604.295.8070 | vancouver@ircgroup.com | ircgroup.com CONSULTING. ENGINEERING. DESIGN. Bringing the Science of Buildings into Focus IRC Building Sciences Group ROOFING The Future of Roof Design. Planning for Progress. BUILDING ENVELOPE We Believe in Transparency from Concept to Completion. STRUCTURAL Bringing Continuity to Building Design from Frame to Façade. PAVING Generating a Proactive Approach to Maintaining Property Value. VANCOUVER | VICTORIA | KELOWNA ENVIROSPEC INCORPORATED Visit our website at www.EnvirospecInc.com or contact us at Phone (905) 271-3441 Fax (905) 271-7552 The PAVE-EL® Pedestal System: • Transforms flat roofs into attractive, maintenance-free, landscaped paver stone terraces. • Elevates paver stones for perfect drainage. • Levels paver stones and ensures their uniform spacing for an ideal roof terrace surface. Turn roof tops into useable, attractive roof decks Designed & Manufactured in Canada 16 l ROOFINGBC l SUMMER 2018 FEATURE implementing it,” he adds. “As such, I don’t think the technology is relevant quite yet to every roofing firm. I would guess that roofing as a whole will be one of the last trades to fully adopt BIM.” Having said that, Little believes that commercial building roofers will be involved with BIM soon, if they aren’t already. “I think that a commercial roofer who hasn’t investigated and at least explored potential BIM processes and technologies in the next few years will be making a mistake. BIM workflows and the massive amounts of information and clarity within them is extremely rele- vant to new complex institutional and commercial buildings. It’s already required for most large government buildings, and in five to ten years it will very likely be required for all of them.” He adds that “If you’re involved in a BIM-enabled project and you haven’t asked to integrate your information and workflows within it, then it is likely that value is being left on the table. Eventually BIM will reach wide adoption, and it is unwise to ignore this technology and be caught flat footed. The far-off future for buildings will be that they are designed, planned, tendered and installed virtually, and then constructed.” Little recommends as a first step that roofers learn a BIM platform such as Navisworks by Autodesk, which is free to users for “passive involvement” (for viewing designs already created and not model creation). Other examples include Bentley Navigator, Assemble and BIM 360 Glue. As far as the current goals of the Trade Committee at the CANBIM Council (which Little chairs), he says it has only one goal, but it’s a broad one: to create a growing community of BIM-enabled subtrades that can share ideas and prob- lems to help drive the industry towards better productivity and value. “Currently we are working on a schedule, minimums that we can propose to the industry so that BIM is more accurately planned for by the owners/general contractors,” he says. “By planning better, we can wring out more value for the project and its members, and the owner.” “BIM on its own is not intelli- gent…It is information,” concludes Ray Smith (of AppliCad USA, a CAD software firm focused on roofing, clad- ding and solar tech), in an article on DesignandBuildwithMetal.com. Smith says that we need BIM software and systems to extract, sort and review infor- mation for specific uses, and that “the tools to do this for each application must be developed, they must be implemented and people trained to use them.” He advises that, “BIM is the future of project design and management. Don’t ignore it.”  One thing you can be sure of is that BIM will continue to evolve. The BIMForum, for example, an organization that explores technological and delivery innovation and performance improve- ment through BIM, will hold its 2018 conference in Las Vegas in September, where topics such as lean, project delivery, productivity, quality assurance, trade coordination, advances in technology and more will be discussed. If you are using BIM and want to share your experiences, please contact Roofing BC magazine. We