Designing for change
August 1, 2014 1 Comment
Ian Harman of Marflow Hydronics (BSRIA Members)
With the industry moving at such a fast pace, new innovations are being introduced all of the time. Manufacturers are inventing great new products that offer many benefits; solving the problems of the present to provide a better future. The biggest problem that they face, though, is launching these products on to the market. This is where BIM could really help.
I think it’s fair to say that people don’t really like change. We like to stick to what we know and what we feel comfortable with. This seems to be the case in our industry. Many people, from consultants to installers, are still completing jobs and planning projects in the same way they’ve been doing it for years; that is in very traditional ways. A prime example is how there is still much use of two port control systems despite Pressure Independent Control Valves having been around now for quite a while. These newer products are faster to implement and more reliable in the long term, yet there is still a reluctance with some people to adopt the new technology.
It’s true that with any new product there’s inevitably a big learning curve to using them, and often training can be time consuming. There’s also the fear of risk. If people use a new product that they’re not so familiar with then there’s always the chance that it will go wrong. This could be because the user isn’t so experienced at using it, but also it could turn out that it wasn’t the ideal product after all and sometimes knowledge and experience can really help when making decisions. This is where BIM steps in.
Using BIM, manufacturers can create models, which I like to think of as ‘Lego blocks’, that they can send to customers to introduce them to a product. And they can do this long before any decisions have been made, at the very initial stages. The ‘Lego block’ would be a visually simplified model that not only clearly defines the spatial envelope and connection points, but also includes a wealth of ‘metadata’. This ‘metadata’ contains data fields specific to the particular products, such as flow rates for valves or electrical loads for powered devices.
That all means that clients can look at the products in detail and trial them in their plans from the very beginning. They will be given the time to properly analysis products and see how they will work within the system and how they will interact with other components.
By starting with the end in mind and properly understanding the system at the initial stage, it will help to future proof the project far down the line. It’s also the cheapest time to detect any issues. The easiest time to make a design or selection change is at the beginning of a project and BIM facilitates this in a much more user friendly manner than ever before. This would undoubtedly give them much more confidence in the products they’re looking to use and would, very importantly, remove that fear of risk.
BIM provides users with the time and ability to put much more thought into their projects earlier on, minimising that risk further down the line. This then increases the chance of far more successful project that works with the best products, potentially the latest and more developed ones, and there’s much more chance of it being on time and to budget.
Manufacturers, like Marflow Hydronics, have been doing this to help bring new products into the limelight that otherwise customers may have been apprehensive about. More importantly, this has helped all parties get the right products specified when they may not have been otherwise. BIM may be the ideal solution to help us move more quickly into the future using more innovative products and having many of the niggling issues that have been around for so long vastly reduced, if not eliminated.
This was a guest post by Ian Harman, Technical Applications Engineer at Marflow Hydronics, BSRIA Member
If you are looking to find out more information about BIM, BSRIA runs two specific training courses:
There are also several other blog posts focused on BIM as well as a BSRIA BIM Network.
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Yussuf A
I need a new central heating system. I have read that it is possible, desirable even, to run a low temperature radiator system (like you use with heat pumps) off a condensing boiler gaining greater efficiencies from the boiler than the current standard system. You had an article about it in Dec 2009. However, I am repeatedly told by fitters and manufacturers that it can’t be done. I recently found someone who could explain why. It is apparently due to the hot water cylinder being part of the same system and requiring greater heat. Therefore, the boiler runs at 75 degs with a 55 deg return expected. Surely there is a solution to this? We don’t need hot water all day so can the systems be separated or different boiler temperatures employed when only room heating is required? Would using 2 boilers be more efficient, one for water and one for room heating? Is there a boiler manufacturer who would supply a low temperature system boiler for heating only? I get the impression that their min temperature control is still quite high.
If low temperature systems are the way to go, why isn’t anyone going? As you have said, change is slow.