FEBRUARY - 2022CONSTRUCTIONTECHREVIEW.COM8In our current age of commercial construction, I can think of no single technological application that rivals Building Information Modeling (BIM) when it comes to meeting the demands of pre- construction planning and execution. BIM provides us the ability to visualize and see our work in the virtual environment, long before the first physical material is procured in the real world. Providing a scalable platform to solve our most complex problems of spatial constraints and system performance, we can utilize geometry and metadata to drive project decision making. At ColonialWebb, we couple this pre-planning ability with leveraging model data to generate material orders, and track our fabrication and installation progress. We use the model as an asset and an information pipeline to communicate to our teams how our build stacks up against our estimates and planning goals. These capabilities of the BIM model help to minimize the risk we expose ourselves to in the volatile industry of mechanical contracting.Spatial Coordination and System PerformanceOne of the first ways our company began to see the benefits of BIM was in the practice of spatial coordination. We model all of our projects to 3D Level 400, enabling us to evaluate how our systems will fit within the design structure. All of our sheet metal, piping, and plumbing systems geometrically match exactly what we will build and install, including the hangers and stands needed to support our systems. Inserting our model and comparing our scope of work with other trade contractorsprovides us with the ability to identify heavily congested areas where our work may conflict with other trades. This eliminates a large amount of re-work in our field operations because we are able to troubleshoot these areas and come up with solutions as a team that serves the customer with a well thought out product in their building.Planning and SchedulingOnce the model has reached a level of substantial coordination, where everything is in 3D and"fits" as it will be built, we take the next step to pre-construction by modularizing out what will be pre-fabricated on the project. We use the BIM model to break down fabrication assemblies and schedule them for our manufacturing division. All of our "assemblies" are bulked together across all our projects and tagged with datafields inside the BIM models, so our CREATING COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE THROUGH BIMIN MYOPINIONBY BRAD MOHLER, VIRTUAL CONSTRUCTION MANAGER, COLONIALWEBBBrad Mohler
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