Sydney Opera House – FM exemplar project

The Sydney Opera House Facilities Management Exemplar Project (SOH FM Exemplar Project) aims to develop innovative research on facility management (FM) with the focus on asset maintenance. The project utilises the Sydney Opera House (SOH), one of most unique buildings in Australia, to research and create innovative FM strategies and models that will have a direct beneficial role for the Australian facilities management industry as well as the economy as a whole. The procurement, benchmarking and digitisation are crucial in improving the performance of FM. The procurement develops strategic plan and deployment framework enabling products, services, etc. meet objectives of performance, economic, environment, etc. Benchmarking is a technology used to compare practice and assess performance against the competitors recognised as industry leaders who achieve most successful activities in the field. Digitisation develops digitized FM modelling that facilitates the integration and automation of facility management. The project carries out the research on all the three areas as well as the relationship between them. It aims to develop an integrated approach for the improvement of FM performance.

Open Specification for BIM : Sydney Opera House Case Study

Executive Summary The objective of this report was to use the Sydney Opera House as a case study of the application of Building Information Modelling (BIM). The Sydney opera House is a complex, large building with very irregular building configuration, that makes it a challenging test. A number of key concerns are evident at SOH: • the building structure is complex, and building service systems - already the major cost of ongoing maintenance - are undergoing technology change, with new computer based services becoming increasingly important. • the current “documentation” of the facility is comprised of several independent systems, some overlapping and is inadequate to service current and future services required • the building has reached a milestone age in terms of the condition and maintainability of key public areas and service systems, functionality of spaces and longer term strategic management. • many business functions such as space or event management require up-to-date information of the facility that are currently inadequately delivered, expensive and time consuming to update and deliver to customers. • major building upgrades are being planned that will put considerable strain on existing Facilities Portfolio services, and their capacity to manage them effectively While some of these concerns are unique to the House, many will be common to larger commercial and institutional portfolios. The work described here supported a complementary task which sought to identify if a building information model – an integrated building database – could be created, that would support asset & facility management functions (see Sydney Opera House – FM Exemplar Project, Report Number: 2005-001-C-4 Building Information Modelling for FM at Sydney Opera House), a business strategy that has been well demonstrated. The development of the BIMSS - Open Specification for BIM has been surprisingly straightforward. The lack of technical difficulties in converting the House’s existing conventions and standards to the new model based environment can be related to three key factors: • SOH Facilities Portfolio – the internal group responsible for asset and facility management - have already well established building and documentation policies in place. The setting and adherence to well thought out operational standards has been based on the need to create an environment that is understood by all users and that addresses the major business needs of the House. • The second factor is the nature of the IFC Model Specification used to define the BIM protocol. The IFC standard is based on building practice and nomenclature, widely used in the construction industries across the globe. For example the nomenclature of building parts – eg ifcWall, corresponds to our normal terminology, but extends the traditional drawing environment currently used for design and documentation. This demonstrates that the international IFC model accurately represents local practice for building data representation and management. • a BIM environment sets up opportunities for innovative processes that can exploit the rich data in the model and improve services and functions for the House: for example several high-level processes have been identified that could benefit from standardized Building Information Models such as maintenance processes using engineering data, business processes using scheduling, venue access, security data and benchmarking processes using building performance data. The new technology matches business needs for current and new services. The adoption of IFC compliant applications opens the way forward for shared building model collaboration and new processes, a significant new focus of the BIM standards. In summary, SOH current building standards have been successfully drafted for a BIM environment and are confidently expected to be fully developed when BIM is adopted operationally by SOH. These BIM standards and their application to the Opera House are intended as a template for other organisations to adopt for the own procurement and facility management activities. Appendices provide an overview of the IFC Integrated Object Model and an understanding IFC Model Data.

