FHWA Continues Work on Bridge Information Modeling (BrIM)

The Institute developed this sample BrIM to test various modeling approaches.

Over the past few years, the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) Office of Bridges and Structures has worked to determine the needs of the U.S. bridge industry when it comes to applying building information modeling (BIM) methodologies to bridges. FHWA conducted its initial work on bridge information modeling (BrIM) in cooperation with The State University of New York at Buffalo.

FHWA recently contracted with CH2M Hill to review and summarize progress to date and further its development towards the goal of producing standardized bridge objects, digital definitions and protocols that can be interchanged between different software platforms (CAD, design & analysis applications, visualization, etc.) and ultimately benefit end users (designers, owners, contractors, suppliers, etc.) The work is being deployed and tested in OpenBrIM Version 3 developed by Red Equation Corp., an open source, cloud-based system that uses standard XML language. The intent is that standardized objects can be developed by software developers and/or end users. This concept will ultimately rely on active participation from the bridge community to develop sufficient standards to make the system robust.

FHWA also contracted with the National Institute of Building Sciences to review and evaluate the BrIM work, as well as other existing and potential approaches to modeling bridges. In particular, the Institute is focusing on evaluating the buildingSMART International Industry Foundation Class (IFC) standard, which is widely used for modeling buildings, but is also being extended to cover civil infrastructure. The Institute prepared a report that reviews the various options and provides a gap analysis of approaches, which is being readied to share for industry review. The report includes modeling of a sample bridge using IFC, as well as documentation of the required exchanges between software across the bridge life cycle, to identify how these could be implemented using buildingSMART International and related International Organization for Standardization (ISO) standards.