Stumbled upon
this on the MSN.com home page after logging into the hotels wireless internet. One slide caugh my eye. The slide that cought my eye was number 11 (Slide 12). Here is the text to go along with the slide:
11. X-ray vision at home South Mountain’s innovation: Each new home comes with a “roughing” book filled with photos of all walls and ceilings -- keyed to a set of plans — shot after the wiring, plumbing and other fixtures are installed but before the walls are closed in. The books give homeowners and the professionals who work on their finished homes “perpetual X-ray vision” into the building’s walls and ceilings. “All new cars have an owner’s manual. Why don’t houses?” asks builder-designer John Abrams, in “Companies We Keep,” the story of his innovative residential building and home-design firm, South Mountain Co., in Martha’s Vineyard, Mass. Abrams tells of one client who returned home one evening to the sound of water dripping into the cellar from the wall above. A plumber used his roughing book to find the leaking pipe and spot exactly where to locate a joint in the pipe. Sure enough, when he made a neat cut into the drywall, the plumber went right to the leak and resoldered the pipe, eliminating the usual messy, expensive diagnostic search. Roughing books also help when adding a room, moving a wall and installing built-ins. Abrams says that if all homeowners, bankers, real-estate agents, insurers and building-code inspectors demanded similar documentation for homes they buy or work with, the costs of insurance, home maintenance, repairs and upgrades could be cut drastically. Or does that just make too much sense? HELLO!! BUILDING INFORMATION MODELING!?! How about a DIGITAL, 3-Dimnsional, and manipulatable record of the building?! So... MSN's Real Estate section understands the advantages of BIM and how many people are on the anti-BIM wagon?
