I am excited to announce a new formal standard, in support of Revit-based workflows, by the National Electrical Manufacturers Association (NEMA). Learn about this standard, my involvement, and my support for this and similar efforts in today's post!
The ideal of an industry BIM standard, for the massive eco-system which revolves around Revit, is one where shared parameters are standardized... and manufactures are creating content compatible with MEP firm templates, schedules, and more. This ideal also supports multi-firm collaboration... meaning multiple MEP firms working together (which I have personally seen many times, and is way more complicated than multi- architecture or structural collaboration).
Over two years ago, I wrote this related post: Promoting Industry Standards for Revit MEP plus Free User Guide, Shared Parameters & More. This post promotes a free standard I helped create... I actually had the initial idea to create the original Electrical Productivity Pack (now the MEPPP) while working at my previous firm (LHB). We started using Revit MEP right when it came out in 2006. About two years later we were patting ourselves on the back, about the high quality content and template we had created, and I said "we should sell this". The rest was history:) We won an ACEC Honor Award (in Minnesota) for the pack in early 2020, read about that here (see photo below).
FYI: Via the link above, you can download the shared parameters file and the entire user guide for the MEPPP.
Today we see another bump in this ideal direction in the maturity and evolution of BIM in architecture, engineering, and Construction (AEC).
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| Stine and Guither at 2020 ACEC-MN awards event |
New NEMA Standard
NEMA, an ANSI-accredited Standards Developing Organization, just passed a new standard called BIM Data Requirements for Electrical Products in Support of Design, Construction, Operation, and Maintenance. I personally like the practicality of this standard, as it is Autodesk Revit-centric. Meaning it helps manufactures, product reps, designers, engineers, contractors, and owners implement the standard in a more robust way... where others are too vague and still leave room of non-standard methods.
The main example here, is this standard fully embraces Revit's shared parameters method and provides the unique guids/id codes to really make everything work in the real world!
A Free Standard
Table of Contents
Here is a peak at the standards TOC... click to enlarge.
NEMA Standard Contributors
The following are listed as contributors. Since I am not directly involved in the MEPPP anymore, I am not listed. However, helped connect Krishnan with the MEPPP team!
- Steven Bunker, P.E., S.C. Bunker Consulting, LLC
- Blake Guither, P.E., LEED AP O+M, BEMP, Gausman & Moore Associates
- Shawn Zirbes, CTC Software
- Krishnan Gowri, Ph.D., LEED AP, BEMP, Fellow, ASHRAE, Intertek ATI
Link to Standard
Product link: NEMA BIM 100-2021
IES BIM Standard
We also created a BIM Standard at IES, via the committee I now chair. I will be speaking on this topic later this week (sign up for free): IES Mexico Presentation - Open to All (Spanish and English).
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I also write blog posts for Enscape - a new paradigm in rendering, animation and VR for AEC.