Aptus adopts international BIM naming and numbering standard

Our clients will already be familiar with our inhouse expert design teams and their reputation for producing high quality designs for all our multi utility services.

We are always looking for ways to enhance our services and recently adopted a new standardised system for naming and numbering our documents – we are pleased to share that we now use official Building Information Modelling (BIM) standards to classify all design drawings.

Bringing uniformity to designs with BIM

We have introduced a ‘Title Block’ to designs for all utilities meaning all drawings will display a design tile in the bottom right-hand corner of each document.

The title block has been designed to BIM guidelines which specify drawing aspects such as layers, line weights, font, colours and text size.

The format meets the internationally recognised ISO 19650 numbering standard allowing designs to be read more easily, helping ensure standardised practices.

So, what is it?

Each part of the naming block has a different meaning which helps classify the document. It has seven fields including the fixed project number, which is used by everyone working on the development and is specified at the start of a project by the client.

The ‘originator’ indicates who has produced the document and is an abbreviation typically using three characters of the company name. The remaining fields use volumes, measurements and other information set out by ISO 19650, to help users understand the design function of the drawing within a project.

Chris Smith, Aptus’ street lighting designer, explains more:

“Adopting the standardisation allows better working collaboration between us and our clients and adds an industry recognised practice to our current procedures.”

“For clients who already use BIM standardisation Aptus’ design documents can be easily integrated into their existing suite of files.”

Key advantages:

• Standardisation of the title block ensures the Aptus logo appears consistently allowing Aptus drawings to be easily identified
• Files can be grouped together according to the client’s project number, facilitating collaboration across complex projects
• Revisions to drawings will be recorded above the title block ensuring consistency across all designs and documents
• Hundreds of files can be easily organised and stored due to the uniform nature of the file naming

Street lighting designers Chris Smith and Abigail Aspin, along with CAD manager Neil Bould, worked extensively on developing the redesign, liaising with our gas, water, electric and street lighting departments to come up with a solution that will support collaboration between Aptus and our clients.

Although not yet mandatory, there is a global move towards using BIM standards. As this becomes more prevalent, by introducing these standards into our working practices now, Aptus will be in a strong position to integrate future advancements.

Published on 2nd October 2022