The difficulty of BIM

BIM stands for Building Interior Mapping, mapping out the interior of the building and the location of objects in the building. It’s a cutting new idea for Geographic Information Systems class (GIS) that they decided to take up for this project.

The reason for doing the project was that there were two incidents where proper safety wasn’t applied. The first incident was there was a beaker of liquid left to boil in one for the chemistry labs unattended. People out in the hall noticed smoke on the ceiling and traced it back. Neither the heat nor smoke sensors picked up the smoke. The second incident was in the front office. There as a carbon monoxide leak from heating issues and only evacuated only the students from the area and not the staff. It took the fire department with a gas detector to discover the Carbon Monoxide hazard.

In response to the safety hazards, the GIS class took it upon themselves to create a few maps on the safety equipment and the vents of the school. They started with roaming the halls and communal areas for the vents, sensors, and the fire and safety equipment. Afterwards, they attempted to use the GPSs available to give the specific coordinates for each of the safety items, but they lacked the signal and precision needed. Next, the class went back to each area and measured the length, width and height to calculate the volumes of the communal area. One of the students went to work with Mr. Brown to recreate the school map on a larger scale while everyone else work to create 3D printed stamps for each of the safety items. However, the 3D-printed stamps were too big for the scale of the map. Finally, the GIS class went and placed all of the objects on the map with pencil, went back over it with thin markert, and placed in the volumes for each area.

The purpose of the project is to prove to central office that Carbon Monoxide sensors need to be installed into the school for safety reasons. They are to be place at the ends of major hallways and communal areas, such as the lobby, new gym, and the HUB. There should be a total of 16-18 sensors installed with the price ranging from $7 to $20 dollars.

The project was meant to be a couple of week, but turned into months. BIM has became a swear word in that class.