Building Information Modeling applied to three projects

In his thorough rundown of three current projects, Jeff Yoders of Building Design + Construction gives a clear picture of what BIM is all about. All three projects, he says, “are achieving a high degree of integrated project delivery through the use of building information modeling and other software tools.”

The historic 11-story Landmark at One Market Street has occupied San Francisco’s financial district since 1916. Without affecting the outside of the building, a team assembled by Autodesk is revamping the first floor into a customer briefing center replete with interactive exhibits. Yoder quotes Phil Bernstein, an Autodesk VP, who says, “If I’m running around the world saying BIM makes vast improvements in process possible, how can we not do this on our own building?”

The other players are Anderson Anderson Architecture , HOK, and DPR Construction. Autodesk, of course, is the creator of the Revit BIM platform, so it’s only natural that DPR is utilizes their products.

DPR is using Autodesk NavisWorks to merge the individual Revit models created by Anderson Anderson and HOK. The general contractor is also using a point-cloud laser scan of the existing floor into a final design. The laser scan even took into account the structural integrity of the building’s existing slabs and brick columns.

In New Jersey, the Giants-Jets Stadium benefits from BIM technology in the form of Revit Structure and Tekla software, wielded by design-build contractor Skanska.

In addition to using the programs to find interferences in the design stage, Skanska is also tracking 3,200 pieces of precast concrete from fabrication to installation using radio frequency identification (RFID) tags. Field construction software provider Vela Systems of Burlington, Mass., updated its RFID-based Materials Tracking module to interface with the Tekla BIM model, color coding each section of precast concrete in the model…Vela calls this interface “Field BIM,” as it elevates the model from design management to construction management by incorporating live field information.

The splendid aspect of this is that the BIM models can be done in sections so work can proceed without having to wait for the entire project to be visualized. When finished, the stadium will seat nearly 83,000 and include four restaurants and two club lounges.

In Las Vegas, the Convention Center takes shape through the efforts of Turner Construction Company’s Jan Reinhardt, who is their program manager of virtual design, and HNTB’s Patrick Davis, who is their CADD/BIM expert. In this case, the working team was set up before the project was chosen. Each discipline, architecture, engineering, and construction, contributes its own model, then the BIM process analyzes and integrates the information from all of them into a single model.

SOURCE: “”Integrated Project Delivery builds a brave, new BIM world”” 04/01/08
photo courtesy of Traviscrawford, used under this Creative Commons license