BIM Part Four : Practical Applications

  • Kurth Connell
  • Assistant Project Manager / BIM Modeler
  • Rafn Company

In past articles we have written about Building Information Modeling’s (BIM) effectiveness, ease of construction, and how a project’s owner benefits from its use. In this article, I’d like to show you the various ways in which many of our recent projects have benefited from BIM during preconstruction.

Cambridge Apartments Renovation

  • Showed earthwork subcontractor the extent of their work and access to work areas within this occupied building built on a steep slope.
  • Created a game plan to execute workplan at a lower cost.
  • Explained why various items are allowances as opposed to budgetable line items.

Anchor Flats Apartments

  • Site model used to show surrounding buildings heights to determine ideal crane placement.
  • Looked at underground utilities for conflicts and checked gravity utility slopes to make sure they work.
  • Looked at power lines for clearance issues.
  • Showed sequencing of earthwork bench and ramp for shoring work.

Greenwood Plumbing Repair

  • Used as-built info to develop a repair plan for plumbing to miss existing structure and utilities, reducing invasiveness in regard to access.

Mount Baker Village Preservation

  • Verified design of new building around existing power lines with safety radius, especially vertically with sag in power lines.
  • Modeled a proposed tunnel to an existing building to discover the challenges that might arise.
  • Modeled the first level floor system and foundation walls to assist in coordinating the Architectural and Structural documents.

Northgate Eighth Apartments

  • Modeled underground utilities to discover potential conflicts for the detention vault connection to the main.
  • Modeled the foundation, shoring and site plans and discovered several design conflicts.
  • Modeled the building relative to the existing powerlines to verify we met all the construction and building clearances.

AMLI Spring District Apartments

  • Provided a general visualization of complex shoring design to get square foot measurements for estimating.
  • We used Revit for quantity takeoff’s and created an earthwork model to estimate more accurate export import volumes.
  • We modeled unique Architectural features to help subcontractors understand the scope of work.

Valhalla Hall Apartments

  • Detailed steel and bracket connection design and sent clarification request to the project’s structural engineer.
  • Modeled the existing and new ROW utilities to assist in coordination and identify conflicts.

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