November 30, 2011

Construct Canada speakers cover building information modeling, Google optimization for contractors

GREG MECKBACH

digital media editor

As more construction projects are being contracted using the design-build-maintain model, the use of building information modeling (BIM) software is changing, according to a speaker at the Construct Canada conference and expo.

“More questions are being asked up front (such as) how a building will be maintained in 10 years,” said Shafee Ahamed, research officer for the centre for computer-assisted construction technologies, institute for research in construction at the National Research Council, during a conference session titled “Facts and fallacies about BIM.”

Construct Canada is taking place Nov. 30 to Dec. 2 at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre and is Canada’s largest construction trade show.

Ahamed started his presentation by comparing BIM to computer-aided design, or CAD.

While BIM may be described by some as “CAD on steroids,” Ahamed noted CAD started nearly 30 years ago as a method for using computer software to make engineering drawings.

“It changed the tools from paper to computer,” he said. “That’s all we did.”

However, BIM takes it a step further by introducing collaboration, coordination, space planning, estimation, clash detection and detailing. It also does 4D modeling (3D plus time) and 5D (4D plus cost).

Although he included a slide naming vendors such as Autodesk and Bentley, Ahamed said he was not recommending one tool over another.

But he cautioned construction industry executives against using a “Swiss Army knife approach” to BIM, in which one single tool is intended for all functions.

“A single tool will not be suitable.”

He also addressed several popular perceptions of BIM, some with which he agreed and others which he refuted.

Ahamed did agree BIM represents a “paradigm shift,” but he does not agree with those who says it’s only for technology-savvy professionals or who say it’s only for firms with a high volume of business.

Other topics covered in Construct Canada conference seminars on Nov. 30 included moisture control in residential buildings and optimizing websites for Google searches.

About 40 people attended a session titled “Condensation or Leak: Understanding Moisture Movement in the Building envelope for Residential Buildings.”

The speaker, DSG Building Diagnostics president John Harris, delved into details such as the difference between absolute and relative humidity and showed charts with condensation curves.

He noted that in the Building Code for 2012, air barriers will be broken out as a separate item from moisture barriers.

He emphasized concrete is not waterproof and constructors need to consider sun-driven moisture, capillary gradings and ground conditions in building design.

In a session dubbed “Google Demystified” construction professionals wanting prospective customers to find their companies on the Internet learned they need to consider search engine optimization, said

Geoff Quipp, chief executive officer of the Search Engine People. Although companies can pay Google to have their sites appear at the top or along the right margin of Google search results, 80 per cent of Google users only click on the non-paid, or so-called “organic” search results, he added.

Quipp went into some detail on the history of Google, explaining that organic searches are designed by Google engineers to find websites that are actually relevant to the search terms.

He said that about 300 different calculations are used by the spiders (software that reads websites). It is believed that about 30 per cent of the total score for your site (which determines ranking) is based on what users put on their own sites, while the other 70 per cent is based on what other websites say about your site when linking to it.

He cited as an example the Google search with the terms “miserable failure,” which at one point yielded, as a top result, the official U.S. government biography of former president George W. Bush. Quipp said this occurred because thousands of Bush’s opponents published web pages where the words “miserable failure” were hyperlinked to the White House web page containing his bio, even though the words miserable and failure were not published in the bio itself.

Quipp said construction professional designing their corporate sites should first decide which key words are appropriate. He showed slides of how developers can use Google’s key word tools.

“Plug in what you do and where you do it,” he said, citing “engineer in Toronto” as an example.

He also stressed users need to create unique content for their sites, because Google can tell if content has been copied from another site.

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