Amy Bunszel is the executive vice president for Architecture, Engineering and Construction Solutions, Autodesk.

Although they look similar to casual users, the developers and practitioners of BIM and GIS technology remained quite separate for decades as they developed in parallel. Building and road designers created plans based on engineering software, often with little care for their surroundings beyond a few feet. GIS developers made vast maps with various polygons describing the “real world,” but detailed models such as infrastructure on the world were simplistic at best.

Amy Bunszel and Autodesk, a leading technology provider for the AEC industry, are hoping its seven-year partnership with Esri, a pioneer of GIS technology, is bearing fruit and bringing these similar industries together for the betterment of both sides.

“We’re on a mission to help educate our joint customers that it’s possible to aggregate our data together, so you have all that rich real-world context you get from Esri plus elements like the buildings you might get from Revit or the infrastructure you might get out of Civil 3D,” notes Bunszel.

Building Better Models

AEC and GIS have always had in common a desire to build the best digital models of real-world aspects that previously were created through paper design drawings and maps, respectively. As computers and users became more capable and sophisticated, it didn’t take long for both sides to realize their strengths would be amplified through integration.

Bunszel believes the greatest benefit of BIM/GIS integration is adding the “real-world” context from GIS to detailed infrastructure models. Design decisions can be made much more accurately in advance using GIS data, rather than building infrastructure first and seeing how it affects the environment and people who use it. She sites road construction, particularly cutting and filling the surrounding dirt, as an example that now can be planned well in advance of construction.

“If you bring Esri data together with Autodesk data, you can also figure out if you can bring your maintenance or construction equipment in,” she explains. “You can plan all of that out in advance and minimize disruption on the neighborhood, the environment, and all the stakeholders on the project.”

Bunszel cites a more-specific example of a customer who is doing design and construction work at an airport site that’s behind the international customs border and has limited access. To overcome this obstacle, the company collected point-cloud scans of the worksite to create a virtual model in a GIS, allowing much of the design and planning to be conducted in a “digital world” so they can meet construction schedules when actually allowed onsite.

Work Where Comfortable

Bunszel believes what makes a combined Autodesk/Esri environment so effective is that existing users can stay in the software environment they’re most comfortable and trained in, simply adding in the data that best help round out their models for customer benefit. They don’t need to start over and learn a new way.

“In AutoCAD now, you can bring in a lot of the [Esri] base maps, and people are actually using AutoCAD to edit that information, and then they can send that back into the Esri database,” she adds.

When help is needed or a user feels out of their depth, both companies are providing training and support to educate users on the new advantages. Bunszel also recommends the common and effective approach of “diving in” and learning from each side’s experts.

“Bring someone who has the GIS knowledge and the BIM knowledge together,” she says. “Our best customers think about process and outcome, and then put their heads together to figure out what data to utilize.”

Creating Customer Value

Regardless of whether it’s a GIS firm adding BIM to its arsenal or vice versa, combining the two technologies must result in customer benefit. Many firms are achieving such value through creating more-sustainable project outcomes.

“If they don’t understand how the environment is going to influence their project and how their project is going to influence the environment, it’s really hard for them to achieve those goals,” explains Bunszel. “The visualization of a [GIS] map with the 3D data involved that comes from [BIM] tools helps them engage the community, the client, in a much better way so everybody has a common picture about what’s going to be delivered.”