Business news

15 May 2019

Plans to develop state civil engineering web portal in Belarus

MINSK, 15 May (BelTA) – A state web portal dedicated to civil engineering will be developed in Belarus. The first version of the website will be presented in December. The information was released by Gennady Purs, Director of the National Research Center for Construction Pricing, during the conference held on 15 May to discuss BIM technologies, their assimilation, and pricing practices in the civil engineering industry, BelTA has learned.

The website will offer a system to manage construction projects, perform administrative procedures, and keep personnel training records in addition to implementing information modelling technologies. “The government has appropriated funds for scientific and research work. It will result in the first version of the construction industry web portal in December. The website will concentrate all the information that participants of the construction process may need. The information resource will be constantly developed and expanded,” Gennady Purs noted.

The official reminded that work continues to develop the draft presidential decree on the digital transformation of management of the lifecycle of construction objects. The document provides for setting up a division of the National Research Center for Construction Pricing to take care of introducing information technologies into the civil engineering industry. Regional research centers for construction pricing will be given additional functions, too. The novelties will allow accelerating the process of digital transformation of the industry and its transition to digital workflow.

Plans have been made to legislate requirements for using information modelling technologies. In the future companies will have to submit blueprints and design estimates made using BIM technologies in order to participate in tenders as part of the projects funded by the central state budget or municipal ones. The same approach is used in other countries.

The sixth international science and practice conference on BIM technologies, their assimilation, and pricing practices in the civil engineering industry is taking place in Minsk on 15-16 May. About 180 experts from ten countries are taking part in it. The specialists are busy discussing the application of information modelling and project management technologies in the civil engineering industry. They are also expected to discuss the removal of barriers standing in the way of BIM technologies, the organization of common data environment, ways for budgeting software to interact with Internet resources of the customer or the general contractor. Cost reduction and pricing are also high on the agenda as well as the assimilation of international and regional standards, the development of common terminology, technical regulations, ways to improve government oversight procedures. Belarus, Russia, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Lithuania, Germany, Turkey, Moldova, Tajikistan, and Armenia are expected to present their experience.

The conference has been organized by the National Research Center for Construction Pricing with assistance of the Architecture and Construction Ministry.

Building Information Modeling (BIM) is an approach to erecting, fitting, operating, and repairing buildings with a focus on collecting and processing all the architectural, design, technological, economic and other kinds of information about the building as a single digital entity. The advantages of BIM technologies include precise blueprints, the fact that customers can easily understand the blueprints thanks to 3D visualization, less time spent on designing and building, and the reduced cost of construction and operation.