Large Scale Solutions Explored with BIMStorm® BIG BIM Bang

Learn-by-doing workshops and webinars show dramatic business process improvements

Participants in BIMStorm® BIG BIM Bang workshops on December 7th and 8th 2011 were only interested in large-scale improvements in building industry business processes. While some of the processes were applied to small parts of real project data sets supplied by Kaiser Permanente and California Community Colleges, they are business activities that have large implications for companies of all sizes.

Among the business processes explored were;- Large-scale portfolio facility management assisted by BIM;- Real-time building data exchanges that enable web-based collaboration on Google Earth;- Cross-platform software and hardware data management;- Planning-to-Design-to-Construction-to-Facility Management data harmonization;- Real time collaboration among many participants using multiple, interoperable BIM Servers;- BIM-to-GIS visual “mash ups” using, IFCs, BIMxml and other open standards proven methods for improving productivity and profitability.

Participants at the Ecobuild Conference in Washington, D.C. and on the web learned and demonstrated live data sharing with Building Information Model (BIM) and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) software.

Proven technology was explored and tested to find solutions for consistent data sharing and reporting using a network of interoperable hardware and software. Even BIM Server interoperability was demonstrated between BIMStorm® backbone ONUMA System and GTX Sync from Gehry Technologies.

When so much is technically possible, the question is, “Can teams work together with technology available today to solve large-scale problems?” Hundreds of participants and observers explored the question together in a manner that showed the answer is “Yes.”

“It is good to use data from non-clients to explore new business approaches without worrying about making mistakes on an actual project,” said Jason Reese, a project manager with Balfour Beatty, which was a platinum sponsor and had more than 50 staff and colleagues sign up to learn about these proven business processes.

This BIMStorm® was subtitled “Less talk and more action” to focus on demonstration of web-based building industry business processes in front building owners looking for building industry professionals able to provide repeatable services.

The learn-by-doing workshop used real project data from real projects to allow teams to demonstrate the efficient, dramatically productive building industry business processes being sought by leading owners. Kaiser Permanente and California Community Colleges provided real data from seven projects for use in the BIMStorm® BIG BIM Bang. It is continuing online until January and February 2012 when final presentations will highlight the lessons learned during this web-based form of building industry business interaction.

Projects at many phases from Kaiser Permanente and California Community Colleges are being used to show the value of available, real-time data sharing for the building industry.

The event was held in conjunction with many co-located building industry events at Ecobuild 2011. Architect and software architect, ONUMA, Inc. managed web-based and in-person learn-by-doing sessions that featured planning, design, cost estimating, construction scheduling, web-based Construction Operation Building information exchange, facility management data organization and other building industry business processes. BIM to FM was a significant focus as institutional owners can design for long-term maintenance savings and energy reduction.

John Messner, associate professor of architecture at Penn State University, was at the Washington, D.C. Convention Center addressing professionals in person, as he broadcast back to his students and other building industry professionals on three continents (see participant map at https://www.google.com/fusiontables/DataSource?snapid=S332111jWIl ).

Hyde Griffith, Vice President at Broaddus & Associates, used the the BIMStorm® to manage data between the ONUMA System web server, Gehry Technology's GTX Server and COBie formats to demonstrate building industry business processes available today. Griffith noted that technology is not the issue – good business processes are the key. “Work flows and business rules are harder to address than software coding,” says Griffith, whose colleague Matt Moore, Broaddus' BIM Manager also participated in the event for Broaddus, also a sponsor. “BIMStorm® activities allow building industry professionals to use real project data before they have to work on real projects,” Moore stated.

Griffith concluded, “BIMStorm® allows us to find ways to piece together and refine the value proposition to the project and the owner.”

Kaiser Permanente made data available from it's Gwinnett Comprehensive Medical Center under construction in Duluth, Georgia and its Glenlake Comprehensive Medical Center & Ambulatory in Sandy Springs, Georgia.

Real Kaiser Permanente project information Building Information Model data is being used in the BIMStorm® BIG BIM Bang.

