End of Year Message
As we conclude 2020 it is impossible not to reflect what an extraordinary year it has been. Our lives and work have all been dominated by the Coronavirus Pandemic. Infections rates remain high in Europe and North America so we look forward keenly to the roll out of the new vaccines. I want to express my sorry for all those personally effected by the virus.
The virus of course presented buildingSMART with immediate challenges; I am extremely proud of the work done by the buildingSMART team to implement online working and host two very successful virtual summits together with our normal governance and leadership meetings. The virtual environment has enabled extended engagement and will remain a key part of our future. The 2020 Awards and Fellowship online ceremonies were particular highlights.
The year has been extremely busy for buildingSMART International and its chapters. We have welcomed new chapters from the UAE and Slovenia, and many have our existing chapters and achieved significant growth and/or renewal milestones.
In terms of our technical work, I want to emphasis as forcefully as I can the importance of the work being done to extend the IFC Standard to cover major infrastructure domains. The deployment projects for Road and Rail have made good progress with growing support from software vendors. We are also liaising with the AASHTO Bridges and Structures project following their adoption of IFC. This is extremely important work to ensure the necessary harmonization is robust.
A major milestone this year was the publication and adoption of our Technical Roadmap. This sets out the technical vision for both IFC and bSDD and is a vital document to build confidence that our standards will be robustly managed in a quality sense and managed in a way to ensure they are available in formats to meet modern needs. We are placing emphasis on ensuring the usability of our outputs with robust supporting tools and services.
