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Loading...Building Information Modeling Solutions from NECA/IBEW Team
A construction site at full tilt can be a busy place. There are hundreds of workers, from multiple crafts, all working at the same time, in the same space.
Often, this ‘coordination dance’ isn’t the easiest thing to scope out, and when a step is missed, it can throw everyone off beat.
But, thanks to a process called building information modeling , or ‘BIM’ for short, the NECA/IBEW team is able to identify potential road blocks very early so that down the line costly change orders are virtually eliminated.
And that makes everyone happy, especially the customer who pays the bills.
ElectricTV’s Dominic Giarratano has more from a ‘BIM’ project just outside of Des Moines, Iowa.
Construction is full of change orders. And what happens usually is that when an electrician gets a set of plans and he goes to rough out a room, he finds there’s something wrong with the plan – the receptacle isn’t in the right place, or some other problem. So what he has to do is go to his foreman, his foreman goes to his electrical contractor, the electrical contractor has to go to the general contractor, the general contractor has to go to the engineer, and then it has to filter back down right to that craftsman. Who, if he could identify problems earlier, before those plans even get to him, it’s going to save a lot of money, and it’s going to save a lot of time.
By layman’s definition, building information modeling is a three-dimensional computer model of an entire job.
This digital set of prints includes not just the physical location of all installed electrical components – conduit, wires, junction boxes, receptacles, outlets, et cetera – but also the locations of the HVAC system & the plumbing pipes, with insulation, the elevator shafts, and so on.
In the past – every craft had their own set of plans. Coordination happened on the fly, during installation. This created a situation where lost time and money was commonplace.
Think of ‘BIM’ as a virtual real estate agent, allocating digital space to exacting specifications so that no two trades claim the same piece of ‘land’ during installation.
Eric Hoge – Manager of Engineering Services, Commonwealth Electric
“The thing when you’re using a using a BIM process, is you create, generally, more RFIs, and the RFIs get shifted to the front end of the project. When we see a discrepancy between an architectural plan and an electrical plan, we’ll create and RFI and send that off to the general contractor, and through the channels to get the answer. We’ve seen a shift in when that happens. Before, it happened on the job site, and an RFI on the job site creates delays – we have to stop, pull back, wait for an answer, then go back into that space. It costs everybody money at that point. If we can create an RFI before we get on site, we get the answer back and can continue with our schedule unabated, so it speeds up the whole process.”
Marijo Bosiljevac – Electrical Designer, Commonwealth Electric
“Our process for this project has been to meet about every two weeks, the project team will meet here on site and have the opportunity to look ahead and plan any area. We’re not going to solve every nitty gritty little conflict, but we can look at the big conflicts – the cable trailer outing, the duct is too big, we can’t run the pipe right here, that’s where the duct needs to go.”
This helps everyone, not just the electrical contractors and their IBEW crafts professionals, but every craft completes the job faster and more accurately.
And accuracy on a job like this – a new hospital addition where power is critical to daily operations – the ‘BIM’ process is a perfect fit.
Marijo Bosiljevac – Electrical Designer, Commonwealth Electric
“So one of our first steps is to place all of the devices that we know are going to be in the building. So I’ve got views set up. This one has pretty much everything turned on. I have other views – just lighting, just power – same as you would have a lighting sheet, a power sheet, an auxiliary sheet in your construction document set. So the first thing we’ll do is go ahead and place all of those items into our model so we have a sense of where they’re going to be, how much room, what kind of issues we have already. Then we can plan our routing. We have software to do this and it can keep track of my circuiting and those kinds of things for me, so then I select the power device. I can tell it what circuit it’s going to be connected to, and then and then that device has that circuit number associated with it. It’s helpful in the planning process for us to know all those things. What you can do is set it up by phase. So right now these are just the devices. Next step, we’re going to tile all the power together so we can route it back to the panel so I have that conduit shown here. I’ve got the same sort of deal in an elevation view so that I can know exactly wall by wall what’s happening in that room.”
To see the model at this stage of the game – doesn’t do justice to the hard work put in by the NECA/IBEW team.
It’s a process in which bi-monthly meetings happen, with all trades and the owners – lead by NECA contractor Commonwealth Electric and IBEW Local 347.
It’s a process where measuring meets re-measuring and coordination meets results.
Rich Corkrean – Facilities Manager, Madison County Health Care System
“To actually see the electrical and the mechanical and everything in its place gives us an idea if that’s where we want it or if we see a problem doing maintenance down the road. Now is the time to make those changes, before it ends up costing us money.”
Eric Hoge – Manager of Engineering Services, Commonwealth Electric
“The savings are huge. It’s all about being more efficient at the site, to the extent that we can do that and we can lay out our conduits. Simple things such as running home runs underground, but being able to pinpoint where that stub-up has to come up and hit a 4-inch stud. Those are huge, but if we can get those dimensions correct, we can save time and money, schedule, and then be more efficient and get more jobs and increase our market share.”
And the electricians are singing the same tune.
Mike Vanderhart – General Foreman, IBEW Local 347
“I like it. I mean, I think it’s great, to be honest with you. I haven’t been involved with it much until this project. I’ve seen other jobs, other trades where they’ve done it for themselves. I think it’s the way to go. It just helps to coordinate the elevations of all the different systems, and it works out great for the owner in the end because he has a much better map of what’s actually up there in the ceiling.”
Rich Corkrean – Facilities Manager, Madison County Health Care System
“It has to save a lot of time and headaches, and things seem to run much smoother with this program in place, without question. Anything that we can do up front that eliminates any conflict during the process has to help the owner, has to be of benefit to the owner.”
And in this case – benefiting the owner means benefiting this community in Madison County, Iowa.
Having a state of the art hospital close to home, which this job will soon become, will certainly make an impact, just as the NECA/IBEW team has with their ‘BIM’ expertise.
BIM is applicable for all kinds of jobs in all kinds of cities, the only requirement is the desire to save time and money, something which any owner would like and something the NECA/IBEW team can deliver.
That’s it for this edition. Forward this story to a friend – and we’ll see you next time.