The Third Annual BIM Awards and a Look at Newforma Project Center

Earlier this summer, the winners of the 2007 BIM Awards hosted by the AIA TAP (Technology in Architectural Practice) Knowledge Community were announced. Inaugurated in 2005, this marks the third year in which the Awards are being presented, serving as a great way to track the progress of BIM adoption in the AEC industry. This year, I was invited to participate as a juror for the BIM Awards, giving me the opportunity to study the projects more closely and deliberate on their merits with my fellow jurors. This month's issue of the "Building the Future" series, 2007 Third Annual BIM Awards, Part 1, takes a detailed look at two of the main award-winning projects—the Loblolly House at Taylors Island in Maryland and the Benjamin D. Hall Interdisciplinary Research Building at University of Washington. The other two projects that won BIM Award citations will be discussed in the September issue, along with some of my perspectives as a juror for this year's BIM Awards.

Last month, in my article on the AEC Technology Strategies 2007 Conference, I had briefly described the implementation of Newforma Project Center, a relatively new project management application specifically developed for the AEC market, at the firm, Eppstein Uhen Architects. Newforma has just announced the commercial availability of the Fourth Edition of the application, which seems to be gaining a lot of traction in other leading firms as well, such as HOK, SOM, and BNIM Architects. HOK, for instance, first deployed the solution in selected offices in June 2006 and is now expanding its deployment to 1,600 employees across all its 26 offices worldwide as an important part of its strategy for information management and efficient project delivery. We will explore Newforma Project Center in more detail in a product review later on this month.

The Tips and Tricks contributions from our experts include tutorials on compositing 3ds Max 9 renderings in Adobe Photoshop CS3, and using Layers and Scenes for design exploration in Google SketchUp. Do continue to check out the recent activity on the AECbytes Blog to see the comments from other readers and share your own thoughts.

Thank you!

Lachmi Khemlani

Editorials > August 2007