062 - BIM (not only for fire) with Peter Thompson and Rino Lovreglio

[00:00:00] Wojciech Wegrzynski: hello, everybody. Welcome to the Fire Science Show. Today. We're gonna talk BIM that is building information modeling, and I guess half of you are super excited about the topic and the other half has already switched off the podcast, hearing this terrifying short letters. It's a subject that, people hate.

[00:00:19] Wojciech Wegrzynski: People love, uh, people like dislike, but it's very difficult to be neutral about it as it is something that we all are or will be exposed to in future. That's the trend that that's where architecture is going. That's where civil engineering is going. We will have to deal with building information modeling if we like it or not.

[00:00:41] Wojciech Wegrzynski: So I guess it's great to learn about it and, see it through the eyes of an expert. And I brought two great experts here today. First is Pete Thompson with GHB Movement Strategies. he used to be our guy in Autodesk, designing Revit for many years. So he certainly has great knowledge and [00:01:00] experience with BIM modeling from the inside.

[00:01:03] Wojciech Wegrzynski: And my second guess is Professor Rino Lovreglio and known pineapple pizza lover. As a lecturer in computer methods in, in civil engineering, he had to go through BIM and now he's torturing his students , with it, but learning a lot of new stuffs as it goes. And I love to learn from Reno about his experiences with BIM. And he's very well known for applying it in serious games, like immersed reality simulations.

[00:01:31] Wojciech Wegrzynski: They, put people through and that's is a really interesting, use of building information modeling and actually potential, , way how this can be very beneficial for buildings in the future. So, if you would like to hear what is the definition of BIM or what BIM is, if you have not faced it.

[00:01:49] Wojciech Wegrzynski: Yet, I guess we, we gave a definition at the very, very end of the episode, but let me just try and briefly introduce you to the [00:02:00] concept. BIM is a way that you store information along your drawings in a computer model. So when you draw a wall, it's not just, you have drawn two lines that represent a wall.

[00:02:11] Wojciech Wegrzynski: You, you have drawn a wall. If you click on it on it, it knows it's a wall. It knows what layers it has. It knows. Properties. It has, it knows its materials. You can change this, you can explore this other software can access it. And the best thing your colleague who's drawing the duct. they know that the wall was drawn and they see it in their model because it's all synchronized in the cloud.

[00:02:34] Wojciech Wegrzynski: And that makes this. Powerful collaborative tool with a huge potential for use outside of just drawing buildings. It has so many users on paper. It's beautiful. but the reality is a little tougher and, yeah, we're very open to talk about that aspect of BIM. So I guess, uh, if you have not switched the episode, good, you're gonna enjoy it.

[00:02:58] Wojciech Wegrzynski: Let's spin the intro and jump into the [00:03:00] episode.

[00:03:24] Wojciech Wegrzynski: Hello everybody.

[00:03:25] Wojciech Wegrzynski: Welcome to Fire Science Show. I have today, two guests who are very willing to talk about the BIM the next big thing in digital construction, maybe, I don't know. First, uh, Pete Thompson from G H D who recently transferred there from Autodesk where he was building Revit the, the number one tool in BIM. Hey Pete.

[00:03:48] Wojciech Wegrzynski: Great to have you here.

[00:03:49] Pete Thomson: Uh, nice to meet you. Wojciech

[00:03:51] Wojciech Wegrzynski: Very happy to have you. my second guest, his majesty Rino Lovreglio of Massey university, hey [00:04:00] Rino, great to have you back in the show.

[00:04:01] Rino Lovreglio: Thank you to having, having me back

[00:04:03] Rino Lovreglio: Wojciech.

[00:04:04] Wojciech Wegrzynski: Yeah. Fantastic. And you are making a lot of noise in digital construction space So I, I thought you'll be great to have, user opinion on, BIM so, let's talk BIM. it's an interesting subject. Everyone talks about BIM. Uh, I don't know how it was for you, Pete. Obviously it was the, the main thing.

[00:04:24] Wojciech Wegrzynski: Uh, but maybe Rino for you. Like how did you end up in BIM in here? Everyone talks about BIM. We need to use BIM in the project. We need to move into digital. Twining of buildings. We need to have this level, this level of BIM in this project. And, and I really fail , to understand if people really get what they are asking for.

[00:04:44] Wojciech Wegrzynski: And I also find transitioning into this advanced ways of modeling buildings in computers, including information layer, rather difficult for myself and my team. So, so how, how did you start up with, with your BIM journey and, where did [00:05:00] it bring you

[00:05:01] Rino Lovreglio: So in my case, I bump into BIM by accident and it was during my post-doc because we were back then developing a, virtual reality training tool for earthquakes.

[00:05:13] Wojciech Wegrzynski: mm-hmm

[00:05:13] Rino Lovreglio: And one of the technology that was promised to be addressing this project was the use of BIM. So build information modeling. it's not just a 3d model.

[00:05:24] Rino Lovreglio: It's much more than a 3d model. It's a 3d model that has many other layer of information. So it's basically a database. And what we did back then is unfortunately to use only the 3d modeling part of, of BM to develop the virtual reality scene. And somehow you can see that there are some advantage to use that puff, but we explain why it's not an advantage as well to use it for virtual reality application.

[00:05:53] Rino Lovreglio: Because most of the time you don't really care about what is inside a wall an evacuation experiment. [00:06:00] And those information eventually get important. And in the software that you use, for instance, unity, to develop your virtual reality scenes, and then you need to spend time to delete all this.

[00:06:11] Rino Lovreglio: Staff on the other head, it could be good if the BIM is already been developed by someone else.

[00:06:16] Rino Lovreglio: And then basically what you can do to develop a virtual reality application is doing a bit of cleaning up. But if you start from scratch to develop a real BIM and then try to put in VR, then you will realize soon that you put too much information that you don't really need it.

[00:06:31] Wojciech Wegrzynski: Yeah,

[00:06:32] Rino Lovreglio: that was the, the first encounter.

[00:06:35] Rino Lovreglio: And then it became my job here at Massey University because, , as I'm say every time is the, is the technology that pay for my bills because it's the things that I always teach, here at Massey University together with many other digital technology in our undergrad master.

[00:06:50] Wojciech Wegrzynski: and Pete, how did you get into world of BIM?

[00:06:54] Pete Thomson: probably cranky maybe 20 years ago. when I was at, Building simulation [00:07:00] modeling company before Autodesk,, IES in Glasgow. and, we were developing lots of analysis tools for green building design for energy performance, and a lot of the models were starting to come in from, Revit other BIM packages.

[00:07:16] Pete Thomson: and we had a project there to, Basically make the import of those models as smooth as possible through, either GB, XML or IFC files. So IFC files are the standard kind of open BIM format. but GB XML is kind of like the equivalent for green building design. So generally in, in Revit, you can export your BIM model.

[00:07:40] Pete Thomson: GB X, L or I C we were seeing both coming through and year on year, it was becoming more important. You could see the adoption in the industry was, was kind of driving that as well. So, yeah,

[00:07:51] Pete Thomson: Long time

[00:07:52] Pete Thomson: ago.

[00:07:52] Wojciech Wegrzynski: Long time ago and 20 years ago you were talking about importing data. And if I would to list, interesting topics, [00:08:00] importing data from BIM into other applications would be still my number one concern.

[00:08:05] Rino Lovreglio: I have a joke. And for Pete, are you capable to see the B BIM without I C readers? Like in the metrics that you get used to read the code and then you see the building without having any,

[00:08:18] Wojciech Wegrzynski: Are you, are you able to see the, like the three dimensional building, but just looking at the code, like in metrics

[00:08:23] Wojciech Wegrzynski: movie,

[00:08:24] Pete Thomson: Oh, like the matrix. No, I haven't quite, I haven't quite quite achieved that level yet. No,

[00:08:30] Wojciech Wegrzynski: but, I'm pretty sure the letters in the BIM code do not align into shapes of buildings. You know, like in metrics, movies,

[00:08:37] Rino Lovreglio: I say to my student. If you start having this kind of vision, that means that you need to see a good doctor.