Building Information Modelling for FM at Sydney Opera House

“SOH see significant benefit in digitising its drawings and operation and maintenance manuals. Since SOH do not currently have digital models of the Opera House structure or other components, there is an opportunity for this national case study to promote the application of Digital Facility Modelling using standardized Building Information Models (BIM)”. The digital modelling element of this project examined the potential of building information models for Facility Management focusing on the following areas: • The re-usability of building information for FM purposes • BIM as an Integrated information model for facility management • Extendibility of the BIM to cope with business specific requirements • Commercial facility management software using standardised building information models • The ability to add (organisation specific) intelligence to the model • A roadmap for SOH to adopt BIM for FM The project has established that BIM – building information modelling - is an appropriate and potentially beneficial technology for the storage of integrated building, maintenance and management data for SOH. Based on the attributes of a BIM, several advantages can be envisioned: consistency in the data, intelligence in the model, multiple representations, source of information for intelligent programs and intelligent queries. The IFC – open building exchange standard – specification provides comprehensive support for asset and facility management functions, and offers new management, collaboration and procurement relationships based on sharing of intelligent building data. The major advantages of using an open standard are: information can be read and manipulated by any compliant software, reduced user “lock in” to proprietary solutions, third party software can be the “best of breed” to suit the process and scope at hand, standardised BIM solutions consider the wider implications of information exchange outside the scope of any particular vendor, information can be archived as ASCII files for archival purposes, and data quality can be enhanced as the now single source of users’ information has improved accuracy, correctness, currency, completeness and relevance. SOH current building standards have been successfully drafted for a BIM environment and are confidently expected to be fully developed when BIM is adopted operationally by SOH. There have been remarkably few technical difficulties in converting the House’s existing conventions and standards to the new model based environment. This demonstrates that the IFC model represents world practice for building data representation and management (see Sydney Opera House – FM Exemplar Project Report Number 2005-001-C-3, Open Specification for BIM: Sydney Opera House Case Study). Availability of FM applications based on BIM is in its infancy but focussed systems are already in operation internationally and show excellent prospects for implementation systems at SOH. In addition to the generic benefits of standardised BIM described above, the following FM specific advantages can be expected from this new integrated facilities management environment: faster and more effective processes, controlled whole life costs and environmental data, better customer service, common operational picture for current and strategic planning, visual decision-making and a total ownership cost model. Tests with partial BIM data – provided by several of SOH’s current consultants – show that the creation of a SOH complete model is realistic, but subject to resolution of compliance and detailed functional support by participating software applications. The showcase has demonstrated successfully that IFC based exchange is possible with several common BIM based applications through the creation of a new partial model of the building. Data exchanged has been geometrically accurate (the SOH building structure represents some of the most complex building elements) and supports rich information describing the types of objects, with their properties and relationships.

Sydney Opera House : facilities management exemplar project

The paper presents an interim summary of research and case studies being undertaken in the Sydney Opera House FM Exemplar Project covering procurement, benchmarking and building information models. The final outcomes of the FM Exemplar Project will be presented through various forums open to all FM practitioners and published in Australia and elsewhere through relevant journals. Sydney Opera House is an Australian icon, attracting some 4.5 million visitors per year who admire its built form and enjoy an evening of theatre. The building is the attraction, part of the experience. Therefore, facilities management is critical to the success of the Sydney Opera House enterprise and an ideal subject for the study of facilities management. Significantly the three research themes are heavily intertwined – effective risk sharing in procurement requires historic information and benchmarks for future performance, benchmarking gathers vast quantities of data that can only be exploited if properly related to one another and a building information model provides the means to manage such data. The case studies are emerging as real-life examples of how one organisation is addressing FM issues common to many, and will provide useful lessons for practitioners pursing similar strategies in their own organisations.

Towards digital facility modelling for Sydney Opera House using IFC and semantic web technology

The challenges of maintaining a building such as the Sydney Opera House are immense and are dependent upon a vast array of information. The value of information can be enhanced by its currency, accessibility and the ability to correlate data sets (integration of information sources). A building information model correlated to various information sources related to the facility is used as definition for a digital facility model. Such a digital facility model would give transparent and an integrated access to an array of datasets and obviously would support Facility Management processes. In order to construct such a digital facility model, two state-of-the-art Information and Communication technologies are considered: an internationally standardized building information model called the Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) and a variety of advanced communication and integration technologies often referred to as the Semantic Web such as the Resource Description Framework (RDF) and the Web Ontology Language (OWL). This paper reports on some technical aspects for developing a digital facility model focusing on Sydney Opera House. The proposed digital facility model enables IFC data to participate in an ontology driven, service-oriented software environment. A proof-of-concept prototype has been developed demonstrating the usability of IFC information to collaborate with Sydney Opera House’s specific data sources using semantic web ontologies.

