Hello BIMfans,
Recently, I came to the realization that as I never received any product information about my kitchen when I bought the house, my information model is missing some details.  So, I decided to see what information I could find using my whits and a little ingenuity.

First things first, I needed to work out who produced my kitchen.  After failing to find the range comparing materials on Google Images or checking Pinterest, I decided to use my detective skills and carefully inspect my kitchen units for hints.  While inspecting, my keen detective senses alerted me to a clue.

Ok…now that I know it is a Howden’s Kitchen, I thought that the hard part was over; oh no.  After struggling to find contact details for Howden’s Kitchens, I rang my local branch who informed me that as I was not the account holder (the previous owner the house is) they could not provide ANY information (Harumph!)  So, I did what any person would do in this situation, moan on social media I tried Google to see what I could find.  NOTE:  Typing “inurl:pdf” into Google makes this kind of search A LOT easier.

While looking through the myriad of links Google provided, I found a Howden’s trade catalog.  Within, it included everything I needed.  While it appears that some of my components have been discontinued, I could find equivalents to be included within my information model.

NOTE:  As the purpose of the information is to deal with replacement, or maintenance and repair, using information about an equivalent product seemed much more practical than sourcing information about discontinued products.

So, all I that was left was updating my information model…

Work Surfaces

In my home, I have two 38mm bullnose matt walnut block laminate work surfaces. Luckily, my graphical model already included work surfaces with the correct thickness and profile but had mislabelled the laminate as Iroko as opposed to Walnut (Idiot!).  I have now updated my material information to suit.

Sink

In my home, I have 1.5 bowl sink.  Looking into the Howden’s trade catalog, I found the closest equivalent, the Lamona standard 1.5 bowl sink (Model reference: SNK5131).  In addition, I also found an equivalent mixer tap (Model reference:  AP4805).   In this situation I have teated my tap like I would ironmongery and instead of giving it it’s own component have referenced it within it’s ‘parent’.  Here you can see I used the Type.constituents COBie property associated to my sink component to capture the tap model reference.

Oven

In my home, I have a Lamona single fan assisted oven (Model reference: LAM3301), Lamona gas hob (Model reference: LAM1001), black enamel supports (Model reference: LAM1003), and the Lamona standard chimney extractor (Model reference: LMS2400). While updating this information I thought it also prudent up give their graphical representations a spring clean while keeping the detail low in line with my BIM Execution Plan.

 

Units

Finally, I have a series of kitchen units I have originally named BBH_Furniture_KitchenUnit.  However, now that I know they were produced by Howden’s Kitchens, I can update their file, type, and component names to suit.  In addition, as the catalog has done I have split their names into base units and wall units to give me:

• Howdens_Furniture_BaseUnit
  • BaseUnitType
    • BaseUnit
• Howdens_Furniture_WallUnit
  • WallUnitType
    • WallUnit

Synthesizing all of this information together has vastly improved the quality of information I maintain about my kitchen.  So much so that I was able to produce a kitchen assembly drawing using this information.

And there we have it.  By using my keen (cough) detective skills, I have now properly identified all of the components in my kitchen.  This means I should now have all of the information I need to apply costs to my preventative maintenance schedule; fantastic!

Operation and Maintenance
3.1 What are the sizes and condition of the windows & doors?
3.2 What assets are in a poor condition?
3.3 What costs can be attributed to my assets?
3.4 What are the most cost effective thermal improvements that could be undertaken?

Now that I have updated my components, it’s time to bring all my information together and complete my preventative maintenance schedule…

Note:  If you have any comments regarding my kitchen schedule, then please let me know either on Twitter, or by commenting below.