It can be easy to assume that BIM is only applicable to new build or commercial renovation projects. In fact, one of the key areas that is now coming to prominence is the use of BIM to enhance the restoration and maintenance of historic buildings and environments.

The ownership and management of Britain’s thousands of listed and historic buildings and monuments is spread across a range of organisations and companies. The BIM4heritage web portal links to nine principal stakeholders, with the main drive to increased use of BIM coming from Historic England who have published a series of papers guiding architects, engineers and other participants towards best practice and innovative approaches to modelling their projects. In an article at BIM Today Paul Bryan, Geospatial Imaging Manager at Historic England says of these papers: “It is recognised that the process of BIM has potential applications across all aspects of heritage, notably archaeology, building services, landscape design and management”.

Historic England has “concentrated on developing the Historic Building Information model, given this can refer to any use of BIM for heritage and archaeology, including applications for documentation, research, conservation and asset management.” Reading this highlights the extent to which a section of the industry focused on preserving the past has embraced the possibilities of BIM and its associated digital infrastructure. The existence of a Geospatial Imaging Manager responsible for digitising the assets of the organisation is proof of their commitment.

Driving Vision have a large part to play in this. One of the main areas that all the stakeholders agree on is that asset management and establishing baselines against which to measure future renovation and maintenance needs, are crucial to the future of the historic built environment. Driving Vision’s proprietary Virtual Reality software allows a 3D model to be created of the asset to provide an initial set of datum points from which ongoing survey work can be assessed.

The first major building to be modelled in this way has been Durham Cathedral, from where the HBIM (Historic Building Information Modelling) was developed by The Centre for Digital Built Britain at Cambridge University. Introducing HBIM into practices of all sizes dovetails with Driving Vision’s well-established BIM processes. By consolidating project data in a central location and automating data exchanges, teams from multiple project participants and stakeholders will no longer work in silos. By working with our partners Plannerly and their cloud-based BIM Management tool for architectural, engineering, construction, we can simplify BIM planning, execution, and monitoring; improve collaboration & communication; maximise efficiency, save time and control costs.

To discuss how Driving Vision can support your adoption of HBIM please get in touch, and visit our website to register for our latest series of Webinars.

Implementing BIM can be daunting, but Driving Vision is here to help you at the pace you are comfortable with. Get started by getting in touch now