Adopting BIM for Facilities Adopting BIM for Facilities Management : Solutions for Managing the Sydney Opera House

The digital modelling research stream of the Sydney Opera House FM Exemplar Project has demonstrated significant benefits in digitising design documentation and operational and maintenance manuals. Since Sydney Opera House did not have digital models of its structure, there was an opportunity to investigate the application of digital modelling using standardised Building Information Models (BIM) to support facilities management (FM).The focus of this investigation was on the following areas:the re-usability of standardised BIM for FM purposesthe potential of BIM as an information framework acting as integrator for various FM data sources the extendibility and flexibility of the BIM to cope with business-specific data and requirements commercial FM software using standardised BIMthe ability to add (organisation-specific) intelligence to the modela roadmap for Sydney Opera House to adopt BIM for FM.

Folk opera and theatre for development

The research field was intercultural theatre, specifically adapting indigenous performance forms for applied theatre purposes. The context was the rich performative traditions of Papua New Guinean cultures, which have remained largely untapped over several decades of "theatre for development" and "entertainment education". Papua New Guinean company Raun Raun Theatre developed Folk Opera from a similar concept in African theatre in the 1970s. The form incorporates elements of song, dance, ritual, chant, metaphor, music, and body adornment from traditional cultures. The form’s spectacular scope suited international touring in large theatrical venues, and the themes of emerging nationalism with which Raun Raun was concerned. The research team made three key innovations in the use of Folk Opera: adapting the form from theatres to community contexts, using the form to address issues of individual choice for health promotion, and emphasising experiential education over entertainment. Field-testing in Karkar Island showed community members gained clearer understandings of relevant health issues through participating in the folk opera form than through other educational approaches. The significance of the research was recognised by the members of the cross-cultural workshop team and the community of Karkar Island including the local Member of Parliament. The success of the Folk Opera form as an approach to sexual health promotion was recognised through the provision of AUD$74,000 funding by the National AIDS Council Secretariat of Papua New Guinea for a train-the-trainer program incorporating this innovative form of applied theatre. The research has been presented at a number of national and international conferences including the 6th International Research in Drama Education conference in 2009.

The pomegranate cycle : reconfiguring opera through performance, technology & composition

The Pomegranate Cycle is a practice-led enquiry consisting of a creative work and an exegesis. This project investigates the potential of self-directed, technologically mediated composition as a means of reconfiguring gender stereotypes within the operatic tradition. This practice confronts two primary stereotypes: the positioning of female performing bodies within narratives of violence and the absence of women from authorial roles that construct and regulate the operatic tradition. The Pomegranate Cycle redresses these stereotypes by presenting a new narrative trajectory of healing for its central character, and by placing the singer inside the role of composer and producer. During the twentieth and early twenty-first century, operatic and classical music institutions have resisted incorporating works of living composers into their repertory. Consequently, the canon’s historic representations of gender remain unchallenged. Historically and contemporarily, men have almost exclusively occupied the roles of composer, conductor, director and critic, and therefore men have regulated the pedagogy, performance practices, repertoire and organisations that sustain classical music. In this landscape, women are singers, and few have the means to challenge the constructions of gender they are asked to reproduce. The Pomegranate Cycle uses recording technologies as the means of driving change because these technologies have already challenged the regulation of the classical tradition by changing people’s modes of accessing, creating and interacting with music. Building on the work of artists including Phillips and van Veen, Robert Ashley and Diamanda Galas, The Pomegranate Cycle seeks to broaden the definition of what opera can be. This work examines the ways in which the operatic tradition can be hybridised with contemporary musical forms such as ambient electronica, glitch, spoken word and concrete sounds as a way of bringing the form into dialogue with contemporary music cultures. The ultilisation of other sound cultures within the context of opera enables women’s voices and stories to be presented in new ways, while also providing a point of friction with opera’s traditional storytelling devices. The Pomegranate Cycle simulates aesthetics associated with Western art music genres by drawing on contemporary recording techniques, virtual instruments and sound-processing plug-ins. Through such simulations, the work disrupts the way virtuosic human craft has been used to generate authenticity and regulate access to the institutions that protect and produce Western art music. The DIY approach to production, recording, composition and performance of The Pomegranate Cycle demonstrates that an opera can be realised by a single person. Access to the broader institutions which regulate the tradition are not necessary. In short, The Pomegranate Cycle establishes that a singer can be more than a voice and a performing body. She can be her own multimedia storyteller. Her audience can be anywhere.

