The BIM4Ren (BIM4RENOVATION) project has just ended and its legacy is really relevant affecting the whole building industry.
BIM is currently the best solution to meet the increasing technical complexity of the construction sector. The reason is clear: BIM allows different professionals and disciplines to interface and collaborate, providing all required tools for the building analysis. This integrated system allows to have a global vision of the project, considering, in addition, theimpact on the environment. The BIM4Ren legacy is resumed in a website (https://bim4renovation.eu/) which aims to systematically enclose all the outputs as a result of four years of work.
The beating heart of the website is the Training section where all the webinars, which were organized in Italy, France and Spain are listed and addressed to all the operators of the European construction sector. Training modules are made up of PDF documents, available in four European languages: English, French, Italian and Spanish.
The Training section aims to provide practical digital solutions and tools to face the initial phases of the energy renovation process of a building: from the collection of data and information of geometry and documents, to the definition of technological choices, to the identification of design solutions on the base of multi criteria analysis.
“BIM is still perceived as too complex and not widely used. This is why the BIM4Ren project shares this training material for the SMEs to quickly get introduced to BIM and its benefits for their activities” commented Antoine Dugue, Manager R&D NOBATEK/INEF4. This is the reason why the courses intend to enable workers from SMEs and suppliers to actively collaborate with the other actors of the renovation process within a digital environment.
In the website’s sections the access to the platform OSAP – One Stop Access Platform, is also available. The OSAP is an independent and collaborative service platform for all stakeholders to efficiently communicate and to optimize the management tasks and quality checks, during the supply or preparation phase, during the execution phase and further commissioning and operation.
The website also provides a number of BIM based opensource tools, developed by the project partners and clustered in five categories:
- Strategic Planning
- Data Acquisition
- Data Driven Design
- Data Management
- Support.
The website becomes a digital toolbox dedicated to the early phases of energy-efficient renovations. The tools are used to quickly create a model of an existing building, out of documents or on-site visits and to create, run and compare different renovation scenarios.
Digital tools have the potential to bring a change the general perception of the industry in the European society, enhancing communication, cooperation and trust along the whole construction value chain, but also a new attractiveness for youth and new talent. But for this to become a widespread reality, digital solutions need to be affordable, easy-to-use and able to bring a real added value to day-to-day activities of the micro, small and medium enterprises (SMEs), which make up the vast majority of the sector.
