Creating a community platform for each building to manage building tasks using a modified BIM HEROES concept is possible and could be valuable. Read to the bottom to see Kimon’s and Ralph’s response
How it Could Look:
Imagine a dedicated online space for each building, branded perhaps with the building’s name. This platform could integrate BIM data with community features, allowing residents, building managers, and potentially even automated systems to interact. Key features could include:
- Visual Interface Linked to BIM: Users can navigate a 3D model or 2D plan for their building (powered by BIM data). Clicking on elements (e.g., a thermostat, a lighting fixture, a ventilation unit) would bring up its status, control options, and related discussions.
- Task Management: Residents or managers could log issues related to building automation (e.g., “My apartment is too hot,” “The lobby lights are always on”). These could be linked to specific BIM elements for context.
- Automation Control: Depending on the level of integration, authorized users might be able to adjust specific building automation settings directly through the platform (e.g., temperature in common areas, lighting schedules).
- Information Hub: Access to building manuals, energy usage data, maintenance schedules, and FAQs related to the building’s automated systems.
- Community Forums: Spaces for residents to discuss building-related issues, share tips on using the building’s features, and build a sense of community.
- Notifications: Automated alerts for system malfunctions, maintenance updates, or community announcements.
- User Roles and Permissions: Different access levels for residents, building management, and technical staff.
BIM HEROES Adaptation:
BIM HEROES, as a community for BIM professionals, provides a template for connection and information sharing within a specific domain. Adapting this for individual buildings would involve:
- Scaling Down/Focusing: Instead of a broad AEC professional community, each platform would be focused on a single building and its occupants/managers.
- Integrating BAS Functionality: The core difference would be the direct link to building automation tasks and data, going beyond general BIM collaboration.
- Tailored User Base: The community would primarily consist of residents and building management, with potentially some external service providers.
Other Industries Doing Similar Things:
While not exactly the same, there are parallels in other industries:
- Smart Home Platforms: Systems like Google Home, Amazon Alexa, and Apple HomeKit provide a centralized interface for homeowners to control various smart devices. A building-wide platform would be a larger-scale version of this.
- Industrial IoT Platforms: In manufacturing and other industrial settings, platforms often combine digital twins (similar to BIM) with sensor data and control capabilities, allowing teams to monitor and manage complex systems collaboratively.
- Smart City Initiatives: Some smart city projects involve platforms that provide residents with information and some control over city infrastructure (e.g., reporting issues, viewing public transport schedules).
- Online Communities for Specific Products/Services: Many companies create online communities around their products, where users can share tips, troubleshoot issues, and connect with each other. This building platform would extend that concept to a physical space and its systems.
- Ansible Collaborative: Red Hat’s Ansible Collaborative is a platform for users to learn and share automation content, which shows the value of a community around automation, although IT-focused.
Is it Possible?
Yes, it is technically possible. The technologies exist to integrate BIM, building automation systems, and community platform software. The main challenges would likely be in:
- Integration Complexity: Connecting diverse BAS protocols and BIM data in a user-friendly way.
- Security and Privacy: Ensuring only authorized users have control over building systems and that data is handled responsibly.
- Scalability: Efficiently deploying and managing these platforms across multiple buildings.
In summary, a building-specific community platform leveraging BIM HEROES principles for building automation management is a compelling idea with potential benefits for residents and building managers. While unique in its specific focus, it draws inspiration from existing community platforms and IoT solutions in other industries.
What aspects of this concept would you like to explore further? For example, we could delve deeper into specific features, the technology stack, or potential challenges. Sources and related content
Explanation of the Diagram:
- Building Residents and building Managers are the primary human users of the platform. They can interact with it to manage tasks, access information, and communicate.
- Building Community Platform (BIM-Linked): This is the central software system. It’s the adapted “BIM HEROES” concept for a single building.
- BIM Data: The platform pulls information from the Building Information Model. This provides the visual context and asset-specific details.
- Central Platform Components: These are key features of the platform, allowing users to interact with the building and each other.
- Building Automation Systems (BAS): The platform connects to the underlying control systems of the building.
- Building Sensors & Actuators: These are the physical devices within the building that monitor conditions and execute commands from the BAS.
User Flow Example:
- A building resident notices that the temperature in a common area is too low.
- They access the Building Community Platform.
- Using the Visual Interface (linked to BIM), they navigate to the common area and see the thermostat.
