BuildingSMART International summit 2022
It had been three years since the last buildingSMART International summit in Beijing. But from 18 to 21 October, the time had finally come again: the first bSI live event since corona was planned in Montréal!
From our client Waternet, I was allowed to travel to Canada together with 3 'colleagues' to pick up knowledge that could help Waternet as an organisation in their developments towards data & asset-driven working.
4 days bSI Montréal
The summit always consists of 4 days of conferences. The first day was a joint day with plenary sessions. On this day, updates and latest developments were mainly explained in the field of BIM, information management and open standards.
Good to see that developments like the bSDD and IDS, were mentioned a lot and nice practical use cases were shown. One of the strong presentations that was about implementing the bSDD was given by Jan & Stijn from Digibase. Nice to see that such a practical implementation of the technology was very well received by the audience (and extra nice because, as Based, we were also able to make a small contribution to it)!
On day 2 and day 3, several parallel sessions were planned on various topics. As usual, it was again difficult to choose, but fortunately I was able to attend several interesting sessions. What struck me during this event, and what I find very positive, is the increasing focus on sustainability and energy with BIM. These are of course very relevant topics that are becoming increasingly important in this day and age. Of course, this was again briefly highlighted and summarised during the final day, which mainly explained the conclusions of the entire event and the various parallel sessions.
International Friendship Club
Besides the interesting sessions, it was also incredibly nice to see and speak to everyone again in real life! A sizeable delegation was present from the Netherlands, with 25 people. In addition, many foreign acquaintances - from all over the world - were also present. Since this week IFC stands not only for Industry Foundation Classes, but also for International Friendship Club, it was of course one big party again.
Tourist in Montréal
Of course, I also took a moment to discover Montréal as a city myself! It was my first time in Canada and I was positively surprised by this city. It is a big city, but the pace feels very nice and relaxed. In the middle of the city is a big park with a mountain in the middle, Mont-Royal. Here I walked very nicely and enjoyed the views over the city. There are also many 'old' buildings in Montréal that are meant to resemble our European buildings. As Montréal is very new, this did feel a bit crazy. For instance, we even saw escalators in a cathedral?
As icing on the cake, I attended another hockey game! The Montreal Canadiens were playing against the Pittsburgh Penguins. A unique experience to be able to watch this local sport and soak up the atmosphere in the stadium. We were even lucky that the Montreal Canadiens eventually won in the extension, which made the trip complete.
On to Rome: bSI 2023
All in all, it was an interesting and very nice week! I would like to thank my colleagues at Based and Alexander Worp of Waternet for allowing me to attend and hopefully see everyone again in Rome next time.
Are you curious about my experiences and the knowledge I gained? Then don't hesitate to contact me!