In Tekla, we come more and more often across building information modeling in infrastructures construction. BIM is used for building bridges, tunnels and even cable cars. The infrastructure builders have noticed BIM and are showing increasing interest, and for them, GIS is quite an established tool.

GIS, that is those fabulous Geographical Information Systems that capture, manage, store, analyze and present all kinds of geographical information, is probably already present at most construction sites. Normally some sort of measuring device gathers the information, and a GIS application is used to create searches, and edit and analyze spatial information. Good for informed decision-making.

For some infrastructure builders, BIM software is not just for design and detailing: For example, at the Röfors bridge construction site in Sweden, builders used models made with bridge design software to control their earthwork machinery. When you utilize model information with a machine, you need to know where it is and to which direction it moves. This is a job for combining GIS and BIM, and naturally you need to equip the machine with a GPS.

In some areas of the globe, like the Middle East, GPS is widely used for gathering information, and total stations measure the structures on construction sites more and more often. I have seen those sites myself, but there are still challenges to overcome within this procedure.

The construction sites are full of geographical information

It is not just BIM that enters the infrastructure construction and meets there GIS. Let’s get evident: All buildings are built somewhere, and this somewhere tends to come with a lot of information which the construction industry has to take into account. Before the architect can start drawing a house, he needs information on town planning, cadastral, roads…

The authorities are less and less fond of using paper for governing thousands of plots. There is a lot of information about what is outside the house, and this information is increasingly found in databases.

Why not to include it in the building information models? Well, it is already being tested. Some work is needed before everything runs smoothly between information systems. One issue is standardization: all this data which comes from numerous sources has to be compatible. You might already stumble on an IFC file in respect with earthworks of a tunnel, but the industries need to agree on standards before data flows smoothly from cadastral to structural and MEP. So, it’s about time to get this done!

This situation will not last forever. Regarding the construction process, a big change is on its way. How big? Well, the earlier comparable changes in construction design were the introduction of miniature models and photocopiers.

At the moment, most engineers, architects and designers do not have a clear idea how their designs become reality on site. The way some parts should be built may only be thought through and realized on site. Now advanced BIM solutions give the same engineers and architects a possibility to model everything to the tiniest detail, and the designers face a new situation where they actually have to think about how their designs should be built.

With all this detailed structural information available, prefabrication and off-site building have become more feasible – on site, the crew just has to fit these pieces together accurately. Or instead of manufacturing trusses or bridge deck units or concrete columns in a factory or workshop, why not load your machinery in a container, drive your truck to the construction site in need for your product and start production. In both cases, the materials come to the hands of the builders as pre-constructed parts, large or small. Work on construction sites is increasingly starting to resemble assembly work.

Back to the increasing building information. With digital modeling, the detailed information can be, unlike drawings, understood automatically by software. Now the information can flow directly from the designer to the machinery. Fewer parts are made on site. The site crew needs less measuring tape. What makes work easier on site requires development elsewhere.

In our rapidly changing world everything does not happen faster than before. According to Associate Professor Rafael Sacks from Israel Institute of Technology, the speed of construction has actually grown slower in the last 100 years. He has done research on construction duration of the Empire State Building and other tall buildings completed during the last 100 years, and the result is clear.

But what explains the trend? Surely our modern buildings are more complex and the mechanical systems are not from the same  planet than those used 100 years ago. Anyhow,  that does not explain it all. The more probable explanation is that our process and organizations are vastly more complex than before. The same phenomenon has been seen in a Finnish research where the by far biggest waste in construction is caused by problems in communication and documentation.

Hundreds of companies work together in a modern construction project, speak dozens of different languages, and operate in a chain of contracts that makes it very difficult to follow who is working for whom, who is in charge, and what everybody is supposed to do. It is no wonder that many people have been trying to come up with ways to bring some order to the chaos.

Lean Construction is one approach. It adapts lean thinking to construction industry. Lean ideology was originally invented in Japan at Toyota and it focuses on preserving value with less work. Strong focus on understanding root causes to all problems instead of just fixing them means extra effort on the first occurrence, but pays off in the long run.

Implementing a BIM based process in construction does not automatically mean lean, but lean is so much easier to achieve with BIM. One central principle in lean is visual management, and what makes construction planning more visual than BIM? Let’s lean towards BIM and speed up building. With our current tools and methods we should be able to do it.

Sacks’ slideshow online

ps. If you want to see what the world build now, go, see and vote for the winner of the Tekla Global BIM Awards by the end of November

Walking into a model

In VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland you can walk into a virtual model, as a group of Tekla employees did. The institute has a little cave where several video projectors reflect views of the model to three wall-size glass screens.

In VTT's cave: In the middle stands a control unit, a large touchpad and the model rotates around on three screens. This is quite heavy computing: Each screen needs a PC to render the model image while one is used for the control unit.

