The following is an excerpt from End-To-End Collaboration Enabled by BIM Level 3: An Architecture, Engineering & Construction (AEC) Industry Solution Based on Manufacturing Best Practices.
Extended Collaboration Enabled by BIM Level 3
An Extended Collaboration model synchronizes productive interactions between designers, suppliers, and builders.
Extended Collaboration proactively addresses errors and omissions, reduces rework, enables predictive process simulations to reduce risk, resolves issues in real-time to drastically reduce RFIs (Request For Information), and improves quality and safety.
Extended Collaboration improves project outcomes.
Innovative projects delivered by industry-leading design and construction teams have shown that collaboratively planning a building’s structural, façade, HVAC (Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning), electric, and interior systems can provide significant productivity gains over siloed processes, which depend on RFIs to reconcile issues.
A full-spectrum collaborative workflow ties all parties together (owners, designers, contractors, suppliers), such that each discipline can provide relevant data in the context of other disciplines’ data.
Extended Collaboration in design, construction, and operations is made possible by BIM (Building Information Modelling) Level 3, where liberated data is transactable among authorized project contributors during each design, construction, and operations phase.
BIM Level 3 creates an environment where Extended Collaboration is possible.
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Extended Collaboration Model for Design, Construction, and Operations
BIM Level 3 Benefits Are Realized throughout the Building Lifecycle
High performance teams apply efficient processes proven in Manufacturing
industries, leveraging integrated data to support the entire building lifecycle.
The following processes make up the Extended Collaboration model, based on proven Manufacturing industry best practices:
Digital Mock-Up
More than: 3D Models, BIM Models
Contributors: Owner, Design Team
The Digital Mock-Up (DMU) process takes a data-rich, model-based approach and produces a representation of all systems within a building. A DMU sets the stage for a clear manufacturing context in which the team can make better design decisions based on the overall project.
Design Review
More than: Shop Drawing Review
Contributors: Design Team, Supply Team
In a Design Review, parties use the DMU to compare detailed, coordinated BIM data on a single platform. For example, a BIM model from the architect, a BIM model from the structural fabricator, a piping model from the systems designer, and so on, are checked to ensure they fit together. This is an integrated system review that is more than a shop drawing review.
The most complicated systems—those that tend to cause errors—are coordinated using Design Review at the beginning of an Extended Collaboration process and continuously resolved throughout. This approach reduces the number of issues that must be formally clarified by RFIs and submittals during project delivery.
Design Review is an iterative process and establishes a Single Source of Truth as the baseline for comparing and managing changes across multidisciplinary teams.
Process Simulation
More than: 4D Animations, Top-down Schedules
Contributors: Supply Team, Construction Team
Construction is a process. Much of what happens in construction happens around the building itself, for example, logistics, equipment, crew optimization, truck queuing, etc. Process Simulation enables project teams to make knowledgeable construction means and methods decisions, and helps produce an optimized work breakdown for construction.
Such bottom-up simulations can reveal even minor integration errors, illustrate which processes are the most cost- and time-effective, demonstrate how prefabrication will affect a project, and generate highly accurate sequence data.
Project Management
More than: Scheduling, Project Coordination, Document Management
Contributors: Construction Team, Operations Team
In the Project Management phase, the DMU containing the source BIM data is tied to resources, tasks, issues, and documentation needed to complete the project. More than just scheduling and site coordination, Project Management synchronizes BIM data with Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems to accurately monitor the project status versus the detailed plan, issue invoices based on milestones, track labor costs, and manage purchased materials.
The current, as-built data model used to deliver the facility is shared with the Operations team.
Facility Management
More than: Operations Manuals, Equipment Lists, As-Built Drawings
Contributors: Operations Team
Facility managers and owners benefit from having a virtual building for streamlining maintenance and operations. BIM data is synchronized with facility management systems to create a living data set with a history.
The integration helps ensure that equipment is maintained and operated for maximum energy efficiency and optimal performance, to reduce time spent searching for key facility information, and to simulate scenarios for facility reuse and alterations (moves, adds, and changes). Compounding, long-term benefits of BLM (Building Lifecycle Management)-enabled processes are often reaped in the Facility Management stage.
Summary
When BIM data is unlocked from a proprietary system, it becomes available for use in the five Extended Collaboration processes: Digital Mock-Up, Design Review, Process Simulation, Project Management, and Facility Management.
A BLM system (using BIM data within a PLM system) manages information and formalizes Extended Collaboration with built-in governance, traceability, electronic approvals, and version control, holding all parties accountable.
The key to solving the Construction industry’s productivity crisis is BLM.
Related Resources
End-To-End Collaboration Enabled by BIM Level 3: An Architecture, Engineering & Construction Industry Solution Based on Manufacturing Best Practices
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