Building Information Modeling for Bridges and Structures: Outcomes and Lessons Learned from the Steel Bridge Industry

The recent push to adopt building information modeling (BIM) for bridges and structures in the transportation industry has encountered major barriers owing to the lack of standardization. Unlike the building industry that has the National BIM Standard®–United States (NBIMS-US™) as a formal open platform standard and guide for the development of interoperable BIM software, the transportation industry does not currently have a similar open platform standard to enable the creation of interoperable BIM software to serve the needs of transportation stakeholders. The purpose of this paper is to present the findings of the research for one of the first use cases and development of data exchange requirements and model view definitions in adopting the open platform NBIMS-US applied to bridges and structures for the U.S. transportation industry. A subcommittee of the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials and the National Steel Bridge Alliance Steel Bridge Collaboration was formed to conduct a pilot study into the creation of information delivery manuals (IDMs) for steel bridges. This study served as pilot for the development of future IDMs in the transportation industry. As a result, the current IDM for Steel Bridge Detailing and Fabrication serves as the starting point of TPF-5(372) BIM for Bridges and Structures development of the Design to Fabrication model view definition. Finally, this study provided the outcomes and recommendations needed to expedite the development of IDMs for other use cases in the bridge and transportation industry.