FECS & CEIR Joint statement on BIM

Construction
11 May 2016

Position paper

CEIR, the European association for the taps and valves industry representing sanitary, building and industrial valve manufacturers

and

FECS, the European Sanitaryware Producers Federation, representing and promoting the interests of the ceramic sanitaryware industry at European level:

 

  • recognise the growing need for sustainable buildings in both new build and refurbishment projects
  • recognise that Industry needs cohesive tools to aid manufacturers.

The CEIR and FECS Boards identified that manufacturers must play a pivotal role in the ongoing development of an acceptable cross-country harmonised Building Information Modeling (BIM) system and therefore agreed to work together to achieve this goal.


BIM is a methodology based on the use of coordinated, coherent and computable information about the physical and functional characteristics of a building or infrastructure. BIM systems address and record the core principles of the full life cycle of the building: design, in use and dismantle.


The BIM goal is to establish a reliable knowledge base for decision-making throughout the entire life cycle of the building.


Furthermore, BIM repositions the construction industry from an opaque environment to a more collaborative one, where manufacturers’ BIM components compound other stakeholders’ BIM models and where the different stakeholders' specialised tools benefit from information about BIM components. 

 

Therefore, CEIR and FECS believe that ensuring the quality of BIM components is important because:

  • BIM users trust the information contained in BIM components provided by manufacturers
  • Wrong BIM components in the cloud/internet may create misleading information that could have legal consequences (if the metadata included in the BIM components leads to mistakes).

BIM is spreading fast but it is still ‘under construction’ in several fields, especially with regard to metadata definition and the legal and liability issue. Therefore, CEIR and FECS members wish to state their concerns about BIM and its development.

 

REad the statement