The cave works well for demonstrating city spaces and building interiors, especially for large groups:   many people can see the model clearly at the same time. With the touchpad, you just choose a spot on floor plan or map where you wish to stand and steer your views or start flythrough. If the situation sounds somehow familiar, it may be because you have met something technologically reminiscent in your living room – your game console controls.

Not only buildings or city blocks are modeled in the cave. Together with machinery manufacturers, the researchers of VTT have modeled engines and their parts, so you could as well stand inside a model machine.

In VTT's cave: In the middle stands a control unit, a large touchpad and the model rotates around on three screens. This is quite heavy computing: Each screen needs a PC to render the model image while one is used for the control unit.

Place your building into the scenery - augmented reality

As fun as walking into a model building or machine might be, in some cases understanding the structure’s relationship to its surroundings is more important. Architectural models can better demonstrate the results of construction project if you set them in the landscape. If you design extensions to an existing structure, making that structure a part of your building information model would often be a good idea.

It is a somewhat similar situation where augmented reality comes in. In tests made for mechanical industry, manuals which utilized augmented reality for tasks like assembling complex machines resulted to fewer errors in assembly – these models really showed what was inside the machine and where to put the parts. Could you substitute machines with buildings? The researchers are working on architectural and construction issues so augmentation is likely to sit between the designer, reality and building information model some day.

Did this idea sound distantly familiar? It may be because augmented reality has entertained you already, as it is already utilized in smartphone apps and websites. The entertainment industry has been early adopter of these technologies.

Model of Museo Casa Natale Enzo Ferrari in Modena, Italy

The choice for car enthusiasts is Museo Casa Natale Enzo Ferrari in Modena, Italy. The museum, which incorporates the house where Enzo Ferrari was born, displays the history of Ferrari, Maserati and Modena’s car industry. The building is shaped to resemble the bonnet of a racing car. Read more about the complex design at Tekla Global BIM Awards booklet

Model of Holmenkollen Ski Jump in Oslo, Norway

A bit flat? For the friends of vertical, the new Holmenkollen Ski Jump in Oslo, Norway, rises 60 meters over ground replacing an older ski jump. You can tour the tower, visit skiing museum, and try out a ski jumping simulator. The weightless-looking, curved ski jump was awarded Special recognition in Tekla Global BIM Awards last year. The model has 25,000 parts, twisted and tilted beams, and all unique knots. Read more about building the ski jump

If you prefer downhill skiing to ski jumping, head south. In Ski Dubai, eternal winter goes on in the indoor slopes, complete with ski lifts, a quarterpipe for snowboarders, and penguins. Snow surface area of the 85 meter-high building equals three football fields which made energy efficiency important feature in design. Read about modeling and building Ski Dubai

Slopes of Ski Dubai

Those who like sports but consider skiing a winter pursuit can opt for baseball game at the New York Yankees Stadium. The Yankee stadium holds over 50,000 seats and is made of cast-in-place concrete, composite steel framing and metal deck, and prestressed-precast seating bowl which were successfully modeled with Tekla BIM software. The Yankees Stadium in Tekla Global BIM Awards

Friends of gardens and exceptional architecture should consider booking airline tickets to Singapore. In Marina Sands Bay, the lotus flower of ArtScience Museum (photo above) currently houses an Andy Warhol exhibition and one on Harry Potter, too. In the recently opened Gardens by the Bay you can climb to 18 giant steel and concrete Supertrees, between 25m to 50 m high each - not grown from seed but modeled with BIM software.  Read more on designing and modeling of ArtScience Museum and Gardens by the Bay

If the destinations above seemed a bit boring or you just want to get further away from it all, Spaceport America might have something for you. This facility the White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico, is the world's first purpose-built commercial spaceport. Although there are no passenger flights yet, you can visit the premises. Read more about the Spaceport in Tekla Global BIM Awards 2010 booklet

Production halls are created for the machinery, not vice versa

Maru Ehitus modeled the building around the machinery, so it was important that the models from the technology suppliers were precise and delivered on time. Installing the technology and leaving the necessary openings to the roof and walls was a challenging task where BIM proved helpful: Without BIM, it would have been very complicated to make sure that the machinery was installed in the correct order.

But even though Open BIM keeps developing, constructors often face yet another challenge when matching together models that were created with very different software solutions. Still, building information modeling helped Maru Ehitus to plan the delivery and erection of construction parts of the refuse-derived fuel factory and also to accelerate the time schedule. Naturally the visual model in itself is a useful tool helping to understand better in which order the building should be erected.

Did Maru Ehitus have an alternative to 3D modeling? Yes, to take extra time and money to double check from drawings and still fix errors later on, even during the construction work.

