Obayashi Eyes Large Scale BIM in the Cloud

(Obayashi and Webcor Builders brought this nearly 3 million square foot headquarters to life for ORACLE in 1999. Obayashi expects future projects to get done quicker because of its move to cloud-based BIM. Photo Courtesy Obayashi)

The movement of Building Information Modeling to the cloud got a boost with the announcement that Obayashi Corporation signed an agreement on the joint development of a BIM cloud-computing platform with NEC Corporation and GRAPHISOFT.

GRAPHISOFT has been on the cutting edge of cloud-based BIM with its BIM Server(TM), the world’s first real-time BIM collaboration environment, and the GRAPHISOFT EcoDesigner(TM), the world’s first, fully-integrated building energy modeling application.

Now that a 120-year old major construction firm like Obayashi is doing a companywide rollout of BIM in the cloud the hand writing may be on the wall for wide scale leveraging of cloud advantages. Obayashi says customers will benefit by being able to check the status during design, construction, and completion of buildings, from anywhere and anytime on the web. Basically, it will be information on demand. Because all stakeholders will understand each phase beforehand, consensus can be garnered early in the design process. The company also says that by using BIM this way, each person involved in the building process can cooperate quickly and seamlessly, greatly reducing construction time.

NEC Corporation specializes in integrating IT and network technologies and will be the engine that brings everything together in this deal.