Virtual design and construction tools are crossing over from buildings to transportation projects. Officials admit that 3D parametric modeling in the transportation sector has trailed the buildings sector, but they say change is afoot. “In 10 years, we will be living in a BIM world,” predicts Cosima Crawford, chief engineer for the New York City Transit Authority. “It’s our new reality,” she says.That reality has transportation teams tackling the same challenges their building counterparts are seeing in their transition to building information modeling. These include BIM technology issues, process change and institutional buy-in. Image: NYC Transit Authority For new projects,
Virtual design and construction is gaining ground in the utilities markets because of its ability to speed large-scale planning and development of energy projects. Though current applications on projects have just begun to touch the full potential of the approach, experienced users are enthusiastic about the financial benefits of debugging a project by building it first on the computer. Photo: Mortenson Mortenson uses VDC to layer environmental data, old-stump locations and grading plans for wind farm-site optimization. Photo: Bentley Bentley’s Substation V8i aids distribution planners with data modeling. Related Links: Digital-Modeling Veterans Want Data for Life Cycles Building Information Modeling
Attention building-information-modeling rookies: Experiences of BIM veterans in the following pages of ENR may save you from reinventing many spokes on the still-rickety wheels of the wagon rolling toward glitch-free use of high-tech tools to make building design and construction less bumpy. The first piece of advice to first-time travelers down the BIM road is to get BIM’s equivalent of driving lessons and roadside assistance. Warning: If you go it alone, you may get into serious trouble. Even modeling veterans can benefit from a BIM “global positioning system.” The helpers call themselves BIM managers or model integrators. The name doesn’t
The year was 2005. The project was the U.S. Federal Courthouse in Jackson, Miss. The decision, made by the U.S. General Services Administration at the end of design development, was to turn the 400,000-sq-ft facility into a GSA poster child for building information modeling. The design team would create a coordinated BIM and use it to produce 2D contract documents. The team would also provide its BIMs to the construction manager-general contractor, as reference material only, for use during construction. Photo: Dana Eldridge, Jacobs Image: Ghafari Associates Designers produced 2D drawings from coordinated model. Related Links: Digging into 3D Modeling
The main lesson learned by the construction manager who recently completed a pioneering four-year, BIM-enabled project to build a replacement ballpark for the New York Yankees is “the more trades modeling, the merrier,” says James Barrett, manager of virtual design and construction for Turner Construction Co., the CM at-risk. But more doesn’t necessarily mean more complex, in terms of interoperabilty, anyway. Building on the experiences with the Yankees project, Barrett says Turner is satisfied for now to see subcontractors building their own models and working with their tools of choice, at their preferred levels of detail beyond a minimum standard,
Sutter Health’s Digby Christian is dead serious about delivering the $320-million replacement for Sutter Medical Center Castro Valley on time and on budget in 2013. But he also is not kidding, and sees no contradiction, when he refers to the 223,500-sq-ft job as a living laboratory. In its most ambitious experiment yet, Sutter is going beyond building information modeling’s low hanging fruit—clash detection—and exploring BIM-based estimating, automated code checking and direct digital-model exchange for detailing, coordination, automated fabrication and scheduling. The nonprofit hospital owner wants to prove it is possible to reduce waste and risk while delivering a better facility,
One lesson learned from the Walsh Group’s construction- management assignment on a 650,000-sq-ft hospital in Elgin, Ill.—a project Walsh took over as mass excavation and steel procurement were under way—is that a lack of team experience with building information modeling should not be an inhibiting factor on a complex construction project. image: Walsh Construction Photo: Walsh Construction In some areas ducts hung below plumbing because pipe lead times were less. Related Links: Digging into 3D Modeling Unearths Many Worms Leading-Edge Collaboration Hurt By Lots of Software Workarounds 3D Modeling Spurs Architect To Reorganize Divisions of Labor Leading Off With a
Building information modeling has come a long way recently, but it is still far from being business as usual. That, and lack of BIM software interoperability, were about the only two subjects of general agreement regarding BIM among the 60 attendees of a recent “eConstruction” roundtable, in Phoenix. As recently as two years ago, there were no model BIM contracts and most designers did not have staff trained on BIM, said John Cross, a vice president of the American Institute of Steel Construction, Chicago, which cohosted the March 31 session with the American College of Construction Lawyers. Work-flow efficiency is
With a trend toward integrated project delivery gaining traction, project teams are clamoring for a free flow of data between disciplines. In its latest response to the evolving market needs, on Feb. 9, San Raphael, Calif.-based Autodesk Inc. presented 2010 versions of its architecture, engineering, construction and geospatial products, as well as civil design software for transportation and utilities, with changes designed to ease the adoption of building information modeling processes within and across those sectors. The most ubiquitous change, as presented in a web conference showcasing key features of the new releases, is the replacement of tool bars across
As we approach the second decade of the 21st Century it might be time to adjust our industry's cliches and adages. With the advancement of Building Information Modeling, better known as BIM, the construction industry will simply revisit the "smart board" instead of going "back to the drawing board."