- They can either:
- Create a Task Management ticket (“Temperature too low in lobby”).
- (If authorized) Directly adjust the temperature via Control Options.
- The Building Manager receives a Notification about the task.
- The Building Manager can investigate using the BIM data for context and potentially adjust the Building Automation Systems (BAS) through the platform.
- The BAS signals the relevant Building Sensors & Actuators to adjust the heating.
- Updates on the task or system status can be communicated back to the resident via the platform.
Some thoughts as we continue refining:
While BIM is clearly foundational, I’ve found that a BIM-centric lens can quickly become too narrow, especially when we talk about digital twins at scale. What we’re seeing in practice — and have been working on since our early BIMStorms — is more of a system-of-systems model: BIM, GIS, sensor platforms, CMMS, permitting systems, emergency ops, and more. These systems each hold a piece of the picture, and the value comes from how they connect. For example, to give access to occupants in the building, the full BIM is too complex, but a connected BIM through a digital twin approach can filter the relevant and only data the occupant needs. There are many solutions out there that market a “Hollwood BIM” which is an idealized detail view that collapses under it’s own weight. https://www.automatedbuildings.com/2025/02/why-are-smart-buildings-and-citiesdumb/
That’s why efforts like C4SB and the use of Connection Profiles (CPs) and IBB matter. They’re not theoretical. They’re operational, enabling real sensor connections, especially when we can avoid getting trapped behind proprietary integrations. Would it make sense to pivot the article toward that? Could it be part of a series where we frame the problem first and then work up to a solution? I have set the stage with that with some of the posts like this:
How open frameworks enable what the industry has long promised but often struggled to implement, especially in scaling digital twins beyond one building and across mixed technology ecosystems.
At ONUMA, we’ve had much of the tech in place for years, but what’s often slowed progress is the lack of open, standardized connectors, not the modeling or visualization. The focus is now shifting to that area, and I think readers would benefit from seeing that evolution.
What the article describes as the future is already happening. Through the ONUMA System and BIMgenie, we’ve connected over 5,000 buildings across the California Community Colleges system, with more than 1,500 actively linked to CMMS workflows, and thousands of occupants are “talking” to the building through BIM already to send requests. This isn’t a prototype, it’s a live, operational digital twin network managing real assets at scale and was the source of the Automated Buildings articles in 2009 and how I first met Anto!
https://automatedbuildings.com/news/jul09/articles/bimstorm/090629045005bimstorm.htm
https://www.automatedbuildings.com/news/may11/articles/onuma/110426103202onuma.html
To take this further, we need open frameworks. That’s where C4SB comes in — enabling broader, standards-based integration across systems and vendors. This is a chance for AutomatedBuildings to help shift the conversation from vision to deployment, and invite the BIMheroes into a real, open ecosystem.
Kimon Onuma, FAIA
Onuma, Inc.
1055 East Colorado Blvd. | Suite 500
Pasadena, CA 91106
Building Informed Environments™
https://ONUMA.com
https://BIMStorm.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/kimononuma
https://www.automatedbuildings.com/author/kimon
@KimonOnuma
@BIMStorm
Ralph Montague BArch MRIAI, Director at ARCDOX
I’m glad BIM Heroes has inspired your article on building community – I’m sure we can all learn from each other.
The only comment I would have on the article is around “BIM-centric,” which implies that BIM is niche or peripheral.
While many see BIM purely as data, or even, from a more limited perspective, as 3D data, that is an uneducated perspective.
BIM is always people, process and technology (incl data).
BIM is all types of data – graphical, non-graphical and documentation.
BIM would include data from sensors and control systems (BMS)
BIM would include operational data from CAFM & CMMS
BIM would include process, like contracting (across planning, design, construction, operations)
BIM would include project management, asset management, cost management, quality management, risk management, safety management, etc. It is hard to imagine any of these processes functioning without information, which is key. And the quality of information impacts the process.
Even in International best practice standards, ISO19650 (BIM) is shown as central to ISO21500 (Project Management and capital delivery), and ISO5500 (asset management and operations), as well as ISO9001 (Quality)
Our Vision, Mission, and Purpose at BIM Heroes is to bring BIM from niche and peripheral toward the centre of AEC discourse – we are intentionally a “broad community”
You might find this short video helpful – BIM is “Foundational” https://youtu.be/Y_Z-U9eI6lg
Sources
What is a Building Management System? – CIM.io
