—each project primarily precast/prestressed. BIM allows designers to create a digital model that represents a building or structure to ensure proper interface among building systems and materials before construction begins. The technology’s main advantage lies in the fact that the digital model is data-rich and intelligent, not merely lines representing a structure. Its clash detection feature is of an immediate economic benefit since it identifies conflicts during design, eliminating errors that would have then been fixed during construction.