Gwinnett Comprehensive Medical Center

Alexander Herr, Kaiser Permanente Senior Project Manager for the Gwinnett ComprehensiveMedical Center, Atlanta, says, “The project consists of two phases of construction. A new building will add 66,000 square feet to the existing campus. Renovations in the existing building of about 19,000 square feet will start after the new building is open. Construction value is approximately $21 million and the total budget is approximately $52 million.”

Kimon Onuma, FAIA, president of ONUMA, Inc., Pasadena, Calif., indicates that since this project is in construction the interest is in “what can we do with this data as we go into operations and maintenance. This is a great opportunity for teams that want to look at this live model of a building that is already under construction and see what else can be done with it.”

Multiple models can be observed on the project. There is a Revit model, SketchUp model, as well as NavisWorks models which will be made available to the teams that want to participate.The Gwinnett team is using Vela Field Manager for commissioning activities and for the transition of data into a NavisWorks model.

Herr says, “We are scheduled to receive the Certificate of Occupancy and issue Substantial Completion on January 13, 2012. Right now we are wrapping up the exterior cladding work and we have been working on the interiors of the building with prime paint, casework, ceiling grid tile, overhead inspections and in the next couple of weeks we should be getting into the flooring and completing the finishes.”

He adds, “The big thing that we are hoping to get out of this event is to gain insight into how the GC and A/E coordinated models can be updated with commissioning and Operation & Maintenance data efficiently. Once the model is loaded with that information, it is believed that the Facilities Department and our Engineering staff will be able to utilize the data to minimize operation and maintenance costs for the entire building life cycle.”

The actual project’s general contractor, Skanska, is providing real project data for BIMStorm® teams to explore in their virtual demonstration projects.

Glenlake Comprehensive Medical Center & Ambulatory

Stephen Cox, Kaiser Permanente Manager of Facilities Design & Construction works in the Georgia region and has been involved with Glenlake Comprehensive Medical Center & Ambulatory, Duluth, Georgia. The project is a high end, high acuity specialty Medical Office Building (MOB) along with a ambulatory surgery center and procedure area on a site that is just under 18 acres.

“This project is very early in the design process. The project is very similar to the Gwinnett project. It is an addition to an existing building. The existing building is about 120,000 square feet. The proposed addition is about 120,000 square feet.” The addition of a 750-car parking structure is also part of the project.

Cox says there is a very aggressive schedule with completion at the end of 2013 or very early part of 2014. The Smith Group out of Washington DC is designing the project and the general contractor is St-Louis-based McCarthy Building Companies.

“We hope to break ground sometime early next year year,” Cox says. In the meantime, participants are invited to use web-services to watch and participate in the design using the same data as the live project. (None of the BIMStorm® activities are to be used on the project, BIMStorm® participants can practice web-based processes using real-life data being shared in real time without the fear of their activities impacting the actual project. BIMStorm® participants can have experience the legally contracted project team data sharing processes without legal obligation to the project team.

Kaiser Permanente requested that business partners be ready to use productivity improving BIM processes. “They hadn't really seen that many owners specifying what they wanted to see in BIM,” Cox says.

Building team members are all working out of Atlanta offices and include, architect of record HKS, Perry Crab & Associates for MEP services and the General Contractor is Skanska.

California Community Colleges

John Roach, Executive Director, Technology Services, Foundation for California Community Colleges supports the institution's 72 districts and 112 campus throughout the state. “All of those districts and campuses are using our facility maintenance program Fusion to collaborate with the Chancellors office on annual reporting,” Roach says.

Fusion is an internally created, online database that assists with space utilization and facility management for 71 million square feet of facilities. The need for integrating information and to streamline and standardize the exchange of information dealing with the facilities was the reason for establishing the Fusion, according to Roach. Because the college system has already had organized the data, it was well prepared to benefit from web-based BIM processes.

“I am very excited about college district projects being involved in the BIMStorm® . It is great opportunity for contractors working with the colleges or potential new contractors to get a sense of what the California Community College work scope is,” says Roach. “And it gives our districts new and fresh ideas and to see how this collaborative approach and data sharing can help them save money and get more done with the limited budget we have to maintain our facilities.”

