The blueprint and T-square are slowly being replaced by digital building models as architects, contractors and engineers look to save time and money in the pre-building phase before a hammer is ever put to nail, according to local commercial real estate executives.
At a morning meeting of NAIOP in Boston today, executives touted three-dimensional building information modeling (BIM) systems as the future of the construction industry.
The technology is slowly replacing the revered blueprint because it lets contractors estimate materials amounts and organize data to combine architectural models with mechanical models, allowing workers to digitally construct the job before they start actually hammering nails.
This in turn gives subcontractors the freedom to spend their valuable pre-construction time eliminating issues that may arise in the field, like plumbing systems colliding with electrical systems, for example. The software also allows designers to cut a vertical slice out of a building and see where all the systems fit within the walls and ceilings.
"We can look at all those pieces fitting together," said Alfred Wojciechowski, a principal with CBT Architects. "You can see a red hotspot where two things collide."
However, software engineers still have improvements to make on the BIM technology, said Greg Titterington, president of RDK Engineers. As the digital building model gets larger through the design process, it causes the computer being used to operate considerably slower. And not just anyone can access the software because it is complicated and requires training. No third-party software has yet been developed for that purpose, Titterington said.
Yet BIM software has plenty of advantages, he continued. In the past, it took his firm about a year to design a building. They now do it in a matter of months thanks to the coordination possible through the software. And once it is more widely used and understood by facilities managers, they will have an entire 3-D model of the building’s systems at their disposal from the work the architect has already done.
But the true value of BIM is giving construction managers the ability to build a building virtually before constructing it in real-time, said Peter Campot, chief innovation officer for Suffolk Construction Co.
Besides eliminating collision points in HVAC, plumbing and other systems, it forces design decisions to the beginning of the timeline that would usually occur later in the process, especially pushing owners to make those decisions sooner than they otherwise would because they can visualize the result better thanks to the software. And that, in turn, reduces the "mad rush" that often accompanies the end of the construction period, Campot said.