[00:08:42] Rino Lovreglio: That means they've

[00:08:42] Rino Lovreglio: been working too.

[00:08:45] Wojciech Wegrzynski: that's true. However, I, I know some people who, who do that looking at FDS code, so it's achievable. Um, for, for me, , the information part in the BIM , is the most interesting one. And, uh, I think, many of us were doing [00:09:00] BIM, uh, or information modeling, way before touching rev.

[00:09:04] Wojciech Wegrzynski: I mean, if you, if you have the AutoCAD model of your building and you name the layers by what they are, you've already did some information in there. And, the information is growing the, the more advanced you go there. Yeah.

[00:09:17] Rino Lovreglio: Yeah, you are giving us like what used to be the ivory solution, the big difference, for instance. And it's one of the cases that I show with my student. If you draw, a box in Autodesk, unless you write the inform. You are a window. The object doesn't know that it's a window. When you start using BIM, you have a set of objects that you use in your project.

[00:09:41] Rino Lovreglio: You don't need to put the information. Look, you are a window with these parameters. So you start using object that they know what they are. They have already some self-defined parameters and you need just to change the parameters and this make life much easier later on. If you wanna automate the process of analyzing the drawing, because you don't need a [00:10:00] human that goes there and starts reading, ah, this is a door.

[00:10:02] Rino Lovreglio: This looks like a door. This looks at like a door. So we have three doors. You can just have a line of code and tell the, so in BIM find all the instances that are defined as a door. I dunno if he makes sense. He's a super clear example and probably Pete can expand on that.

[00:10:20] Pete Thomson: Yeah. I mean, essentially, if, if you think of AutoCAD as really good wire frame line drawing, and basic, polygons and triangles, it's nice smooth package to use, but it is nowhere near as information rich as the BIM model and BIM. The big difference for me is when you, for example, you, if you just draw a wall, as soon as you draw that wall, When you draw the wall on the screen, inside the package, it knows that that wall is a brick wall.

[00:10:48] Pete Thomson: It's got a cavity, it's got, uh, insulation on the back because you've chosen to start with a standard wall type. And as soon as you start drawing, it knows all of that information.[00:11:00] you can change it because you can change the type of all after the fact, but just right from the get. Everything comes with information supplied, uh, and that's, the big difference.

[00:11:10] Pete Thomson: And that's why it's been making so many inroads over the last 20 years into industry, because potentially it should make your life a lot easier when you start to connect that to other analysis packages, because in theory,

[00:11:26] Pete Thomson: when you go to another modeling package, like FDS.

[00:11:29] Pete Thomson: If FDS had a perfect IFFC file importer, you wouldn't have to draw a new model again, in FDS, you could just do your fire modeling because all the information or nearly all the information would've been brought

[00:11:42] Pete Thomson: in, it's just that that's been a slow

[00:11:44] Pete Thomson: process to come on board.

[00:11:45] Wojciech Wegrzynski: And you're talking not about just transferring the three dimensional geometry of my building. You're you're talking about the thermal properties of my walls, the distribution of my fuel inside the model.

[00:11:58] Rino Lovreglio: And we are talking now about the kind

[00:11:59] Rino Lovreglio: [00:12:00] of

[00:12:00] Rino Lovreglio: worms of

[00:12:01] Rino Lovreglio: BIM

[00:12:01] Rino Lovreglio: interoperability.

[00:12:02] Wojciech Wegrzynski: Yeah. it's a dream. It's a beautiful dream, but still a dream a, in a way. well, eventually the world is moving into that direction. It it's inevitable. It will happen. It's just, how soon and, how widespread, will it be? I, I think for Autodesk, at some point you guys started developing own CFD code and own tools for modeling.

[00:12:23] Wojciech Wegrzynski: So what was this in a way connected with this BIM revolution,

[00:12:27] Pete Thomson: the, the CFD team at Autodesk aren't part of the Revit team, but I mean, obviously they, they test out the connection. but the. Ethos at the moment in, in Revit is that, every function which is written in the software generally is also. made available in the API. So if anybody wants to come along and write their own little custom add-in, they can start to extract that information as well.

[00:12:50] Pete Thomson: Um, every, everything, um, is quite a good policy, that all of that functionality is open. Obviously you need some coding, expertise to get into it, but it is possible. And I've [00:13:00] seen a lot more students recently start to do that kind of thing. and in terms. Interoperability. I've been helping coordinate, working groups on enhancing the IFFC standards for, occupant movement modeling, Asim Sadiki and Peter Lawrence at Greenwich university are halfway through upgrading the IFFC standards for occupant movement modeling and it's in the process.

[00:13:22] Wojciech Wegrzynski: Reno you that something

[00:13:24] Rino Lovreglio: I want to say that a key, player has been, what is the role of governments in different

[00:13:30] Rino Lovreglio: C. Because in UK, I can say that in the us, there has been a lot of more going on because there was a mandate of, in the use of BIM for many projects, there are other countries that are a bit slow, like unfortunately, New Zealand, because we decide to use the policy.

[00:13:48] Rino Lovreglio: Let's be kind and wait that the industry will, uh, adjust and start using this technology if it's really worth using it. And so this is creating for us a lot of delay in the [00:14:00] implementation and in development of these tools. But I can tell you that there is a lot of startups and a lot of, it's not just a matter of a big company doing the efforts.

[00:14:08] Rino Lovreglio: There are a lot of small companies, small groups that are making these big efforts to make BIM interpretability more and more, more effective,

[00:14:17] Wojciech Wegrzynski: So, the governments are pushing for BM and, many projects get specified BM, but I, I really wondered at what extent the benefits of B I M really go into a construction project.

[00:14:30] Wojciech Wegrzynski: I mean, outside of having this nice three-dimensional drawing and, I guess collision check is one important thing that, really, can save your life sometimes. And I've seen that happen already. Uh, so, where else the benefits, for the construction industry lie in, in putting all this additional information, in the model or just model creation is easier?

[00:14:54] Wojciech Wegrzynski: What, what's your, maybe that's a, that's also a thing. I, I'm not sure because I have, I'm not building

[00:14:59] Wojciech Wegrzynski: my [00:15:00] BIM models like real

[00:15:00] Wojciech Wegrzynski: models

[00:15:01] Wojciech Wegrzynski: yet.

[00:15:01] Pete Thomson: Yeah. Sure. in most of the commercial design areas and medium to large scale projects, the BIM models now kind of hosted. Cloud, , and that centralized managed cloud service where the design team connect and draw the BIM data down is controlled. and you can always rewind for a history of updates, et cetera, et cetera.

[00:15:21] Pete Thomson: But particularly everybody gets up to the minute access to the latest design and you'll see. more and more now in some more of the advanced built construction sites around the world, people with rugged tablets, iPads, et cetera, and, it's starting to replace paper. so they're getting the latest drawings, and the latest information, uh, Updated time and time again.

[00:15:42] Pete Thomson: and that's the big change I'd say cuz it was always the case on, I was a construction engineer many years ago and you'd end up with this kind of concrete covered drawing. Uh, you'd be dusting off on site, which was probably three months out of date. now it's up, you know, it's possible to have the up to the minute [00:16:00] synchronized controlled and they'll make changes rapidly and, and they can implement those on site pretty quickly.

[00:16:06] Pete Thomson: So it should get over some of those losses that come from having out date things, and also the gains that come from be able to update things straight away.

[00:16:14] Wojciech Wegrzynski: Have you ever seen a revision cloud? cut in, uh, in concrete because I did , you know, like the, the revision cloud you put in AutoCAD to, to highlight, detail or something. I I've seen that literally cut in a slab. So sometimes too much information is too much, sometimes too much information is too much information, but I guess, in BIM, when you're, in a 3d mode, it's pretty, obviously it's a revision cloud, not an outline of a whole in, in the slab and, Rino

[00:16:43] Wojciech Wegrzynski: how, how do you see, benefits? How do you sell BIM to your students? Why do you tell them it's important outside of you being able to, finance your bills?

