Calvin Kam is a man with a considerable number of hats – but BIM, the digitization of the AEC industry, and buildingSMART have been the common thread throughout his professional career. In this article, Calvin Kam, the Chapter President of buildingSMART USA, shares his thoughts about how buildingSMART tools can secure a more efficient and sustainable AEC industry.
“I like to call myself a global ambassador for construction and sustainable development. I’m an entrepreneur, founding CEO of various companies mainly in the US and Asia. 4 years ago, I acquired a Dutch company,” says Calvin Kam who also can add the titles: Founder and Fellow, Engineer, PhD, and Adjunct Professor at Stanford University, to his resume. “Last month, we formed Strategic Green Innovation (SGI) in the Netherlands.”
The ‘Yes’ people are drivers for development
It’s natural to hear, what Calvin Kam considers is the main driver for innovation in the AEC industry, due to his extended experience and knowledge collected from many years of work on projects all over the world. To provide an answer, he recollects his early involvement with BIM.
“Back in 2000, the US, Nordic countries, and the Netherlands were the forerunners of BIM, and especially openBIM. Why? It’s all about the people. I had the closest relationship with people from Finland, Norway, and Denmark. Here the involved people did not take no for an answer. They just do it, and never say never. I think this type of personality drives innovation by being an evangelist and a true believer.”
One thing is talking to the already convinced, but for the industry to change on a massive scale that truly makes an economic and sustainable impact, it’s important to broaden the scope. You have to get every part and level of the value chain engaged in collaboration and standardized information exchange.
“The difficult thing is to scale solutions, not piloting them. – piloting is easy. Standards let us upscale solutions. You can always bring in the best experts for a given project, but for scalability, you need to bring in the B-team and C-team, and for that, you must have clearly defined common standards”, explains Calvin Kam.
Ole Berard feels that he has noticed a positive change in the mindset of AEC professionals. “It’s all about informed decision-making. It has always been the goal of buildingSMART and openBIM. What has changed is that we used to try to fix everything in one solution. Today what is happening – and is a major part of the new success of buildingSMART – is providing use cases with a mindset of eating the elephant bit by bit. Finally, we’re seeing tools, that allow us to do this in a more effective way.”
The ideal openBIM workflow is based on our previous experiences
Calvin Kam doesn’t hesitate when asked about what constitutes an ideal openBIM workflow. First and foremost, it is imperative to identify the value propositions and the impacts of the suggested solution. And secondly, it’s important to draw upon our previous knowledge.
Calvin Kam elaborates, “If I were to define an ideal openBIM workflow, I would start with building upon previous knowledge. That means working with requirements. Strong requirements should include global lessons learned. This can be done with Information Delivery Specification (IDS), which can check if all the requirements are met. Add the full toolset of buildingSMART, using the requirements to guide the process. Dig into design optimization. Check multiple design options and choose the best one. Once in the process coordination, quality assurance and clash detection goes without saying.”
The value propositions that Calvin Kam mentions goes beyond economic and sustainable goals, even though they always are of paramount importance. It’s also about what people gain from the project, which aligns with his belief in people being drivers for innovation.
“It’s not just a question about keeping the project on time and on budget. We also have to ask ourselves, why are we building this building or this road? How can this project make people happier? I went to Europe a few years back. I didn’t want to see amazing photos of great architecture in magazines, I would much rather ask the users and people working or living in the building if it brings them happiness in their daily lives”, says Calvin Kam.
An information strategy is key to a successful openBIM workflow
A clear and unambiguous information requirement strategy is also of vital importance and should be completely aligned with the overall value proposition.
“The information strategy should align with an organization or project's value stream. The owner should identify and articulate the value proposition for maintaining these data. Make sure that the information is reliable, and updates are easily controlled by the owner. That will ensure that the owner – whether private or governmental – gets value”, explains Calvin Kam.
Ole Berard adds to the conversation by shining coordination as an issue that needs to be addressed in the buildingSMART community, “Coordination is still important to solve. Contractors still can’t build from the documentation from consultants. We need a more integrated design process, and as an openBIM community, we must solve this. Open and common standards will enable this for multiple companies working together.”
Calvin Kam is very positive and thinks this will help smaller companies to be part of more diverse and larger projects: “With today’s technology, we can enable smaller teams to work together. We should unite global knowledge to form a common bSDD- a common dictionary that will allow projects to tap into building codes and information, won’t be a burden, but rather a value to a given project.”
