TPM

A GENERAL CONTRACTOR
DAVID THIRLWELL

AUGI/AEC Edge Spring 2009
A recent phone conversation with our local software reseller started: “Please help! I’ve been selling a lot of Revit and Navisworks licenses to local Contractors because they love what BIM can do. And I’m holding a lot of classes and most of the students are picking up the software well.” And he continued, “But, I keep getting calls a few weeks following the training asking, ‘Now what? Now that my team knows how to use the software, how do we do BIM?’ How’s anyone else doing BIM? ...and I don’t know what to tell them!”
Coincidently, I was contacted by Steve Stafford with AUGI the next day to write an article about how BIM is being utilized by General Contractors and its benefits.

MOTIVATION FOR ADOPTING BIM

My Employer, Current Builders looked to BIM technology in order to save money and pursue a fundamentally improved method of delivering all of our projects on-time, at or under budget. As a result, we have been successfully preventing significant coordination errors of all kinds on a full range of projects. Resources such as the AGC’s Contractor’s Guide to Building Information Modeling and numerous Construction Users Roundtable (CURT) whitepapers have given Current Builders’ leadership an avenue toward changing the way we plan and perform as a company. These papers emphasize that although Building Information Modeling is technical and quite expensive, mastering the technology can and has had industry-altering effects. Further, applying BIM effectively offers predictable, consistent and reliable ways to plan and prevent many problems with the entire building process including the building lifecycle. The benefits reach all corners of the AEC industry, much like the same fundamental technology and processes have done and continue to do for Engineering and Manufacturing industries. The increasing complexity of the building lifecycle processes, legal requirements, and documentation should resolve the entire AEC industry to reduce delays, rework, legal disputes and miscommunication. BIM presents us with the capacity to accomplish these reformations.

DEFINING BIM AND VDC

There are seemingly endless variations of the composition and definition of ‘BIM’ and if there is a consensus on the fundamental meaning then I certainly missed the memo. Much to the chagrin of those who advocate an all-encompassing def init ion of BIM, we’ve opted to limit the acronym to regard the fundamental t e chnolog ie s centered on relational building data.

At Current Builders and Other industry organizations, it is becoming established that Building Information Modeling (BIM) refers to a set of tools (i. e. the technology, toolset, or ‘means’) and Virtual Design and Construction (VDC) encompasses the processes, goals and concepts (i.e. ‘methods’) of applying BIM as well as other technologies. VDC involves the communication and collaboration between project participants using toolsets as diverse as BIM and product lifecycle management (PLM) systems as well as estimating and scheduling systems.

I have observed that Contractors and leaders in related fields are less interested in the technical ‘means’ of BIM, than in the processes and ‘methods’ of VDC. Therefore, Contractors are trying to get a grasp of what BIM means in the greater paradigm of VDC and of any changes to traditional project relationships, such as Integrated Project Delivery (IPD), that may be accelerated as a result. While a flood of articles about BIM focus on what can be done using BIM, most do not even hint at how to achieve a strategy for applying these capabilities. This lack of strategic communication is particularly true in regard to construction-related applications. Furthermore, there are very few sources that describe what VDC production might comprise for a Contractor.

IMPLEMENTING VDC

For Current Builders, VDC is still largely being integrated inhouse in the absence of BIM collaboration with other project team members. John Tocci, Sr. Of the AGC’s BIM Forum has coined the term “lonely BIM” to refer to this typical, earlyadoption arrangement. This is not to say that we have or are going-it-alone, but that collaboration with the owner, designers, and subcontractors is performed through live meetings and/or a semi-manual exchange of data as opposed to a native BIM collaborative environment or “social BIM.” The major distinction is that under lonely BIM, there is a greater reliance on the competence of fewer individuals to construct the discipline-specific BIM models: often from existing construction documentation. VDC in the lonely BIM scenario thus relies on a single or few project team members for the authoring of a combination of BIMs representing each critical discipline to accurately represent the contract documents. However, a well-managed VDC environment requires that all necessary project team members are able to study and provide input to the BIM development. In the Current Builders VDC environment this is accomplished via live meetings online or offline as well as through the review and markup of thin BIM models such as a DWF or Navisworks model. Regardless of the number of team members exchanging native BIM models, a well-managed VDC environment should be able to leverage relevant information into BIM. The team should also be able to extract coordinated data out of BIM and into the field via data and drawings.

At Current Builders we have been mostly limited to lonely BIM due in large part to the availability of BIM collaborators on previous projects. Yet, we have had the luxury of developing an effective and unrestrictive implementation plan as well as a very practical set of deliverables along the way. This VDC environment allows us to focus on our greatest immediate cost-saving potential: the prevention of design and constructability issues. As most of us know, errors and omissions across all planning processes are often discovered just before or at any time after work has been performed: resulting in delays accompanied by rework and/or redesign. The delays, the rework, and the redesign often have unintended consequences which propagate additional issues through later stages of construction.

VDC IN DESIGN-BID-BUILD PROJECT DELIVERY

This delivery method inherently creates an extreme environment for BIM and VDC and will continue to do so until all parties are BIM-enabled and interoperability is no longer a major concern. Don’t expect this to be the case soon. To date, Current Builders has not yet received a BIM from an outside party for project use. This simplifies our interoperability concerns since we are able to define all aspects of the BIM to match our particular needs, but also involves a significant upfront expense for 2D conversion (i.e. interpreting the Construction Documents into BIM) thereby limiting BIM almost entirely to a post-bid start.

