Avatech partners with Siemens to develop BIM strategy

BALTIMORE — Avatech Solutions Inc. has announced that its professional services group is working with the Building Technologies Division of Siemens Industry Inc. in designing BIM content and developing a building product model publishing strategy.

For the past several months, Avatech has been providing BIM consulting services and creating BIM content for Siemens. These models, covering hundreds of Siemens’ products, are in the process of being published and made available to the building design industry for download and inclusion directly into building information models.

To date, the joint Siemens/Avatech team has identified product model standards, documented Siemens’ internal best practices, and created an initial group of models from existing manufacturing drawings. Plans call for expanding product coverage to suit market demand once the success of the first group of models is established.

"Our vision is, in essence, to make our customers’ jobs easier by supplying product models that fit seamlessly into building projects," said Joe Studzinski, senior director of product development for Siemens. "With federal and state governments, as well as leading developers mandating BIM, we are confident that a BIM content strategy will make us more competitive and win more contracts simply because of the efficiencies the models bring to the engineering and specifying process."

James Head, manager of tools development for Siemens added: "We’ve worked with Avatech since 2000 on automation projects, so we were familiar with their expertise in both manufacturing and AEC [architecture, engineering, and construction],” he said. “We invited them to help us create our BIM strategy because they were the obvious choice to guide us through the creation of product models from concept through publishing.”

The potential for Siemens products to end up in final building projects increases exponentially as they move to BIM, said Scott Hale, vice president of professional services for Avatech Solutions. “This will help Siemens better serve its customers as the competitive building product manufacturing industry moves to BIM publishing as a primary means of marketing," he said.

For more information about Avatech Solutions, or the Building Technologies Division of Siemens Industry Inc., please visit www.avatech.com, or www.us.sbt.siemens.com, respectively.