Integrated Project Delivery should be more … integrated into the workflows
In Calvin Kam’s opinion, there is a strong correlation between Integrated Project Delivery (IPD) and a more collaborative and successful workflow.
“In the Stanford community, we have looked closely at the Integrated Project Delivery for a long period of time. We don’t want to have people shovel data to people in the next phases, but we want them to provide knowledge that will allow the subsequent professionals to make informed decisions. That’s a good handover, and this is especially important for more sustainable construction and decarbonization. IDS and IPD should be part of the early phases and continue all the way to the final handover. This also applies to operations and Facility Management (FM). Model servers – Common Data Environments (CDEs) – also become increasingly more important, which means you don’t need to wait until the last minute to get the final Industry Foundation Class (IFC). Everybody that is part of the workflow must be able to update information – even perhaps without looking at geometry at all.”
buildingSMART Data Dictionary (bSDD) and Information Delivery Specification (IDS) explained
IFC, IPD, bSDD, IDS, BIM, and IDM – the BIM community uses numerous abbreviations that sometimes might feel a bit mysterious, however, they actually do make sense. bSDD and IDS are two of the new ones that we all will take into our vocabulary in a short amount of time.
Calvin Kam explains the meaning and the inherent value proposition behind the abbreviations. “buildingSMART Data Dictionary provides us with the ability to be more methodical, efficient, and organized with “I” – being the information – in BIM. That’s where the rubber meets the road! If the owner, designer, and builders can use the same bSDD, it will help everybody to get a better return from the investment in working with building information across disciplines and language barriers,” says Calvin Kam and he is equally positive regarding IDS.
“I think IDS is buildingSMART’s vital step to make requirements more useful and readable. IDS makes the IFC files much more relatable to the needs of asset owners. If we don’t have machine-readable specifications, IDS helps IFC to be more conforming. IFC has been developing for more than 20 years, whereas IDS only has for 4 years, so there is a huge growth potential.”, Calvin outlines.
The infrastructure community has embraced buildingSMART
When asked about the current state of buildingSMART, the talk quickly falls upon how infrastructure is taking advantage of BIM – and particularly buildingSMART tools (such as IFC) – to strengthen collaboration throughout the whole value chain.
“I’ve worked 24 years at Stanford, and in 2021, I was part of the Stanford/Finland IFC project, and now, I’m Chapter President of buildingSMART US. I founded the GSA (General Services Administration) National BIM Program in 2003 in the USA, where we had 9.000 buildings and hereby, brought openBIM to the US,” he explains.
“Today, we’re working closely with infrastructure. It’s more homogenous and standardized, also because there are fewer diverging interests and actors. With infrastructure, it’s easier to convince the right people to make the right changes. Furthermore, public players in infrastructure have more power compared to public players in the building sector,” he says, “When a bridge collapses, it’s a very, very, very big deal that affects a lot of people. Therefore, it’s much easier to agree that infrastructure is important.”
Ole Berard agrees and adds, “Maintenance and operations are very important for infrastructure, and they get an inherent value from openBIM,” he argues. “The use case for collaboration in infrastructure is operations and maintenance. For buildings, operations are more complex, but nevertheless, building owners realize that infrastructure gains benefits from openBIM, and they want to harvest the same value. Even though they are not there yet, I’m convinced that as the FM teams become increasingly professionalized, the more value they will get from openBIM”.
“IFC 4.3 came at the perfect time with its infrastructure collaboration tool, and it’s actually a no-brainer since the green transition and an increasingly more sustainable construction industry is dependent upon correct and standardized data that can be reused over and over again”, says Peter Bo Olsen. “We are looking at openBIM from multiple views and are considering the actual needs of the industry to reach our sustainability goals.”
Future scenarios for buildingSMART
We conclude the interview by asking Calvin Kam about his perspective on the future of buildingSMART. His answers are equally visionary as they are embracing.
“First of all, I believe in leveraging the best of openBIM, AI, and VDC to accelerate climate change solutions and responses. Secondly, I’ll work to elevate the buildingSMART and openBIM community from being pioneers to becoming more mainstream and more of a commodity. Finally, I’ll continue to engage with global friends and collaborators to enjoy the progress and impacts we can make together,” Calvin concludes.
People have been the pivot point throughout Calvin Kam’s answers. As a person, he is equally knowledgeable and engaging, and as the accompanying rain-filled photographs show, even cold and wet weather couldn’t destroy the positive atmosphere of an interview session.