[00:16:51] Rino Lovreglio: I sell it to my student, telling them if you know it, you're gonna find a job easily. for the, the people in the industry. I [00:17:00] tell that one of the key

[00:17:00] Rino Lovreglio: feature of BIM is collaboration, but also if you wanna see from a drawing point, of view,

[00:17:06] Rino Lovreglio: there are also some nice video that you can, uh, find on YouTube in which there is, the possibility

[00:17:11] Rino Lovreglio: to draw exactly the same things using AutoCAD and Revit. and you see that also from a drawing point of

[00:17:17] Rino Lovreglio: view, the process speed up, but it's not just about construction because yes, it can help

[00:17:24] Rino Lovreglio: as Pete said, in the construction process,

[00:17:27] Rino Lovreglio: it can give a fundamental contribution in

[00:17:30] Rino Lovreglio: cost estimation, project management, avoiding clash and stuff like

[00:17:34] Rino Lovreglio: that. But the fact that you have a BIM information, that means that you have instruction manual for the building.

[00:17:40] Rino Lovreglio: So it's like the building is done. Now you

[00:17:43] Rino Lovreglio: can give this instruction manual to the owner of the building and facility management. And that's what we are trying to push here in our program also to educate the facility

[00:17:52] Rino Lovreglio: management on the use

[00:17:54] Rino Lovreglio: of BIM. Because if you see

[00:17:55] Rino Lovreglio: the real cost of a

[00:17:57] Rino Lovreglio: building, it's not the construction cost, it's the [00:18:00] operation cost of the time, life of the building.

[00:18:02] Rino Lovreglio: And if you start using BIM tool to make assessment

[00:18:05] Rino Lovreglio: and, use it as an information

[00:18:07] Rino Lovreglio: tool to keep up all the assets

[00:18:09] Rino Lovreglio: that you have in place, it can become a really powerful tool. Do we do it in real life? Is the, answer probably not, not much. And I can tell you that there is a

[00:18:19] Rino Lovreglio: lot of education that we need to do, because we

[00:18:21] Rino Lovreglio: have been focusing quite a lot at this stage on the construction, sector to educate people on the use of BIM.

[00:18:27] Rino Lovreglio: And I think we

[00:18:28] Rino Lovreglio: need to put, uh, Now a lot

[00:18:30] Rino Lovreglio: of more emphasis and, education

[00:18:32] Rino Lovreglio: on the facility

[00:18:33] Rino Lovreglio: management

[00:18:34] Rino Lovreglio: side.

[00:18:35] Wojciech Wegrzynski: So it's literally here is the keys to your new building, and here is the digital twin, which you can play a

[00:18:41] Wojciech Wegrzynski: a bit with and find anything you need to know about

[00:18:43] Wojciech Wegrzynski: your building inside. Right.

[00:18:45] Rino Lovreglio: And you are basically telling us also,

[00:18:47] Rino Lovreglio: what is the other advantage?

[00:18:49] Rino Lovreglio: Because then you can also connect the information with sensor and

[00:18:52] Rino Lovreglio: have real time information and this can became a really big things, even for safety, because if we have a [00:19:00] real time data and

[00:19:00] Rino Lovreglio: Pete was doing, with Daniel Nisson project like that,

[00:19:03] Rino Lovreglio: using sensor to estimate, for instance, so many people you have in a building going a specific room,

[00:19:09] Rino Lovreglio: all this information that can be really useful for facility management point of view can became really important.

[00:19:14] Rino Lovreglio: Also when you need to

[00:19:15] Rino Lovreglio: rescue someone.

[00:19:16] Wojciech Wegrzynski: Yeah, absolutely. I wonder now how, fire comes into play with bam. Like what. Would be the benefit of fire for fire engineer. And let's put modeling aside, like let's put FDS and evacuation modeling aside for, for a second, because here would be some obvious, benefits to, to collaborate on, on B models.

[00:19:40] Wojciech Wegrzynski: But outside of that, if, if you are just preparing a fire safety strategy for your building, if you are just responsible for, for determining, the basic safety functions of your building, maybe you, are just interested if your building is compliant with

[00:19:56] Wojciech Wegrzynski: the building code,

[00:19:57] Wojciech Wegrzynski: like

[00:19:58] Wojciech Wegrzynski: to, to what

[00:19:58] Wojciech Wegrzynski: extent bin comes into [00:20:00] play there.

[00:20:00] Pete Thomson: it's a good point, , Wojciech because, when we were looking at, uh, implementing, evacuation modeling, advanced simulation in, in, in, in rev and testing different things out at certain times, and we're chatting to customers and asked what they wanted. First thing they said was travel distance calculations.

[00:20:15] Pete Thomson: Of course, the fancy 3d model in me, I go, oh, really? but. What pays the bills. and it's the prescriptive regulations, on what, 90 plus percent of buildings. So it's easy to get carried away with the advanced 3d modeling sometimes and forget what pays the bread and butter bills on many consultants, doorsteps.

[00:20:34] Pete Thomson: so the first thing that we did, was implement, path of travel distance calculator in Revit. and then, uh, we built on that for. When the pandemic hit to do, um, social distance tools as well. So you could lay out your seating positions and corridors with one way traffic streams and start to plan out those things.

[00:20:54] Pete Thomson: So We did that pretty quickly in response to again customers' needs. so it's.

[00:20:59] Pete Thomson: the geometry's [00:21:00] there to do your distance calculations. You can now plot a to B and calculate the travel distances for your prescriptive regulations. but also, there are automated code compliance, checkers becoming available.

[00:21:11] Pete Thomson: Uh, I think, Briab have one in, , Scandinavia. There's a company in.

[00:21:16] Rino Lovreglio: We have your New Zealand as well.

[00:21:18] Pete Thomson: Yep. Uh, there's also

[00:21:19] Pete Thomson: energy code compliance ones. energy modeling is the other hat that I've had for the last 20 years in terms of green building design. so, there's enough information there to fulfill many of the criteria for prescriptive regulations checks.

[00:21:33] Pete Thomson: now often each prescriptive regulation is gonna require. Very particular information for the, you Know, local country rules, but at least you're starting from an information rich point and it should reduce the heavyweight amount of data you have to put in, to your prescriptive regulations checks. Hopefully there's enough information there to give you a good start that it's not quite as painful going through all that process of checking all the prescriptive regulation

[00:21:58] Pete Thomson: checks.

[00:21:59] Wojciech Wegrzynski: Know, from [00:22:00] my personal experience, we've participated in some really large projects. And at some point we, we felt like we are , the source of information. Like if electrician guys change some things, the firemen knew about it because they had to go to him. So if let's say. The lighting people or ventilation, people wanted to know what the electricians, uh, changed.

[00:22:22] Wojciech Wegrzynski: They didn't go to electricians. They came to us, or when the, the ventilation people change something in terms of, of ducting. And so, so on we, we were responsible to transfer that knowledge to the architectural team to say, okay, you know, here you have to move something because now you will be out of distance, out of space.

[00:22:38] Wojciech Wegrzynski: Like, you know, there are these levels of areas of the building that you're allowed to build in as a single fact compartment and so on and so on. So, we were monitoring this compliance, and I guess once you have this out automated compliance checkers, the, the distance checkers, whatever, in, in, inside your model, working automated, whatever [00:23:00] decision you take, wherever in the building you are capable of, of

[00:23:03] Wojciech Wegrzynski: almost

[00:23:04] Wojciech Wegrzynski: automatically

[00:23:04] Wojciech Wegrzynski: checking the consequences of that decision and that.

[00:23:07] Wojciech Wegrzynski: does not, sound very sexy until you, try to, uh, commission a building and suddenly your path of distance is one centimeter longer than the load by low. And I don't know what you have to do. You wait for winter. so everything shrinks a little bit, but this things happen in real life, especially in terms of building distances, separation distances, and stuff like that.

[00:23:29] Wojciech Wegrzynski: So, so this automated checkers

[00:23:31] Wojciech Wegrzynski: can be like superb,

[00:23:34] Wojciech Wegrzynski: tools and Reno.

[00:23:35] Wojciech Wegrzynski: I, I saw on, on LinkedIn, some videos You were playing with like automated layout generators and stuff like that. And immediately when I saw that into my mind

[00:23:44] Wojciech Wegrzynski: came the episode with.