Industrial strength demands

Industrial buildings might seem quite simple when you look at them from the outside. From a contractor’s point of view, the apartment buildings are more like one another while the industrial ones tend to be very different. The challenge is the technology and the processes the building is designed for, as they often present very high demands for instance to durability of structures or ventilation. For example the fuel plant discussed involved very high exposure classes for concrete, quite unique sewerage system, large concrete walls to cast at a time, and high retaining walls for raw material and finished products.

Boring and ugly projects, these industrial ones? It is the innermost that matters.

Technology has always opened up new construction possibilities, both in the sense of economical efficiency and aesthetics, told the pioneering BIM company WSP Finland in their presentation. WSP  also predicted that in future BIM will be the DNA of construction industry.

Shall we see BIM gone deeper to the industry in future Forums and other BIM events? Well, let’s first talk about some topics of this first Nordic BIM Forum. Viewpoints to BIM were given for example by a rebar fabricator, precaster, property owner, general constructor, and bridge and road constructor.

There’s no such thing as a lonely bridge

Have you ever crossed a bridge without a road, path, or railway? Or one without embankments? Me neither.

In the Nordic BIM Forum, bridge building was represetented  by Destia, a company which builds, maintains, and designs traffic routes, industrial and traffic environments in Finland and the bridge experts SiltaNylund.

BIM is coming to bridge building as there are already bidding contests which require  as-build models,  and according to SiltaNylund BIM is today the more effective and more enjoyable way to design a bridge.  Bridges combine the disciplines of road building and structural design of concrete and steel, and they reach underground with the piles they stand on. A bridge project is likely to need many kinds of software, including one like Tekla BIMsight for combining the models and showing the combination to the customer.

As we all can figure out a bridge obviously has to be fitted to the embankments, be it river or highway construction, which tends at the moment to be the most challenging part in the BIM process. But this is not what the bridge builders are most interested at the moment - it is 3D controlled machinery like bulldozers and excavators on site.

Would you change your everyday coffee lounge for this?

Selection of other challenges met and discussed

• In the construction site the new Terminal 2 for Oslo’s Gardemoen Airport well over 130 000 parts have to find their places while the airport remains fully functional during the construction. That definitely is some extra logistics and other challenge for the project parties.
• Elsewhere traditional workflows cause problems as information is lost in all stages. All project parties tend to optimize just their own subprocesses, all separated from each other.
• Open BIM was definitely in Tallinn air. No wonder: When ten or fifteen different construction-related software products are involved in one project the need for Open BIM and interoperability is evident. It is as evident as that the tools should not decide if a company can participate to a project. Hopefully.
• Talking about Open BIM, the huge hospital construction project of Nya Karolinska Sjukhuset in Stockholm, Sweden, chose IFC and developed it further in Tekla's BIM software to enable all of project’s needs. The new state-of-art hospital will have about 8.000 rooms in total, including among others operating theatres and radiation therapy rooms.

In the BIMsight blog, a couple of other topics of the Nordic BIM Forum will be discussed pretty soon. Stay tuned!

Open BIM is there to support a transparent, open workflow, and allow project members to participate regardless of the software tools they use. BuildingSMART® International, members of the Nemetschek Group, Tekla® and other leading software vendors joined forces to launch a global program to promote Open BIM collaboration workflows throughout the AEC industry.

Software vendor members of Open BIM are committed to developing software which contributes to BIM solutions for the AEC Industry and fully support the actual IFC coordination view standard. Also AEC Industry organizations and even industry projects can be members of Open BIM.

It is no secret that AEC projects face a lot of collaboration challenges, and yet the project parties need to collaborate to success. A common language for widely referenced processes would help with these issues, wouldn’t it? Also, being able to access the BIM data for the entire lifecycle of building, including construction and operation, is possible with open standards.

Open BIM movement is there to promote open collaboration workflows for better-coordinated projects.   A globally achievable Open BIM with clear definitions, specific requirements and best practices to help implementation – supported by branding to make it recognizable within the industry.

The Open BIM movement was originally started by two software vendors, Tekla and GRAPHISOFT, and is now supported by organizations such as buildingSMART.  There is room for other AEC organizations and projects to join in.

You can find more information on the assets of the membership and entry requirements in the Open BIM website at www.openbim.com and Tekla’s Open BIM pages.

There is also an Open BIM webinar organized by GRAPHISOFT, Tekla, and Data Design System on March 27.

Michael: It has fascinated me how structural engineers in Nordic countries provide a greater scope of services than structural engineers in the U.S.  Many of them  work with both structural design and detailing services for steel and concrete structures.  Can you  tell how they manage this scope of work from the conceptual stage through construction?

Minna: I see a structural engineer in the junction of design and construction, balancing between the architect's vision and a buildable solution.  In Finland a structural engineer usually takes his design through detailing. As an engineer, I tend to think about detailing and deliveries already in the design phase. The actual detailing process is very straightforward, and with Tekla Structures BIM software, the process from design to detailing couldn't be easier as the model evolves through the project seamlessly. It is quite demanding but rewarding since I am, as the structural engineer, in control of what is designed and how it is detailed. In addition, I get a broader outlook on the whole project: it’s nice to see how the project builds up from the architect’s first prints to a complete building on site.

