Meeting the Challenge - How VBIS opens new access in Australia
In the latest edition of IFMA’s (International Facility Management Association) FMJ magazine, Heshan Samarawickrama explores how VBIS is meeting the challenge faced by building owners and managers in being able to readily access asset information to make informed decisions to efficiently operate their facilities.
Building owners and managers rely on accurate information for planning and keeping assets running effectively. The information is accumulated throughout the asset lifecycle. The rise in digital engineering and FM technology has led to an increase in the amount of digital information accumulated but equally the number of systems that hold data. This presents challenges in managing the potentially disparate information sets to enable opportunities to better use the information to achieve facility objectives.
Virtual Buildings Information System (VBIS) was developed to provide a solution for these challenges and to realize the opportunities. The development was sponsored in part by an Australian government grant program supporting innovative development in key industry sectors.
The objectives of the development were to:
• Provide an open standard that is system agnostic, allowing it to work with all commercial software applications.
• Promote consistency in asset information needed for facility and asset management.
• Facilitate ease of information handover in activities such as procurement or construction to operations transitioning.
• Support better use of BIM in FM.
• Enable improved access to existing disparate information to achieve facility outcomes.