[00:23:45] Wojciech Wegrzynski: Benjamin

[00:23:45] Wojciech Wegrzynski: Ralph he's now at fosters.

[00:23:47] Wojciech Wegrzynski: And, he, he said

[00:23:48] Wojciech Wegrzynski: that the world of architecture's the world of rapid

[00:23:51] Wojciech Wegrzynski: prototyping, like he give me 10 layouts. Okay. I like layout

[00:23:54] Wojciech Wegrzynski: one, two and three. Give me 10 of each more again, And again and again, and, and, and there's no place [00:24:00] for, for performance base fire engineering. When you have to go to a

[00:24:03] Wojciech Wegrzynski: hundred iterations of, of your layout within

[00:24:06] Wojciech Wegrzynski: one day.

[00:24:07] Wojciech Wegrzynski: So, so I

[00:24:07] Wojciech Wegrzynski: guess suddenly the fact you are automated with everything means this rapid prototyping is, is possible.

[00:24:15] Rino Lovreglio: Yeah, that's another big advantage of what is gonna be probably the future of, uh, designing, that is called generative design. and we actually played last year a bit, me, Pete and my colleagues, And think about the possibility to use this paradigm. If we want to apply it for far safety, what will be the steps required?

[00:24:35] Rino Lovreglio: If we want to apply generative design specifically far propose. If you download now, one of the

[00:24:42] Rino Lovreglio: latest version of Revit you have, generative

[00:24:44] Rino Lovreglio: design tools that they show you some key study about, or you can have a different layout of, desk or different layout depending of

[00:24:53] Rino Lovreglio: the objective that you have.

[00:24:54] Rino Lovreglio: For instance, the desk, can be, place and programmed in a way that you optimize the [00:25:00] view from, all the windows you have around. Or you can have a COVID the, guidelines that tells you that the inter distance and then the software is capable to create different integration and show you what will be the location in different, design solution.

[00:25:13] Rino Lovreglio: But in our case, we start thinking, what if the goal is far safety? What are the steps that we need to do all we need, what we need to do to connect the BIM inform. With the existing software and try to create a multiple iteration. And from a equation, point of view, you can think like it's easy to do 100, 100, 100,000 iteration of equation simulation.

[00:25:37] Rino Lovreglio: If you ever really advance CFD model, that's not easy any longer. So that's the, the things we discuss in a letter to the editor that we sent last year to Fire Technology, all the challenge that we need to face in the future and what will be possible, putting it in a joke to get rid of fire engineer, like let the computer became the fire engineer [00:26:00] of the future.

[00:26:00] Rino Lovreglio: But of course there will be always a far engineer because you need to set up boundaries and, optimal solution and verify that eventually the solution does make sense because you com a computer is not capable to

[00:26:13] Rino Lovreglio: understand. Eventually if something is really good or

[00:26:16] Rino Lovreglio: completely

[00:26:17] Rino Lovreglio: done,

[00:26:18] Pete Thomson: Yeah, we've had the situation where, sometimes.

[00:26:20] Pete Thomson: You engage with engineers and you start to describe about how you're automating some of these processes. and some of the initial reactions is a little scared because obviously

[00:26:31] Wojciech Wegrzynski: Hm

[00:26:31] Pete Thomson: if they spend currently a week,

[00:26:34] Pete Thomson: Doing consultancy on a particular size of design.

[00:26:37] Pete Thomson: And you say, can you, you can automate it and get it done in two days. Then there's a little bit of fear that they're gonna be able to build less. But actually what it happens is it means that they can try out a much richer set of options for the client. so that's, big message that. the holy grail of this process is that all your information is in the BIM model [00:27:00] and you have a rapid and solid connection to your analysis packages.

[00:27:04] Pete Thomson: And you've got the round trip with that round trip of data. You don't have to keep remodel building every time you can run many different options and simulations and try, you know, try and try again. it means that all of a sudden, whereby you would just test out one single design, you can test out 5, 10, 15, potentially.

[00:27:22] Pete Thomson: If that connection is solid. And that's where one of the big gains is that, all of a sudden, as a fire engineer, your life should become a bit more interesting in terms of, some of those projects, not always the most interesting, the mundane tasks, which can be automated, could be automated, and then you can do more of the interesting stuff, and hopefully come up with a safer design.

[00:27:43] Wojciech Wegrzynski: I think We're never in a point where market for fire safety engineers

[00:27:46] Wojciech Wegrzynski: is, is fully saturated. the amount of new projects being, opened , every week. Even if I look at the skyline

[00:27:53] Wojciech Wegrzynski: of Waro the amount of new

[00:27:55] Wojciech Wegrzynski: projects popping every now and then due to the demands of the market, even [00:28:00] in, in the

[00:28:00] Wojciech Wegrzynski: in the post COVID times, it it's insane.

[00:28:03] Wojciech Wegrzynski: And we are never nowhere close to, producing the, fire safety engineers, the capable and smart and, and well trained fire safety engineers, who understand fire safety engineering to the level where O of the

[00:28:17] Wojciech Wegrzynski: demands of the, of the building industry. And especially. We seem to be generating, problems quicker than we generate solutions.

[00:28:25] Wojciech Wegrzynski: So I, I don't think we're, we're running out of problems anywhere, soon. And, um, this being

[00:28:31] Wojciech Wegrzynski: episode 60 somethingish of my podcast is a statement to that. I'm, I'm nowhere close to running of interesting, topics to, to talk in

[00:28:40] Wojciech Wegrzynski: here because we are just very, very good at generating

[00:28:43] Wojciech Wegrzynski: them. Uh, you've mentioned that the holy GRA will be having the, all the information in, in BIM model and then seamless integration with everything else around it.

[00:28:53] Wojciech Wegrzynski: So, yeah, let's open this kind of forms

[00:28:55] Wojciech Wegrzynski: and, and, and let's go into this, seamless integration

[00:28:58] Wojciech Wegrzynski: and for me as [00:29:00] someone who's building CFD models, this is the painful part. It, it's not easy. And, I guess we can talk a lot of time on why it's not easy, but I, I, I think.

[00:29:12] Wojciech Wegrzynski: The best way to

[00:29:13] Wojciech Wegrzynski: summarize that is that building your numerical model, your, your model as an engineer,

[00:29:20] Wojciech Wegrzynski: it's, a process which has a purpose.

[00:29:22] Wojciech Wegrzynski: I'm building a, a model of my building for a certain purpose.

[00:29:27] Wojciech Wegrzynski: And I understand that purpose. I know that if I

[00:29:31] Wojciech Wegrzynski: mistake, some dimension by one centimeter and I'm modeling a hundred meter long wall, I know it is irrelevant to my model. I know that if my doorknob has extremely fancy shape, I, I understand it has zero impact on my, uh, flow field around the door.

[00:29:52] Wojciech Wegrzynski: And this is what I mean about, you know, purposeful modeling. I understand the purpose. So I understand the level [00:30:00] of, Generalization I can put in my model and still receive the full information out of it. However, when you transport information from BIM, there is no, at least at my understanding, there is no easy way to tell me, okay, import me everything.

[00:30:16] Wojciech Wegrzynski: But when you are importing doors, you know, leave the door, knobs alone. I don't want them. and this suddenly the problem is not building my model. It's reducing the information to the smallest amount that forms the model. And I found this really, really tough. am I alone in this or

[00:30:35] Wojciech Wegrzynski: this is the,

[00:30:36] Wojciech Wegrzynski: the

[00:30:36] Wojciech Wegrzynski: world we live in.

[00:30:37] Pete Thomson: No, no, it's a, it's it's a known issue. because at the moment when you export your IFC file from a BIM package, in general, it includes all the detail and then the receiving package, has to spend time filtering out the information it doesn't want. And that slows down the whole process. Um, I think, if we look potentially at [00:31:00] kind of customized IFFC exporters, which I think is probably the way forward, then for example, when we're exporting things for analytical modeling, like fire safety or energy modeling, CFD, that kind of thing, What needs to happen is there needs to be a level of detail, switch somewhere in the system to turn off some of the detailed iron Manary, the detailed ball frames on the windows, et cetera, cetera, et cetera.