The resulting fast-track nature of this VDC scenario places Current Builders’ foremost concern with a fully-coordinated project. The product of this coordination effort is a field package that provides both task-oriented drawings to field labor and comprehensive visualization and planning material to project management at all levels. As this VDC package continues to develop from project to project, the management teams will increasingly leverage BIM and related systems and collaborate with other project participants to troubleshoot, update, manage and analyze the project. This collaborative effort includes all project parties with particular emphasis on the design team and owner early-on and then with trade subcontractors throughout building systems coordination.

RESULTS FROM AN ON-GOING VDC PROJECT

Current Builders has developed a preliminary analysis of our largest and most complete VDC project to help measure the effect that the technology and processes have had on historical costs. While the VDC process had not yet incorporated many of the efficiencies including analysis improvements to clash detection and field deliverables, the results have been impressive. For these preliminary metrics, we used the total number of RFIs as opposed to change orders, as they represent a more accurate relationship to total cost over-runs. Using four very similar and recent (non-VDC) projects as a benchmark set, we have compared slightly projected figures to the in-progress VDC project (now just weeks from completion of the two-year project). We were able to cut the number of actual RFIs to less than half of the benchmark average. Additionally, many of the most significant issues were identified and resolved prior to any field work being carried-out. As a result, the administrative, per-RFI cost was cut to 1/5th of the benchmark average. A large factor in this improved performance has been the comprehensive and unambiguous methods of RFI issue discovery and communication with the aid of BIM technology.

The results of these improved numbers are dramatically expressed in the total additional project costs. Total additional project costs include total cost over-runs + BIM / VDC costs. Total cost over-runs were calculated using: actual + projected RFIs & Change Orders as well as estimated delay costs for the Owner, Contractor, and Architect. BIM / VDC costs are based upon the costs of 2D conversion (i.e. BIM creation) as well as administrative and capital overhead (including all VDC). Using this formula, the over-runs were reduced to approximately 1/15th of the total additional project cost benchmark average(i. e. RFI administration + Change Orders/2 + all delay costs). For full disclosure, the average of total Change Orders on the four benchmark projects was cut in half to provide a rudimentary, conservative method of depicting Change Orders directly related to coordination issues: using company experience and a rough survey of project data. Finally, with the extraordinary efforts of the project management team as well as an effective VDC program the project will complete months ahead of schedule whereas each of the benchmark projects were delayed many months beyond the prescribed completion date.

Although the resulting savings in time, direct and indirect costs are specific to the issues that arose on this one particular job, we have seen proportionately similar results on a number of other projects. With such impressive results, BIM and VDC have been mandated for every Current Builders project in the future.

WHERE ARE WE GOING FROM HERE?

Current Builders is continuously pursuing advancement in BIM and VDC capabilities. While the greatest effort on every project is likely to center on clash detection and the resolution of problems in project documentation, we expect that the severity of these issues will decline as more disciplines adopt and produce designs using BIM. Thus, we are beginning to incorporate a wider range of BIM capabilities to provide a more comprehensive set of project planning and monitoring information. We are seeking to expand our VDC environment to incorporate 4D simulation and 5D estimating data and expanding our capacity to work with BIM from other software platforms. At the same time, we are focusing a greater effort on securing design-build and even integrated project delivery (IPD) contracts in order to leverage BIM and VDC more comprehensively in the planning process.

SUGGESTIONS FOR ADOPTING BIM AND VDC

As stated in the now aged AGC’s Contractor’s Guide to Building Information Modeling, implementation of BIM requires unwavering and comprehensive support from the very top of a company as well as a persistent and dedicated champion to interject these new tools and strategies. This person may, or may not have CAD experience, but he or she should be well aware of the distinction between the responsibilities and liabilities of professionals and the means and methods of the contractor. In my case, I was hired by Current Builders because of my cross-discipline experience in order to address Building Information Modeling and Virtual Design & Construction. I was chosen to research BIM, its implementation and manage model production as well as field application. I could not do this successfully without the full support from the highest levels of the company.

ABOUT CURRENT BUILDERS

Current Builders has delivered quality construction projects throughout Florida for more than 30 years and is now performing work throughout the Southeast United States. We offer a full range of construction management and project management services within many standard delivery systems including design-build, design-bid-build, and construction managementat- risk. Current Builders also self-performs concrete structures including tunnel form, tilt-wall, and Garage Beam systems. The Current Builders team has built hundreds of successful commercial, industrial, multi-family, assisted living and government development projects throughout Florida.

David Thirlwell is the BIM / VDC Manager for Current Builders at the corporate headquarters in Pompano Beach, FL. David earned both a Bachelors degree of Design in Architecture in 2001 and a Masters degree of Building Construction in 2007 at the University of Florida.

He has approximately eight years of total work experience amongst architectural, specialty engineering, and construction fields. He draws upon more than fifteen years of computer hardware and software knowledge. This experience includes numerous feature-based, parametric modeling systems. David was hired by Current Builders in May of 2007 and was tasked shortly thereafter with an executive mandate to explore and champion the adoption of BIM and to guide its integration into our company operations and culture.