Building Information Modeling and Integrated Project Delivery — Design-Build Synergy in Action

Over the last 20 years information technology has revolutionized the design and production of movies and music, airplanes and toasters, machinery and holidays.

The production of manufactured items in particular has benefited from digital modeling software that enables the engineering and analysis of every conceivable characteristic of an assembly, from physical and operating characteristics to thermal behavior and fabrication requirements. The adoption of digital models has made products more efficient and suitable to their purpose, less costly, and more stylish.

With the advent of building information modeling (BIM), the AEC industry is beginning to apply similar tools to buildings. For the design-build method of construction project delivery, the use of a building information model is particularly appealing, with project information contained in the model (material quantities, installation dates, sub-contractor responsibilities, alternative materials, and so forth) being leveraged by the entire project team.

This article provides a brief overview of BIM and explores why it resonates so well with design-build’s integrated project delivery systems. It also features several design-build firms who are successfully using BIM — their experiences to date, their goals for the future, and what lessons other design-build firms can learn from their success.

What is Building Information Modeling?

Information technology has driven productivity improvement in many other industries, but its use within the building industry is rudimentary. It has largely been used to improve the productivity of individual tasks, but seldom to address the more fundamental problem of integrating and communicating across entire processes.

The term “building information modeling” was introduced by Autodesk in 2002 to describe an innovative new approach to building design and construction. It is characterized by the creation and use of coordinated, internally consistent, computable information about a building project in design and construction. Autodesk® Revit® is Autodesk’s purpose-built platform for building information modeling. Applications such as Autodesk® Revit® Building and Autodesk® Revit® Structure built on the Revit® platform are complete, discipline-specific building design and documentation systems supporting all phases of design and construction documentation.

Sophisticated BIM solutions use a parametric change engine to automatically coordinate changes and revisions across the project deliverables. Drawings, views, schedules, and so forth are direct presentations — live views if you will — of the underlying building database. The 3D model views, the 2D drawing sheets, sections, and plans, the informational schedules, and take-offs are all coordinated because they are all elements of the same underlying building model.

The use of building information modeling results in:

• more coordinated, higher quality work,
• done faster and more efficiently, which leads to
• a better building design at a lower cost.

BIM and Design-Bid-Build

Although much of the information regarding a building is produced in digital form, the design-bid-build project delivery system relies on building information being exchanged in paper form — from the architect and engineer to the construction contractor to the building owner. Thus, the downstream benefits of a computable, interoperable building model — one that contains a sufficient level of detail to be used for other building/construction applications such as cost estimating, energy analysis, etc., and is able to be accessed by those other software applications — are lost.

In the design phase, architects and engineers generate a great deal of information about the project, including geometric information, products to be used, and analytical information about structural and environmental performance. Much of this information is captured as digital data.

However, in the design-bid-build environment, when the project is sent to a bidder to determine construction cost, the digital information is printed onto paper and is lost to the companies bidding on the project. In the procurement phase, the bidders reconstruct some of the lost information. In particular, they measure and count paper drawings to determine quantities — information that was known when it was digital.

At the conclusion of the procurement phase the project is to be built, but once again digital information created during the bidding phase is lost in the design-bid-build process, and once again paper-based information is used to build the project.

BIM and Design-Build Delivery

The fragmented paper-based design-bid-build processes described above often develop a culture of distrust instead of synergy, and in that environment new technologies can be branded as risky and unnecessary.

In this light, BIM is especially attractive for integrated project delivery — where the project team members and processes are unified contractually, if not organizationally — and the full benefits of a building information model, created initially by the design team, accrue at no additional cost to the downstream build/operate teams.

The benefits of BIM for design-build firms (and their clients) include: more accurate project cost forecasting, accelerated time-to-market, reduction in change-orders, and more repeat business.

Traditionally, project cost forecasting (critical to a contractor’s profit) is slow, error-prone, and riddled with duplicative effort. The standard 2D CAD-based data from the architect is not formatted for construction purposes, and so the project scope must be estimated many times (sometimes five to six times per project) with risky, ill-documented assumptions. Whereas a building information model already contains a complete description of the project, including accurate and reliable schedules and (at the option of the design-build team) material takeoffs that are live views of the underlying project database.

Time-to-market pressures for the project owner constantly create delivery acceleration for the team. Generally, decisions to accelerate the project schedule are made with a lack of data as to the overall effect on the project. BIM allows design-build teams to accurately gauge the impact of project change and acceleration, minimizing the amount of change orders, finger pointing, rework, and delays.

For repeat business, BIM is a powerful way to combine skills and experience — with the building in-formation model representing a knowledge base of design and construction insight. The costs to produce proposals/bids are decreased, and win rates are increased.

Now let’s look at three different design-build firms who are leveraging building information modeling for their competitive advantage.

“It’s All About Trust”

The Neenan Company (www.neenan. com) is an integrated architectural and construction firm based in Ft. Collins, CO, with an annual sales volume of $120 million. The company designs and constructs office, healthcare, education, and high technology buildings and is listed among the nation’s top design-builders.

At the Neenan Company the focus is on the people who will use their buildings. With a goal to improve the economic and operational vitality of the end users, the Neenan Company is attempting to change its industry. They’re asking the questions that truly matter, and challenging every assumption about what’s possible in construction today. In that spirit, Neenan became intrigued with BIM and recently deployed Autodesk Revit® to use in their design process.

Neenan’s pilot BIM project, developed by The NexCore Group, Ltd., is a 130,000 s.f. building which integrates a medically supervised fitness center, aquatic therapy pools, physician offices, a community education center, a medical spa, cardiac and physical rehabilitation offices, and a health-oriented cafe. Neenan used the building information model in a variety of ways, including detailed design, visualization, construction documentation, and quantity take-offs.