[00:31:25] Pete Thomson: Another, the IFFC exporter for Revit is open source and, can be accessed and customized. the master student, uh, supervised at Lund um, university Zi, he wrote a customized Adin, which, , Uh, exported the model data and added some information, sent it into Pathfinder with, um, some good success.

[00:31:44] Pete Thomson: Cause we work with Pathfinder at the same time and they enhanced some of the import and that was a great prototype of showing what's possible. and we're hoping to build on that, in the future as a principle, uh, I would say, I think that's probably one of the important things to [00:32:00] tackle is one of the next steps is to have.

[00:32:02] Pete Thomson: Level of detailed or a customized IFC exporter, which strips out the unnecessary information before you send it to disk, because it, it, for those big, big projects, it can take quite a long time to import those IFC

[00:32:14] Pete Thomson: models.

[00:32:15] Wojciech Wegrzynski: is, one word, but CD model can work with unnecessary data. It's just, how much more you spend to solve for, that? I think, the most interesting, Way would be to import BIM into something like Azo, like a B risk or C Fest, you know, because there is no irrelevant data there.

[00:32:34] Wojciech Wegrzynski: Your compartment is your compartment. That's the minimum amount of data. It's just the dimension and materials on the walls. That's the, the, the smallest package you transport. And essentially when you're building your CFD model, it would be closer to the CFA model than closer to the, to the BIM model. You know, because it is just a slightly enhanced geometry, but not really that much enhanced.

[00:32:56] Wojciech Wegrzynski: You don't want it to it to be that much enhanced geometry, [00:33:00] re Reno. You've mentioned in the beginning of the talk that while building model, you take your doors, put in your model and model nose. It's the door. You put a window in noses, the window, maybe what, we need is, uh, like. Multiverse of doors, you place one doors.

[00:33:15] Wojciech Wegrzynski: And the model knows that for this level of detail, the door is like this, but if I triggered the switch here, the door is, is like just a rectangle with, uh, with a name door on it. And, and it, and, uh, it's the same door at the same location. And, and then

[00:33:30] Wojciech Wegrzynski: this layer could be exported.

[00:33:31] Wojciech Wegrzynski: Yeah.

[00:33:32] Rino Lovreglio: It's something that has been already the finals Pete was saying, we have a already definitional level of details in, in the bam. It's just that probably we didn't spend enough time to implement the possibility to extract until up to certain level of information. And I understand your, discussion on fire.

[00:33:48] Rino Lovreglio: I think instead they will be really interesting and probably revolutionary the possibility to have so much three dimensional, uh, information for question point of view instead

[00:33:57] Rino Lovreglio: because humans don't behave [00:34:00] like smoke or fire. and, uh, if you think back in the day, we have been always oversimplified that a building is like a layer and, all the information of the geometry just on a layer.

[00:34:12] Rino Lovreglio: And the information is always, the interaction of the agents with the building is always conceiving a flat surface. Now we have the possibility to have agents that are capable to view in a 3d model. And start having the information. And this is part, for instance, once again of the job that Pete for instance is doing with, uh, many other university loan university,

[00:34:32] Rino Lovreglio: universal, Canterbury on the possibility to develop three models, they start getting rid of this flat idea, even in terms of fundamental geos and the concept of density that used to be

[00:34:45] Rino Lovreglio: really good 20, 30 years ago.

[00:34:47] Rino Lovreglio: But now we need to

[00:34:48] Rino Lovreglio: start seeing what's the real deal.

[00:34:50] Rino Lovreglio: What is the real reason, moving people in a certain way and

[00:34:53] Rino Lovreglio: driving their interaction with each other and back in the day

[00:34:56] Rino Lovreglio: was like SIMIS developed by Pete [00:35:00] was a good attempt with what was the technology

[00:35:02] Rino Lovreglio: when he was young, probably 20 kilos.

[00:35:05] Rino Lovreglio: I'm kidding in which he was, developing something on, on what was available back then, flat surface in which

[00:35:13] Rino Lovreglio: you were supposed to put agents.

[00:35:15] Rino Lovreglio: Now we can actually start moving in a three dimensional evacuation

[00:35:19] Rino Lovreglio: model. BM will give us for free all this kind of information that we might need. I'd say we might need, because we don't know how much of the information we are

[00:35:29] Rino Lovreglio: processing our brain. When we move in a crowd, probably we also, the kids over simplifying the information that, we need in a model, because probably humans, they don't start seeing

[00:35:38] Rino Lovreglio: too much details. they don't even care in the movement about the details Probably we simplifying our brain when we move

[00:35:45] Rino Lovreglio: the perception

[00:35:46] Rino Lovreglio: of

[00:35:47] Wojciech Wegrzynski: But, that, that perception, that, decision making process, that would be,

[00:35:51] Wojciech Wegrzynski: the role of the

[00:35:52] Wojciech Wegrzynski: evacuation model software. Now the role of BIM

[00:35:55] Wojciech Wegrzynski: would be to support it with, very detailed information about[00:36:00]

[00:36:00] Wojciech Wegrzynski: that. the building, maybe even the occupants in the building,

[00:36:03] Wojciech Wegrzynski: layers of obstacles.

[00:36:05] Rino Lovreglio: to give you a simple idea, uh, let's assume to have an agent that need to navigate in a

[00:36:10] Rino Lovreglio: space. And, back in the

[00:36:12] Rino Lovreglio: day, if you wanna set up the possibility of an agent to see, to check what exit are visible, if you are doing it in a flat surface phase, it's gonna be really challenging to represent three dimensional space on a flat surface.

[00:36:28] Rino Lovreglio: Instead, if you have already a three model and you set the height of an agent, you know, already, if it's gonna be cap to see an another equation, sign an exit. and this is just from a simple prospective point

[00:36:40] Rino Lovreglio: of view. but back in the day, if we were oversimplify and that was the problem that we couldn't push too much and even investigate or bother to investigate, what's the human perception, interdimensional space, and all this can be compute a real, more realistic equation

[00:36:59] Rino Lovreglio: model.

[00:36:59] Wojciech Wegrzynski: [00:37:00] Hmm.

[00:37:00] Rino Lovreglio: And I guess this is the step that Pete probably wants to do compare with this PhD work is to get rid of the two dimensional space and start consider the actual deal of

[00:37:12] Rino Lovreglio: equation.

[00:37:12] Wojciech Wegrzynski: Yeah, Pete, moving into, uh, GD movement strategies. uh, sounds like, you're moving into the direction, uh, Reno said. So, so maybe share us a bit about your future and, your plans. Because I have a feeling they very well

[00:37:26] Wojciech Wegrzynski: connect to

[00:37:27] Wojciech Wegrzynski: what has just been

[00:37:27] Wojciech Wegrzynski: discussed.

[00:37:28] Pete Thomson: Uh, yeah, I mean, um, actually the current project I'm working on is, uh, a thing called unity, which is the wildfire, uh, urban interface, evacuation modeling. So, um, in, uh, connection with Jonathan qui work at London, so creating an interface to, to, to drive that it's not related to BIM, but, um, Drawing in multiple sources of information to do advanced modeling of, of fire and evacuation, just on a, on a wider scale.

[00:37:55] Pete Thomson: uh, in terms of where I think ultimately things want to be heading, as, as Reno [00:38:00] said, you know, Traditional evacuation modeling's been on, on two dimensions. obviously the BIM model has three dimensional, rich information. uh, the possibility is to automate the geometry and additional properties like signage, et cetera, coming into the evacuation models.

[00:38:17] Pete Thomson: and then further than that, you know, further downstream, it should be possible to look at line of sight from where a person is standing in the room to which signs they can see. And that's more of a three dimensional problem, because it could be in relation to any partitions that are in your way, doors, walls in different positions.

[00:38:38] Pete Thomson: Whereas, you know, in two dimensions, It might look fine. You, you, you can now start to get to the point whereby if that connection is good, you've got the information about the signs and, and, and different stimuli that you can start to work out the motivations of people. Um, and actually start to use another step again, above the basic geometry.

