Securing Masonry's Place in Software, Information Technologies

JOURNAL: ISSUE 4 - 2012

Georgia Tech Associate Professor and BIM expert, Dr. Russ Gentry

Building information modeling, or BIM, is increasingly the go-to design and delivery method for buildings – a computational tool that is becoming an umbrella for the construction industry. A related technology, Digitally Assisted Masonry, or DAM, attempts to reconnect architects to masons in the traditional ways they have worked together. Advancing these technologies as a means to improving structural design software and estimating software as well as scheduling, and energy analysis, all of which affect how masonry is designed, are behind the masonry industry's decision to work with Georgia Tech University's School of Architecture to develop a road map for masonry's full participation in the latest design and information-sharing processes.

Associate Professor Russ Gentry, Georgia Tech's project manager on this effort – the national Building Information Modeling for Masonry initiative, which is supported by leading industry stakeholders like BAC and IMI – spoke to Council members on their shared goals. "We want to build more masonry buildings. We want masonry to compete with other materials. So we have to think like architects, because ultimately, architects work for building owners and they are the ones who initiate masonry buildings," said Dr. Gentry.

Referring to masonry masterpieces such as Frank Lloyd Wright's Johnson Wax Building, which required the architect to work hand in hand with bricklayers on the jobsite to execute his complex designs, Gentry said today's architects will be able to unleash the "power of load bearing masonry and engage and use the material in new and novel ways using the promise of BIM." BIM lets architects and engineers look "beneath the surface at a drawing and say, 'I want to know where the lentils are; I want to know how many ties to order; I want to know where I need to brace the wall today because I'm not coming back until Monday.' All of that information can be embodied in a BIM model," said Dr. Gentry.

BAC President James Boland pledged BAC's and IMI's unqualified and ongoing support for the project, adding "BIM's potential is boundless."