Department of Veterans Affairs releases BIM Guide

The VA recently released its BIM Guide to the public at a meeting of the Federal Facilities Council's Emerging Technologies Committee. The VA Guide includes an Excel file which is an outstanding advancement over previous guides. To locate the document, select REFERENCES, then select OBJECT ELEMENT MATRIX FILE. It shows what information is to be provided by who and when in the overall planning, design, construction, commissioning cycle.

Also happy to report that VA is requiring construction product submittals to use the COBIE Standard. VA is the first large owner to make COBIE as a requirement versus an option even though the savings reported by firms responsible for populating data in CMMS/CAFM systems is about 80%! There is now a reasonably robust set of software applications , a growing set of commissioning oriented firms, and owner/managers adopting COBIE.