[00:38:58] Rino Lovreglio: Now the cool things that I've been [00:39:00] always thinking about is that we can recycle a lot of AI algorithm that were developed for games, because a lot of visualization and perception were already developed for game to develop AI , for instance of shooters that need to shoot the players. So they kind of have this possibility to perceive space.

[00:39:18] Rino Lovreglio: And of course they weren't based on real data, but now we have the possibility to recycle some old algorithm implemented some data and data is the other kind of warming in my field, generate new data and generat new data to develop model data, represent the actual

[00:39:35] Rino Lovreglio: reality of, uh,

[00:39:36] Rino Lovreglio: aqui.

[00:39:37] Wojciech Wegrzynski: one, one thing from my own space, because I'm, I'm, currently, um, doing, a grant with the university of professor Lucas, Arnold on the visibility of evacuation science. And we are very interested in, lighting conditions because that that's critical to the perception of the, of the sign, for example, the traditional model of Jin uh, if I'm [00:40:00] not wrong, it is estimated that 80 looks, lighting in, in your building.

[00:40:04] Wojciech Wegrzynski: No one takes that into accounted in different lighting conditions. You'll have different outcomes and different perception of, of the reality even without smoke. And, and when smoke comes into question, the complexity is at the ridiculous level So it's very interesting. If now in BI. It could not only just transfer from one layer to another layer, but add multiple layers at the same time.

[00:40:30] Wojciech Wegrzynski: You know, imagine if I had my smoke calculation combined with a lifeing simulation of my room. So I understand what are the lighting conditions now, what will be delighting conditions? When I cut the power to my building, , how will that change the perception of the signs and these two sources of information go into evacuation model, where the occupants, as you said, will, would be able to data mind the path of, view and, and understand if they can see the sign or

[00:40:58] Wojciech Wegrzynski: not.

[00:40:59] Rino Lovreglio: Now, and another [00:41:00] phase that we haven't discussed yet is the possibility to develop a training solution for

[00:41:05] Rino Lovreglio: buildings. Because if you have this information, we can actually potentially have the possibility to change the behavior of future of equation. Because now we can start developing BIM based training tools in which you don't need to actually run a drill.

[00:41:21] Rino Lovreglio: You need just to have a BIM model implementing on, uh, on the cloud and say, okay, this is your office. Those are the instruction. And you need to follow. You can have a game that actually tell. Walking in the digital building, what's the closest exit. And in case there is a fire or a hazard are close to the closest exit, what are the other option?

[00:41:41] Rino Lovreglio: and it's a lot of keeping can be done for simulating, but also to, to educate people on fire safety and show them what are the consequences of, good choice or bad choice, not just in terms of equation, but even far fighting because, uh, we have been developing a lot of [00:42:00] prototyping here even, to show them consequences of using the wrong forest extinguisher in fire, in a building.

[00:42:06] Rino Lovreglio: And this can became really customized because if you develop the BIM for constructing the building, why not recycling this information, develop something that can be used. And to be honest, it doesn't take the much time today to get the bam and converting far safety. Equation drills. It's used to be a

[00:42:25] Rino Lovreglio: nightmare six years ago. Now we have all the

[00:42:28] Rino Lovreglio: tools

[00:42:28] Rino Lovreglio: to do it

[00:42:29] Rino Lovreglio: in a couple of

[00:42:29] Rino Lovreglio: days.

[00:42:30] Wojciech Wegrzynski: In a, in a virtual reality,

[00:42:32] Wojciech Wegrzynski: uh, setting,

[00:42:33] Rino Lovreglio: It can be a virtual reality in terms of immersive virtual reality. So you put a headset, but it can even be

[00:42:40] Rino Lovreglio: on a

[00:42:40] Rino Lovreglio: desktop.

[00:42:41] Wojciech Wegrzynski: uh, like a

[00:42:41] Wojciech Wegrzynski: shooter game on, uh,

[00:42:42] Rino Lovreglio: And from a safety point of view, we are try to identify if it's really worth to put people in a virtual reality headset, or it's enough to do a training, to, to have a training in a

[00:42:53] Rino Lovreglio: three dimensional space, just using a, a desktop that is more affordable and

[00:42:57] Rino Lovreglio: accessible to everyone, even better.

[00:42:59] Rino Lovreglio: [00:43:00] If this application is on the web and that's the things that we are trying to do. So you don't need even to install the software, you just browser to a specific software. And there is a lot of challenge to put it on a servers. I've been doing something like that.

[00:43:13] Rino Lovreglio: Crush every, every. Days. So there are a lot of challenges that needs

[00:43:19] Rino Lovreglio: to be done

[00:43:19] Rino Lovreglio: from a technology point of view, but I

[00:43:21] Rino Lovreglio: think

[00:43:23] Rino Lovreglio: we are getting

[00:43:23] Wojciech Wegrzynski: but, but for that there's, there will be also a technical limitation that the building changes. So the BIM model would have to be up to date. It's gonna be perfectly up to date till the last day of

[00:43:32] Wojciech Wegrzynski: construction when, uh, someone is being paid to, to do that. and then, uh, checked

[00:43:38] Wojciech Wegrzynski: of what's being delivered.

[00:43:39] Wojciech Wegrzynski: But once the that goes, the bin model is passed to the

[00:43:43] Wojciech Wegrzynski: administrator of

[00:43:43] Wojciech Wegrzynski: the building. The administrator

[00:43:45] Wojciech Wegrzynski: must

[00:43:45] Wojciech Wegrzynski: be conscious.

[00:43:46] Rino Lovreglio: and I can tell you that for big infrastructure airports can remember it was one of the major airports. There is a team that is always their updating the BIM information. If you care about the information, you need to have a team [00:44:00] that is

[00:44:00] Rino Lovreglio: looking after it. And, uh,

[00:44:02] Rino Lovreglio: that's a role that should be in the future in big building, a BIM manager taking count of all the possible change.

[00:44:10] Rino Lovreglio: If we

[00:44:10] Rino Lovreglio: see the value in

[00:44:12] Rino Lovreglio: having

[00:44:12] Rino Lovreglio: this

[00:44:13] Rino Lovreglio: updating

[00:44:14] Rino Lovreglio: information.

[00:44:14] Wojciech Wegrzynski: I I, think

[00:44:15] Wojciech Wegrzynski: airport

[00:44:16] Wojciech Wegrzynski: would be a easy thing to manage. I, I think a

[00:44:20] Wojciech Wegrzynski: sports arena would be a very easy thing, to manage. I think in a large office building would be a mess

[00:44:26] Wojciech Wegrzynski: because in many, uh, like owners of the flats

[00:44:29] Wojciech Wegrzynski: would have quite big autonomy in, managing their own

[00:44:33] Wojciech Wegrzynski: spaces.

[00:44:33] Wojciech Wegrzynski: Like in, Poland, we, from the fire safety perspective, we would, we would often deliver the building in shell and core. Like with, just open plan offices and whatever you do at the office. I mean, you have your own fire expert, you have your own responsibilities. It's not that you are allowed to like store crude oil in your flat, but still there's a level of, of autonomy.

[00:44:55] Wojciech Wegrzynski: You have to arrange your own space. And this transfer between [00:45:00] the lease, company and owner of the whole building responsible for the, for the global safety, that that's a difficult interface.

[00:45:07] Rino Lovreglio: No definitely no, I was saying that one of the, , the reason to incentivize the upgrade of information is insurance. Because if we can have think about the future. If you have an upgraded information, that means that you have more cons understanding of what's happening in that building.

[00:45:24] Rino Lovreglio: And if there are, uh, people that go and cut and make holes in, uh, far cells, you know, that are there, and this can have a lot of implication in when you need to ensure an make an, uh, insurance on assets. Like we can think that in the future, if we have upgraded information and you keep this, you might get some discount in that.

[00:45:45] Rino Lovreglio: I'm just

[00:45:45] Rino Lovreglio: speculating.