“The districts have obligations to annually submit space inventory information explaining what space has been added, what space has been removed and how those spaces are being used down to the room level,” Roach says. “We have a team of assessors that travel the state full time and visit each campus, walking each building approximately once every three years.” The FUSION database is linked through ONUMA to other programs.

Information about the condition of building systems combined with the chancellor's office annual updates for enrollment forecasts allow districts to allocate spaces at individual campuses and add additional forecasts.

“With those three basic building blocks: 1) space inventory telling us what spaces we have and how they are being used, 2) the condition of the space and 3) the enrollment forecasts the districts then develop their capital construction plans,” Roach says.

As capital plans are approved by the chancellor's office and then funded, active projects move into the project module of Fusion. “As projects are built out and the last of the financial reimbursement claims are processed, the project moves back into the space inventory and the cycle continues,” Roach says.

He added, “Each district maintains its own sets of data and then collaborate by sharing it through web services. Ideally we do it as we are doing it in the ONUMA System. We found that because of the standards approach of the ONUMA Systems and it's light weight web-based approach, that it is the ideal tool for being able to link into these tools.”

The Foundation for California Community Colleges is working with individual districts on larger focused projects dealing on a range of projects from master planning through to maintenance, ticketing, sensor and energy reading, according to Roach.

For this BIMStorm® the California Community College will for the first time, generate project program requirements in BIM from FUSION which will then be made accessible to the design teams to work with and submit the completed BIM back to FUSION for compliance checking and updating of the FUSION data.

Onuma says, “We are actively looking for other tools that can connect to the FUSION system and add more value to the colleges.” For example, at Glendale Community College, IRIS Greenbuild is using the ONUMA System and Energle software to link BIM with building automation systems and sensors to FUSION data.

Sensors provide real-time data through Energle's dashboards. Also, web-based BIM lighting controls that provides the ability to turn lights on and off remotely are being tested and were demonstrated at the BIMStorm® BIG BIM Bang. Onuma used a connection through a web based BIM to turn off a light in a California building from the Washington, D.C. Convention center floor.

A Light was turned off remotely through a BIM at the BIMStorm.

At MiraCosta College, there were two program requirements defined for two real buildings being developed at the college. Using a master plan created by HMC Architects entered into a web server, 56 GIS layers from an ArcGIS Server were able to be seen accurately, in real time in relation to planned and actual buildings. According to John Roach, making many GIS data sets available in relation to buildings provides a significant benefit for cost effective campus planning.

Roach says, “We achieved the connection between facility data, geographic information systems and BIM and created immediate. . . This has allowed us to achieve rapid, accurate results at a modest cost. The smart, adaptable design of the ONUMA System, has allowed FUSION to make great progress in a short time. . . This allows me, despite frozen budgets, to offer new features to my college districts at a time when they need it most.”

Among the BIMStorm® participants were others from the California Community College system and their contractors wanting to learn about the processes proven to provide value by giving access to data that can be easily used as needed by each campus.

“BIMStorm® BIG BIM BANG is allowing access to several energy studies, audits for demand response and how to reduce energy use for an entire campus,” Onuma says.

Onuma adds, “We are had a connection between the ONUMA System and GTX Sync, a master model management web server. In the ONUMA System we keep models light weight, but if we have a full blown Revit model that we want to see in 3D in a web browser - for example a mashup of the mechanical model with the architectural model - GTX Sync is going to have the ability to import that Revit or IFC model and visualize it in 3D on the web.”

Another focus of BIMStorm® BIG BIM BANG is data transfer using the Construction Operation Building Information Exchange (COBie) format, according to Tina Macica, MPM Consultancy, supporting the Build LACCD program. “We are developing a COBie specification to figure out how to take the information that we receive during construction – the operations manuals, the maintenance manuals, the warranty information and put it into a data format that you can you can transfer it automatically into SAP,” Macica says. “The goal is to take information that is already required to be delivered in the written format and move it into an electronic format.”

