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In the sidebar “the devil’s in the details,” we’ll look at the potential impact of item 1 on the design process.
Figure 4.25 Roof drain distance
ScrippS HealtH
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Who knew waterproofing details could have such a big impact on the design?
You can imagine what would have happened if that issue hadn’t been caught until the construction with rFIs. You’d probably have a disgruntled boss and owner and those items would typically have not have been caught by clash detection. Leveraging the model for this kind of constructability review is invaluable. It is much more efficient than flipping through plans, because everyone’s information is consolidated into one location. using these composite models allows you to get a better understanding of how the systems relate to one another, but you have to leverage the details in order to identify the relationship issues.
Leverage the People
the whole is greater than the sum of its parts—I can’t stress that enough. even if you memorize all the details in The NRCA Roofing Manual: Membrane Roof Systems, you’ll have only one piece of the complex building puzzle. It may be a corner piece, but it’s only one piece. Buildings today are much more complicated than the empire state Building, so they demand even more planning. Your success is dependent on the construction experience of the entire team and their ability to access and review the model.
cloud-based BIM software has given confidence to the hesitant and accelerated the learning curve of inexperienced BIM users. In a sense, these solutions almost trick people into using BIM. this factor has had a huge impact on the future of BIM.
up until now, there has been an underlying skepticism from old-school industry professionals toward BIM and the majority of lessons learned are held in the minds of those old-school professionals who claim, “I’m too old to learn that BIM stuff—
that’s for those techy kids.” You’ve probably heard someone well respected in your organization say something similar. It’s a common sentiment among leaders in the construction industry, but I’d be willing to bet those same individuals could take a picture of their kids or grandkids on a smart phone. they may even have a Facebook account where they posted a selfie last week drinking wine in napa Valley and even used a clever hashtag.
code compliance. (Fire standpipes typically route in the stairwells, which are required for egress during emergencies and have a minimum code square footage requirement at landings.) The code has to be met, so now redesign and re-coordination must occur to make sure the stair egress meets code. The butterfly effect creeps back in right when we thought we were going to be able to submit the drawings for permit of the Core and Shell package.
The Devil’s in the Details
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the power of BIM has been simplified down to an elementary level and is so intuitive that a child in Iowa could use an iPad to look at a model of a billion-dollar project being built in dubai, spin it around, and color on the walls. It truly exemplifies what thomas Friedman calls the “Flat World,” as described in his book The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century (Farrar, straus and Giroux, 2005).
one tool that has revolutionized the design process is autodesk’s BIM 360 Glue. this application is a cloud-based collaboration tool. BIM 360 Glue allows you to upload all the team members’ models to the cloud (network) and then arrange any combination into a merged (commonly referred to as consolidated or federated) model.
all the models are available to every team member through desktop and mobile Glue applications. that means the models are available for review at any time, anywhere, and by anyone. the beauty is that there isn’t a long installation process and the
majority of people won’t realize that they even put Glue on their computer. It works off your autodesk e-mail account, so if you have old-school individuals on your job, you can set up an autodesk account for them and invite them to the Glue project through the desktop application, and they’ll get an e-mail that looks similar to Figure 4.26.
Figure 4.26 Glue e-mail invitation
now you can write their autodesk account information on a sticky note and put it on their computer screen. once they get the e-mail, tell them to click Get started and use the sticky note for the login information. Before they know it, they’re doing BIM, which they thought was only for those “techy kids.” When they see you
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spin the owner’s building around on an iPad, they’ll want to create an account so they can do it too.
once the models have been uploaded, the team can view them, run clash detection, create viewpoints, and mark up constructability issues in real time in the cloud. Whenever someone does any of those items, the whole team is notified (if they want to be) through an e-mail within seconds. now you can truly leverage the minds of all your team members. this is key to delivering a project that everyone can be proud of.