[00:45:46] Pete Thomson: w right Reno. I mean, um, I, I said the holy grail was, to get the, all the rich data from your bin model into the design packages, but actually. the, the additional side of that is also that the model grows and lives with the building [00:46:00] so you know it start off an early architectural stage that it develops as the level of detail of modeling, progresses through design stages.

[00:46:07] Pete Thomson: You go to your planning control, you get, permission to build. And then the construction process starts. And in theory, every single step of the. if as changes are made, even, you know, after the design has been given the go ahead, then further change is gonna get made during the construction process.

[00:46:24] Pete Thomson: Inevitably, as somebody works out that something doesn't work and something else doesn't work and then it, gets to commissioning stage and then the commissioning happens and. Ideally all every single, single step of the way, there should be a living model of the building updated. you know, as permits, come on, track people go in maybe three years later, they go ahead and, add new openings between floors in buildings to get new central heating systems in or whatever, or sprint.

[00:46:53] Wojciech Wegrzynski: Uh,

[00:46:53] Pete Thomson: that would all be stored in one central model. and, and that was one of the things highlighted in the Grenfell report when they, they [00:47:00] looked at what went wrong. that exactly that, you know, what was happening was apart from the original design, other stuff happened since the conception of the design, retrofit changes, et cetera, et cetera. so One very single thing, which caused the horrible loss of life. It it's a combination of factors. You know, the cladding was a problem for sure. But other things happened along the way that, people got in, you know, traditional construction process where somebody goes in, they get a permit to do something and they make the work, they do the changes, but it's not coordinated and logged and the trouble is.

[00:47:32] Pete Thomson: In the world of, of, of

[00:47:33] Pete Thomson: fire safety engineering and physical modeling, you change one thing, you change something else and it has an impact somewhere else. And unless it's all coordinated

[00:47:41] Pete Thomson: stuff gets missed.

[00:47:42] Rino Lovreglio: If you wanna really don't have nightmare tonight, think that we are applying the same technology also on city level. In fact, we talk also about city information model and the challenge is also there to digitalize what wasn't digital in the past

[00:47:57] Rino Lovreglio: and to, or to keep this information [00:48:00] updated and

[00:48:01] Rino Lovreglio: uh, in.

[00:48:02] Rino Lovreglio: Big version of a digital twin of a city. I know that there are million of pounds that were literally invested, in a research project, looking after the roads at the

[00:48:11] Rino Lovreglio: university of Cambridge, if I'm not wrong, just focusing on the digitalization of the road infrastructure

[00:48:18] Rino Lovreglio: in the UK. So it's,

[00:48:20] Rino Lovreglio: uh, it's a really big deal.

[00:48:21] Rino Lovreglio: It's a big challenge, but

[00:48:23] Rino Lovreglio: it's the things that keep us alive,

[00:48:25] Rino Lovreglio: I guess, as a researcher,

[00:48:27] Rino Lovreglio: try to, to

[00:48:28] Rino Lovreglio: tackle this

[00:48:28] Rino Lovreglio: really

[00:48:29] Rino Lovreglio: challenge.

[00:48:29] Wojciech Wegrzynski: Uh, when we talk about this

[00:48:31] Wojciech Wegrzynski: maining, the BIM, I have one last thing to, to ask and that's accessibility.

[00:48:37] Wojciech Wegrzynski: If I run, an architectural company or even a specialized fire safety engineering,

[00:48:43] Wojciech Wegrzynski: and this is the tool that pays my bills, I would probably pay for it and, and buy it and let let's face it's.

[00:48:48] Wojciech Wegrzynski: It's not a super cheap

[00:48:50] Wojciech Wegrzynski: solution. I'm, it's a specialized piece of software. but if I'm an owner of a medium sized building, I'm not sure if I wanted to purchase, licensing and everything [00:49:00] to manage my, thing. And also if, I'm not in an rich country, I I'm somewhere else. And yet I would love to benefit from this technology to what extends. Open access or, or, or the freeware side of this world is growing. Is there even such a thing or is it fully around large companies? Like Aldes before we go, it was really interesting to find out that you can actually buy tokens and it goes to like three years per day to, to use Revits.

[00:49:32] Wojciech Wegrzynski: So maybe that's a solution in a way, but I, I don't think that solves this wide accessibility idea. You know, I, I come from Poland, we have a way to solve that. It's called piracy. It's not being used that much in here anymore, but is there an open access scene on the, on the BIM industry?

[00:49:48] Wojciech Wegrzynski: I mean, IFFC

[00:49:49] Wojciech Wegrzynski: is, uh, is something very

[00:49:50] Wojciech Wegrzynski: universal, right?

[00:49:51] Pete Thomson: Yeah. I mean, there are some free BIM packages, which are open source. Uh, I mean, obviously I was invested in Revit, So, I don't know that much about them, but I do know they, [00:50:00] they exist. There's certainly a lot of free BIM viewers. So if someone's produced a BIM model, then you can get it, but there are BIM.

[00:50:06] Pete Thomson: Free BIM authoring tools, around, some, I mean, sketch up, for example, I dunno if I don't think it's, it's free in certain situations. It's not really what I would call a regular BIM tool. Um, it's got limited amount of information, um, but it is referred to as a bit tool. Sometimes you can get some information from It But there are other free, free BIM tools. generally BIM is free to most universities and academic institutions at least to train and, test on. but the thing is if, if the long term future here is to have your, your building more model stored, centrally and hosted, someone's gotta pay for the bills.

[00:50:44] Pete Thomson: um, because if, Ultimately, even if it's just the hosting and the administration costs for centralizing And storing the making sure it's secure, et cetera, et cetera, somebody's gotta pay for it uh, but I think probably, the secret in pushing that forward is.[00:51:00]

[00:51:00] Pete Thomson: As it's been in the past, the government implementing BIM mandates. I mean, at the moment, many countries around the world, I think us was the first UK, several, you know, various European countries it's happening in other countries around the world, is that all, all government projects have to be designed with BIM, packages. What probably needs to happen next for the proper digital twin modeling to occur is that governments start to need to mandate that not only is a bin model required for the design, but it's also required for the monitoring as well. And and, and I mean, there's an additional cost, but then it depends, what value you put on the losses that you can get

[00:51:38] Pete Thomson: by?

[00:51:38] Pete Thomson: Not.

[00:51:39] Wojciech Wegrzynski: And then this specification is used usually in terms of the BIM level or, or some specific IFC requirements, not, saying you have to use, uh, revenue, something. So, that's good. That that's, um, that allows everyone to, to participate in the revolution. And, I guess more people, more people participate.

[00:51:57] Wojciech Wegrzynski: The cheaper, the cost of technology is the [00:52:00] more widespread it is. The more possibilities you will have to, to, to also cater for the needs of, of, of those who may have difficulties accessing mostly cost related because let's face it. I mean, you also need not your usual laptop of computer to open a five gigabytes, rev model.

[00:52:20] Wojciech Wegrzynski: It's it's

[00:52:20] Wojciech Wegrzynski: not gonna really work well.

[00:52:21] Pete Thomson: It takes a

[00:52:22] Wojciech Wegrzynski: Yeah, Reno, you have a good

[00:52:23] Wojciech Wegrzynski: computer.

[00:52:24] Rino Lovreglio: yeah, that's, it's

[00:52:25] Rino Lovreglio: my excuse

[00:52:26] Rino Lovreglio: to ask my

[00:52:27] Rino Lovreglio: boss for a good computer.

[00:52:28] Rino Lovreglio: It's.

[00:52:28] Wojciech Wegrzynski: and then you, and then you, mine bathroom. I know that.

[00:52:32] Wojciech Wegrzynski: for sure.

[00:52:34] Rino Lovreglio: Anna

[00:52:34] Wojciech Wegrzynski: Okay.

[00:52:35] Rino Lovreglio: in the good, good old

[00:52:36] Rino Lovreglio: time. Yes,

[00:52:37] Rino Lovreglio: no, no.

[00:52:38] Wojciech Wegrzynski: okay guys. Uh, that, that was, uh, interesting to,

[00:52:42] Wojciech Wegrzynski: to talk about BIM bit, one thing we didn't do is,

[00:52:45] Wojciech Wegrzynski: is to define BIM, but I'll try to do that in the introduction. It's going to end up horribly and you're gonna spam me with emails that you are disgusted by my attempt on that.