In Nordic countries the contractors are demanding more and more 3D-models in the early stage of the project to do estimation and sourcing, and later they use the same detailed models on site for coordination and scheduling. Communication with contractors from the early stage also enables us to find the best solutions for the work on-site.

Michael: When we talk with structural engineers in the U.S. about expanding their services, many struggle on how they can expand their technical expertise.  How can Nordic structural engineers be effective as engineers as well as detailers?  Doesn’t it make them less productive?

Minna: The U.S.  and Nordic markets differ quite a lot from the engineering point of view. The line between design and detailing phases is blurrier in Finland than in the U.S.   In Finland the builders traditionally buy the design and detailing from the same provider. As a result, the engineers think about detailing and how the project will be delivered from day one.  So when you in the U.S. hand over the project downstream, the Nordic engineers continue to work with the same on-going project.
An engineer can be more of a generalist and do almost everything or one can be a specialist in some area. When an engineering office employs both types, the project manager can gather the right personnel for the project in question. Usually engineers specialize themselves on a type of material and a type of building. So, there are engineers who do only analysis and some who do only structural design or detailing and engineers who do a bit of both.

Michael: We frequently get asked how can detailing be effectively done prior to getting the manufacturers’ preferences for optimizing their building product.

Minna: The best design is always the result of good communication. As soon as contractors and manufacturers are known, there is a get-together meeting which all project parties attend and decide the best practices for that particular project. But since the design phase, I, as the engineer, have thought how pieces fit to a truck and how the structure is built, so this meeting is more about  fine tuning to the subcontractors’ needs.

To sum up, my workflow tends to go like this:  When I get the architect’s layout to my desk, I figure out the frame, the materials and other requirements.  As a project manager I would also think about scheduling, selecting the project team etc. With the team assembled, we determine the structural design and prepare documents in the Tekla BIM software showing structures, typical connections and elements in the project, and material lists. When these bidding documents have been delivered to contractors, we start detailing/connection design and production of workshop drawings. When the bidding contest is over it is time for  a  meeting where we discuss details with the winning contractor. At this point we already have some detailed workshop drawings done. The whole project is scanned for possible problems. After the meeting the project team can finalize detailing and shop drawings.

Michael: How can this integrated approach to design be improved?

Minna: The process already runs smoothly from an engineer's point of view but I think it could be better.  I would like to see more communication with the architect during the early design phase. In my opinion, early collaboration would result in a faster resolution of the design. This would lead to reduced changes later as the structural engineer has already scanned the structures for possible non-buildable situations   and the client would see an instantly buildable best-in-class solution.

The integrated design and detailing process discussed by Minna Arola above is a growing trend in the U.S.  Martino & Luth Structural Engineers, as part of the Renaissance Design Group, recently worked on the Denver Health Pavillion M project where they performed a range of integrated services to enhance the project delivery.

The Tekla BIMsight 1.4 comes now with a user interface for Windows 7 tablets, but it works equally well on tabletop and laptop computers. You can install the very same software in your preferred type of computer. The tablet user interface comes with a set of navigation control buttons, which you can hide if you wish.

The software allows both multi-touch and stylus use that comes handy on cold winter days. Falling snow melts on the tablet’s surface.

Tablets vs. drawings

Many decades ago, quite a few buildings were practically drawn on whatever was available, like  random scraps of paper and lids of cigarette packs. Next came the paper drawings, which can still be found on sites lying wet on the ground.  Conceptually, these two formats of building information are pretty close to each other.

In comparison, a tablet stores all your information in digital format. Sometimes reading 2D drawings can be slightly challenging as they may not be up to date, but with the Tekla BIMsight, the information is real-time, modeled in an intelligent manner, and shared between the office and the site.  And with 3D one does not have to imagine the third dimension.

Tekla BIMsight can be used for mechanical, electrical and plumbing (MEP) checking, too. 3D visualization is helpful to fitters, who can also take advantage of the software’s measuring tool.

Many a general foreman or superintendent is in charge of several construction sites so there is a need to move around a lot. With a tablet, you can communicate with designers, foremen and clients from the site without having to visit your office.

Using a tablet with the Tekla BIMsight can save time during the working hours, too. A general foreman may spend a large part of the day by walking to and from the site office, but with a tablet all information is with you. You can show to fitters and other workers what you exactly mean.

A glimpse of BIM in three various Windows 7 tablets. If you happen to posses for example a Motion J3500 or Motion F5v, an HP EliteBook 2760p or a Trimble tablet, you can download Tekla BIMSight 1.4 here and install it in both the tablet and the tabletop computer.