On Wednesday 14 August, following months of organisation by Women in BIM (WiB) and the Revit Users Ireland Group, Autodesk hosted an event that was both inspiring and educational for the Irish Construction Industry. WiB Vice Chair Louise Kelly talks to BIMIreland.ie about the agenda and organisers.

This event brought two of Irish Digital Construction’s leading organisations together at Autodesk’s EMEA HQ — a venue becoming a key location for Digital Construction in Ireland.

Organisers

Women in BIM (WiB) is an organisation that aims to draw together women in key strategic positions relating to technology and architecture, engineering and construction and provide a portal for shared information and interaction.

Revit Users Ireland Group (RUIG) meets to share information, ideas, tips and tricks, to promote the more efficient use of Revit and related tools across the disciplines, exploring ways to improve collaboration.

It has been a number of years since the Revit Users Ireland Group held a user event and Louise tells us the arrival of Tom Kunsman, the WiB Regional Lead for Ohio, USA to the country, who had a longstanding invitation to present at a RUIG event, provided the perfect opportunity for a joint event.

Agenda

The event kicked off with pizza and beers kindly sponsored by Leica Geosystems, Arcdox and Women in BIM in the Autodesk Bar in 1 Windmill Lane. Then after a warm welcome from John Bennett, Autodesk AEC Manager Ireland, the first speaker was introduced.  Ralph Montague, Arcdox and RUIG reintroduced what the Revit Users group was about. He also briefed the attendees about upcoming events (CitA BIM Gathering, Dynamo Users Group) and invited the audience to get involved. John Kerrigan, Country Manager for Leica Geosystems gave a brief introduction to what Leica does and how this interacts with Revit Users.

Then Louise Kelly, Solution Consultant with Invicara gave the group a presentation on what Women in BIM is about, the aims and goals for the group. Women in BIM has a presence in Ireland, with Global Vice Chair Louise Kelly and Irish Regional Lead Emma Hayes hoping to increase the Irish database membership. To join the database, please sign up at www.womeninbim.org. Judging by the presence at this event it shouldn’t be hard to grow the group.

It was then time to introduce the next speaker. Aurelie De Boissieu, London Head of BIM at Grimshaw architects joined the event via video link to present ‘Why We all Hate Interoperability: Tools, Late Nights, and Case Studies’. Louise says, “Aurelie brought us through various tools and workflows that they have tried and tested in Grimshaw to pull information from one design platform to another. One example was from Rhino to Revit. She showed examples of three different tools used and how they have compared, their strengths and their weaknesses.”

Next up was Tom Kunsman, who presented ‘Detailing in Revit’, starting with an introduction into who he is and his hometown of Cleveland, Ohio and how he ended up presenting in Dublin. Louise says, “Tom led a very interactive presentation with a significant amount of audience input, it seems like detail libraries, the importance of a structured Revit template and never exploding AutoCAD elements in a Revit model were subjects that everyone was passionate about.”

Of course, it wouldn’t be a BIM event if discussion didn’t come down to standards, how much should be standardised? Louise tells us, “Ralph in closing the event suggested maybe the group could come up with a set of Revit templates for the Irish Construction Industry, similar to the RIAI BIM Pack & Templates. Challenges to this were raised such as company IP and the value of each company’s ‘drawing look’.” 

Success

Louise believes the event was informative and a great networking event. “All in all it was a very successful event during a time of year where everyone is in between deadlines and holidays; we almost had a full house. Thanks again to our sponsors: Autodesk, Arcdox, Leica Geosystems, Women in BIM; and to BIMIreland.ie and Irish building magazine for their ongoing support.”

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