According to Neenan’s Robert Lucero, Director of Animation and Technology, one of the most important benefits of a BIM solution is its consistently reliable information. Other technologies scatter building information across multiple files or require user intervention to make sure that all of the building information is internally consistent. But with BIM, schedules and quantities of building components are live views of the building database, and therefore are always accurate.

“It’s all about trust,” Lucero states. “In the past, our estimators would spend hours and days pouring over drawings doing manual quantity takeoffs. Now the building information model provides the numbers automatically.” At first, Neenan’s estimators kept manually counting and recounting to make sure the numbers from the building model were accurate. But now Lucero reports that the estimators come and ask the designers, “What does the model say?”

Although they’ve just started using BIM, Neenan has “exploded out of the gate,” said Lucero. “We already have the design and drafting team sharing building information with the field-based project architect and superintendent.” Neenan plans to embed Revit® into its design process, using a building information model at the center of its collaborative process — bringing key players together to create accurate estimates and schedules using BIM technology.

What advice does Lucero have for other firms interested in BIM? “Don’t think of BIM as a slightly more efficient CAD tool. It’s much more than that. It has the power to completely transform the building process.”

Quality Assurance

Ryan Companies (www.ryan companies.com) is a leading national commercial real estate firm offering integrated design-build and development as well as asset, property, and facilities management services to customers.

Ryan Companies is dedicated to providing the greatest possible value to its clients and is continuously reviewing its process to insure that all work done on a project provides direct value to the client. That is where the company sees the power of BIM — to accurately coordinate building information within the documentation set, resulting in significant time savings for Ryan and cost savings for its clients.

Most of today’s architectural and construction drawings are digital, but they’re not necessarily connected or integrated with a building model. Some drawings are created directly by CAD drafting solutions and stand alone — with no relationship to a 3D building model. Some drawings are generated from a 3D model, but the connection with the model is tenuous or has been lost. Thus, when the model is changed, the drawing update is unpredictable and often requires manual checking and/or coordination efforts. This significantly diminishes the effectiveness of a model-based approach.

Sophisticated BIM solutions such as Revit® use a model/drawing relationship whereby project documentation is a byproduct of the 3D model. Drawings, views, schedules, and so forth are direct presentations of the underlying 3D model; they are essentially graphical “reports” of the underlying model data and therefore are always coordinated with the 3D model.

Dick Bates, Ryan’s CAD Manager and responsible for their recent implementation of BIM, states that, “Traditionally we do an extensive QA check on the construction documentation package before issuing for permit or construction. Any late changes mean that the QA cycle starts again, wreaking havoc on our schedule.” BIM plays a vital role when changes are introduced to the design. “BIM’s capacity to automatically coordinate changes made to the model against the entire set of project documents allows us to quickly and accurately provide our estimators and construction team with solid, up-to-date building documents.”

With two commercial projects completed in Revit®, Ryan has used BIM for detailed design, CD generation, and drawing coordination, as well as 3D imaging and visualization and data extraction for estimating. Ryan’s future goals include integration of the building model with external databases for cost estimating, and adding project schedule data to the building information model for “4D modeling,” i.e., analyzing and evaluating construction sequences and alternatives.

Bates’ comment for companies considering the move to BIM is simple, “The accuracy of the construction documentation set alone is worth it!”

X-Ray Vision

Founded in 1968, R.R. Simmons Construction Corporation (www. rrsimmons.com) is a true design/builder based in Tampa, FL. Licensed to practice both architecture and construction management, it is actively involved in all facets of a project. Utilizing a true team approach, the company is well known for its fast-track delivery of complex projects.

Having recently implemented Revit®, R.R. Simmons is currently using BIM on two design-build projects – an administrative office for a local public school system and an office relocation project for large Florida-based site contractor. The office relocation project is well under way and includes three facilities totaling approximately 100,000 s.f.

Randy Simmons, Chairman, reports, “BIM has already made us even more efficient — keeping rework to a minimum and providing us with real-time pricing that accurately reflects the design model.” R.R. Simmons leverages the building information model across the building project spectrum. During business development, the company can quickly create conceptual design models, create presentation-quality visualizations, and export quantities for proposals and bid packages. During detailed design, BIM is a powerful shorthand for creating the design model already formulated in the architect’s head.

As discussed earlier in this article, without BIM much of the project information generated during the design phase is lost when the digital project information is printed onto paper and sent to a bidder to determine construction cost. Using BIM, the full expression of the design, including the architect’s design intent, is captured and preserved — allowing downstream project participants to “see” the building in a consistent fashion and add their own input — structural elements, project schedule information, cost data, etc. Or as Simmons puts it, “BIM gives everyone in the design-build delivery process x-ray vision, letting us see what the building looks like and how it’s put together.”

But Simmons adds this caution. “The richness of the building information model carries with it an assumption of completeness. Don’t let your team jump the gun with their quantity takeoffs and cost estimates. There’s so much information and it’s so transparent that firms have to be sure to exercise workflow discipline.”

Summary

With the continued growth of design-build delivery systems, adoption of BIM solutions will be particularly attractive.

In the design-bid-build environment, the benefits of using building information modeling to support the creation and communication of digital building information are typically enjoyed solely by the design organization. When the project is let for bidding, some of the value of the building information model is lost.

Integrated project delivery extends the value of building information modeling beyond the design phase and spreads its benefits downstream into the construction and operation processes.

Many tools can produce a digital model but only a purpose-built BIM solution delivers a coordinated, internally consistent, computable building information model capable of satisfying the complex appetites of all the design-build participants.