NFMT's the place to be for BIM, FM, WBDG, FMOC, COBie and SPie

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BALTIMORE — The National Institute of Building Sciences (NIBS) has issued a free invitation to attend the National Facilities Management and Technology Conference and Expo (NFMT) — to be held March 15-17 — at the Baltimore Convention Center.

NIBS said NFMT allows the creation of personalized educational programs. Choose from a comprehensive curriculum of 120 sessions, including educational sessions on building informational modeling (BIM), sustainable facilities management (FM) and whole building design.

Seminars of interest include: The Many Faces of BIM, Developing a Workforce Strategy for Sustainable Facilities Management and the Whole Building Design Guide (WBDG).

And don’t miss the COBie Case Study & Help Desk, scheduled for Wednesday, March 16. The Construction Operations Building information exchange (COBie) standard, developed by the members of the National Institute of Building Sciences, makes it easier to capture building project data. It has already been adopted by several federal agencies in their construction submittal requirements. This will be the third consecutive year the Institute presents COBie at NFMT. (The Institute hosted the first COBie Challenge there in 2009.)

Beginning at 9:00 a.m., Dr. Bill East, of the Army Corps of Engineers' Engineer Research and Development Center, will lead a discussion of case studies highlighting COBie in practice. Come see how the COBie standard operates in real-world applications.

Then at 10:00 a.m., the COBie Help Desk will be open for business, so bring in your files for review and recommendations. (Or submit your inquiries in advance to nibs@nibs.org.) Watch COBie demos and get answers to any questions related to the standard.

Later in the day, at 4:10 p.m., there also will be a vendor session on the Specifications information exchange (SPie) Product Guide. Dr. East will introduce both the SPie project and the Whole Building Design Guide's Product Guide, discuss the progress to date and how attendees can create open-standard BIM models directly from existing product databases at a fraction of the cost of current proprietary efforts.

The Facility Maintenance and Operations Committee will meet on Thursday, March 17, from noon to 3:00 pm in Room 334. During the meeting, which is open to the public, the Committee will consider steps to support COBie, SPie, the Equipment Layout information exchange (ELie), Life Cycle information exchange (LCie) and related BIM standards; the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) draft National Equipment Standard Guide; the WBDG Operations and Maintenance Section web pages; and the WBDG Mentoring Program in the context of workforce strategies for high-performance buildings.

Institute friends and members will receive a free registration to the show. Just enter the VIP Priority Code “EOS” when registering. To learn more about the NFMT Show, please visit http://www.nfmt.com/default.asp. To register, visit the NFMT website.