[00:52:56] Wojciech Wegrzynski: Or maybe you want to, maybe you want to define at the end, after [00:53:00] all

[00:53:00] Wojciech Wegrzynski: of

[00:53:00] Wojciech Wegrzynski: this, Pete,

[00:53:01] Wojciech Wegrzynski: go try a defined BIM.

[00:53:02] Pete Thomson: So, uh, I mean, essentially BIM

[00:53:06] Pete Thomson: is not just. drawing. It is right at the start. When you start to create your design, you do it in three dimensions from the get go and inherently, everything has. Physical properties. So You're not just drawing lines in a model, you are actually creating three dimensional, physical objects as you draw right from the start.

[00:53:28] Pete Thomson: As soon as the first wall goes down. And from that point on the model, as you build it up, has all of that information in it, and potentially available to be used for other packages. it's, a multi parameter 3d space rather than just a series. dimensional polygons, which is your traditional view of

[00:53:48] Pete Thomson: AutoCAD.

[00:53:48] Wojciech Wegrzynski: Yeah.

[00:53:49] Pete Thomson: So fair

[00:53:50] Pete Thomson: summary.

[00:53:50] Rino Lovreglio: Yeah.

[00:53:51] Rino Lovreglio: no, I

[00:53:51] Rino Lovreglio: can pretend to be

[00:53:52] Rino Lovreglio: smart and

[00:53:53] Rino Lovreglio: read the

[00:53:53] Wojciech Wegrzynski: Ah, don't I'll

[00:53:55] Wojciech Wegrzynski: cut this out.

[00:53:55] Rino Lovreglio: No,

[00:53:57] Rino Lovreglio: No, the, if I should do a [00:54:00] definition or BM, what I it's in my mind as a BM, as a clear definition, like one shot is a smart database is a smart database with, three dimensional visual.

[00:54:10] Rino Lovreglio: and, there is a lot of keywords like 3d parametric model.

[00:54:13] Rino Lovreglio: It can be associated with it and, process as well, because it helps in the, in the process of construction. It's a lot of words that there are a lot of keywords that can be associated with, BM, but the things that deeply, I believe that is the key feature of a BIM is the fact that it's a really comprehensive database or instruction

[00:54:33] Rino Lovreglio: manual

[00:54:34] Rino Lovreglio: of a

[00:54:34] Rino Lovreglio: building.

[00:54:35] Wojciech Wegrzynski: It's like smart database with a two dimensional interface. , it's a smart database that you can walk

[00:54:40] Wojciech Wegrzynski: through. That's a, that's a nice future.

[00:54:42] Wojciech Wegrzynski: We have.

[00:54:43] Rino Lovreglio: And if you want this, like Lego manual

[00:54:46] Rino Lovreglio: it tells you when in place and you, you have pretty much the information unless than one change the blocks of what has been put there. If you wanna really super. Interpretation of what is even a database. So, you know, many piece of red [00:55:00] block you had, or many piece of blue box you had, and there are not just blocks there that build a wall.

[00:55:06] Rino Lovreglio: They, they have information about what they are, that the block can be a door that can block can be a, window. So it's much easier to go back and say, ah, let's see how many doors of this feature we had and what will be

[00:55:17] Rino Lovreglio: the cost and the tendering process for this

[00:55:19] Rino Lovreglio: specific door.

[00:55:20] Pete Thomson: Yeah,

[00:55:21] Pete Thomson: And a good demonstration of what you get from, drawing in BIM. Creating a building in BIM is probably good example is if you use something like unity reflect, which, is a games engine, viewer of your BIM model, and pretty much automatically you get something which looks really quite photorealistic out of the box.

[00:55:40] Pete Thomson: And all of a sudden the kind of light bulb goes on and you realize all of that stuff was in the BIM model. You know, the color of the blocks, the, the surface roughness, all of that stuff was there. It's just. Because you're viewing it in sketch mode. You're just not aware of it, but it's

[00:55:54] Pete Thomson: it's all there.

[00:55:55] Rino Lovreglio: don't do my mistakes because I tried it, the 30 days trial and put my [00:56:00] credit card detail, and

[00:56:00] Rino Lovreglio: then I forgot the trial. And

[00:56:02] Rino Lovreglio: then

[00:56:02] Rino Lovreglio: I was on my credit card. There were unity

[00:56:06] Rino Lovreglio: fees of 1,600

[00:56:09] Pete Thomson: Oh, wow. Okay.

[00:56:10] Rino Lovreglio: to,

[00:56:12] Rino Lovreglio: I had to talk to my wife and my university if they could.

[00:56:16] Rino Lovreglio: So don't do that mistake because you

[00:56:18] Wojciech Wegrzynski: Yeah.

[00:56:19] Rino Lovreglio: sleeping

[00:56:19] Rino Lovreglio: on the couch

[00:56:20] Rino Lovreglio: that night.

[00:56:21] Pete Thomson: maybe just play the

[00:56:22] Pete Thomson: video on YouTube first. It's

[00:56:23] Pete Thomson: a

[00:56:23] Pete Thomson: lot cheaper.

[00:56:24] Wojciech Wegrzynski: Yeah, that's a lot cheaper.

[00:56:27] Wojciech Wegrzynski: Okay. everyone should, should try and and play because that's the future. And if you don't want to be ex excluded from the future, you you'll have to learn some of this either. You like it or not eventually. So why not starting now, guys, thank you very much for this super interesting discussion on, on BIM and fire safety and just in, as a tool in construction process, it was, um, huge pleasure to have you in the fire science show and, uh, looking forwards to the future of BIM and, uh, the future of you in fire safety, because both things looks, looks

[00:56:58] Wojciech Wegrzynski: exciting.

[00:56:58] Wojciech Wegrzynski: Thanks guys.

[00:56:59] Pete Thomson: Great. [00:57:00] Thanks. Good. Talking to your Wojciech

[00:57:01] Wojciech Wegrzynski: And that's it. You know, sometimes when I recall the episode and I have a discussion, I know it's gonna be a good one. I know it's gonna be a popular one. And I have such a feeling about this BIM episode. because I really enjoyed it. I mean, I don't necessarily enjoy transferring data from BIM to my CFD models, which is a hell of a pain,

[00:57:21] Wojciech Wegrzynski: but I certainly enjoy talking about the future of civil engineering and fire safety and all the exciting things that can happen if we can make this work. Really, this is a beautiful technology on paper. It's amazing. It's improving every day. It's better . And as you heard. Pete in his days in Autodesk, when they've received a request, they were implementing it.

[00:57:46] Wojciech Wegrzynski: There are people working on exporters on other adds that will help us achieve what we want from this software. Without the pain that we may have today. So it's developing, it's there. It's [00:58:00] growing. if you want it to be better, maybe just, talk with these guys, tell them what we need. And, uh, I have a feeling it's gonna be great.

[00:58:08] Wojciech Wegrzynski: I mean, Already we in my office for last two years, we have been switching more and more into, rather than BIM importing and working with architects. Like they like it and it is good for our business. It's good for, the discussions that we have. I certainly appreciate the fact that the model is up to date and I don't have to send an email every time I start working with my model.

[00:58:33] Wojciech Wegrzynski: Is this the newest version? So yeah, I guess there's more advantages than disadvantages and annoying features. They're being improved. They're being worked on. Eventually they'll be removed. I'm really looking forward to this level of detail, switch in Revit if they can make it work. It will be brilliant and it will solve so many of the issues we we have with this [00:59:00] technology today.

[00:59:01] Wojciech Wegrzynski: So absolutely looking forward to the future. And I'm very, very happy to have had this conversation with Pete and Reno. And guys, thank you so much. It was really nice to learn BI. From you. so that's it for today, guys. I hope you've enjoyed this as much as I did. I mean, if you're still listening, I guess that is the case.

[00:59:23] Wojciech Wegrzynski: as usual, I am looking forward to meet you here next Wednesday. Cheers.