The MEPcontent.com manufacturer meeting was held in the Netherlands last week. With around 30 leading installation industry manufacturers and Stabiplan's entire board of directors in the room. Presiding over the meeting, Gijs-Willem Sloof, Stabiplan's Managing Director, outlined the connection between practice, theory and the future of content for MEP engineers.
Up-to-date graphic and parametric product information is required in every BIM project to create a clear model. Rob Young, HVAC Business Development Manager at Eriks (a major manufacturer of mechanical engineering components), addressed how formula-based families prove their worth in every BIM project. "There is crucial demand for a uniform way to provide content that has the correct information for various parties. This way the engineer can work with the same content in different BIM projects. MEPcontent.com has already proven its worth as a central content platform," says Rob Young, who then showed how MEPcontent is meeting customer demand for specific content with high-speed production of high-quality content. Michael Bottema, BIM manager at Heijmans (one of the major construction companies in the Netherlands), shared his experiences with using BIM by referring to current projects and gave his views on product information. "The demand for information and the need for usable information have yet to be well coordinated," says Michael Bottema. "We shouldn't overburden the market with information requirements that are not relevant."
The presentations by Eriks and Heijmans clearly illustrated the next step with regard to content: closing the content cycle. MEPcontent.com here forms the bridge between engineers requiring the right content and the necessity for a content factory and a central, open platform for manufacturers.