Multiple California Community Colleges use web-based BIM.The test project is a lab building, so there is a significant amount of equipment in it and it is a common example of the different types of items will need to be maintained. “We will need to know how do we take some of that information and hook it back into FUSION so the client can manage the assets down the line in a logical manner,” Macica says. “We will be uploading the maintenance information into their maintenance management system which is SAP.”

“We released some of this information during the BIMStorm® so the different project teams utilized what we have done,” Macica says. Results will be displayed in the final BIMStorm® BIG BIM Bangs presentations.

While FUSION does not maintain equipment data, it does maintain room data, according to Onuma. “The opportunity is to have multiple systems talk about the same room. For example, LACCD uses their own FM CMMS Systems and also uses FUSION so that all the data from different systems can be related to the same room with accuracy,” he says. “We don't need every single element in this model that you see on the screen during facility management. What we worked on with the LACCD and Tina was to identify specifically what is needed from the model. Some of it could be very simple data about a piece of equipment. We might not need all the ducts, but we need all the air handling units, for example.”

Many models being delivered to owners are great for construction but they don't support facility management, according to Onuma. “So how do you break this data back down into a different format? It is not necessarily that the more data you have the better. It is really the appropriate level of detail for what you are trying to do throughout the whole project life-cycle,” he says.

Onuma adds, “One very important theme for all of the BIMStorm®s and a lot of the owners – is how to consistently get data from all of our facilities that can be rolled up to a portfolio level. This is not possible unless you have consistent naming and numbering. It is as simple as that actually. We have to have consistent naming and numbering at a very basic level. If we can't name buildings and number buildings and name spaces and number spaces in a consistent way, it is impossible to say what's inside. That is the lowest level of BIM detail in this BIMStorm® . Let's keep data consistent. This seems simplistic, but this is absolutely the biggest challenge most owners have is naming and numbering of spaces.”

These challenges and many other related to improved productivity with web-based Building Information Models are still being addressed in BIMStorm® BIG BIM BANG – www.BIMStorm®.com/WAS

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Healthcare BIM Consortium

In addition to promoting the activities of the American Institute of Architect’s Technology in Architectural Practice www.aia.org//tap, which Mr. Onuma will be chairing in 2013, BIMStorm® time was spent promoting the Healthcare BIM Consortium group of the buildingSMART alliance.

Xiajun Lin, AIA, LEED AP, with Kaiser Permanente National Facilities Services - Facilities Planning division is supporting the collaborative efforts on behalf of her company and the Healthcare BIM Consortium.

“The Healthcare BIM Consortium was created by healthcare owners in collaboration with software vendors, designers and builders seeking solutions for interoperability for facility life-cycle management. Currently, the owners group includes Kaiser Permanente, Department of Defense Military Health, the Department of Veterans Affairs, Sutter Health and recently we had the University of Texas join the group.”

According to Ms. Lin the Healthcare BIM Consortium is collaboratively addressing five core focus areas:1. Automate space PFD (Program for Design) validation in design submittal. Input Data Flow2.Automate Room Equipment (Project Room Contents) Validation. Input Data Flow3.Optimize the benefits of BIM during the execution of design to ensure successful project construction.4.Automate the data population of computerized maintenance management software (CMMS) / CAFM. Output Data Flow5.Automate the data population – Medical Equipment & Furniture Inventory and Maintenance System. Output Data Flow

“We are very excited to be a part of this BIMStorm® and look forward to very interesting results,” says Lin. Details regarding the next HBC meeting will be posted on a site hosted by the buildingSMART Alliance http://www.buildingsmartalliance.org/index.php/projects/activeprojects/162

Onuma, a buildingSMART alliance board member has been involved with the HBC since early 2010 and says, “Healthcare BIM Consortium is really looking at how data flows from different parts of the building process.”

For healthcare owners to be openly sharing project data with colleagues and competitors through the BIMStorm® activities is a clear sign of the common agreement on the importance of improving building industry processes to reduces costs and eliminate waste.

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