Folk opera : stories crossing borders in Papua New Guinea

The Life Drama project is a drama-based sexual health promotion project, developed by a cross-cultural research team in Papua New Guinea (PNG) over the past four years. Recognising the limitations of established theatre-in-education and theatre-for-development approaches when working across cultures, the research team explored ways of tapping into the everyday performativity of PNG participants and their communities in order to communicate more powerfully about the personal and social issues involved in sexual health. Through the Folk Opera form, developed by PNG theatre company Raun Raun Theatre around the time of national Independence, the research explored the importance of ‘story’ in identity formation, maintenance and change, the communication of meaning, and the transmission of tacit local knowledges. In a highly diverse and rapidly-changing country like PNG, enacted stories inherently compel the exchange and exploration of different knowledges, and promote the dialogue and ownership that drives social change. The paper will present and unpack the folk opera form as developed in the Life Drama program, drawing conclusions which may apply to other programs which to promote health and social justice across cultures.

Sun, sea, sex, sand and conservatism in the Australian television soap opera

A recent issue of Young People Now (November 1995) mentioned the new (UK) television soap opera Hollyoaks by Phil Redmond, which raises the issue of the role of ‘soap operas’ (hereafter referred to as soaps) in the daily lives of young people. The term ‘soap’ originates with the sponsorship of radio and television programmes by companies such as Proctor and Gamble who in America in 1932 used a daytime radio domestic comedy, The Puddle Family to advertise Oxydol, a washing powder. The first British television soap was The Grove Family (BBC 1954-7) was followed by Emergency Ward Ten (ATV 1957-67), Coronation Street (Granada Television 1960-present) and Eastenders (BBC 1985-present). Australian soaps are especially popular in Britain and of potential interest to those who work with young people, because they have a high proportion of youthful looking actors and actresses and frequently depict scenes involving young people and apparent ‘real’ teenage dilemmas. On one level it may be commendable that actors who are young(ish) somewhere between the ages of 14 and 25 play roles that are ostensibly about young people and their alleged problems. However, the casting of young, largely unknown, actors reflects more the political economy of soaps in their relative cheapness and dispensability, rather than any genuine attempt to create an oppositional text for, about and by young people (Paterson 1986).

Folk opera : stories crossing borders in Papua New Guinea

The Life Drama project is a drama-based sexual health promotion project, developed by a cross-cultural research team in Papua New Guinea (PNG) over the past four years. Recognising the limitations of established theatre-in-education and theatre-for-development approaches when working across cultures, the research team explored ways of tapping into the everyday performativity of PNG participants and their communities in order to communicate more powerfully about the personal and social issues involved in sexual health. Through the Folk Opera form, developed by PNG theatre company Raun Raun Theatre around the time of national Independence, the research explored the importance of "story" in identity formation, maintenance and change, the communication of meaning, and the transmission of tacit local knowledges. In a highly diverse and rapidly-changing country like PNG, enacted stories inherently compel the exchange and exploration of different knowledges, and promote the dialogue and ownership that drives social change. The paper will present and unpack the Folk Opera form as developed in the Life Drama program, drawing conclusions which may apply to other programs which to promote health and social justice across cultures.