Laura Handler oversees Tocci's Virtual Design and Construction (VDC) process utilizing Building Information Models (BIM). In this key position, Handler manages the VDC team, including modeling, coordination and optimization for all of Tocci's projects. She advances Tocci's use of VDC, through research & development efforts. Apart from her duties at Tocci, Handler is very active in the industry. She serves on the leadership committee of the BIMForum as a Leader at Large and participates actively in local organizations, including the Boston Revit Users Group, Boston Society of Architects BIM and IPD Committees and the Associated General Contractors of Massachusetts. Handler presents frequently, locally and nationally, on VDC, IPD and Tocci's use of this ground-breaking process. Her blog, bimx.blogspot.com, is widely regarded as one of the best sources of information regarding VDC and BIM. She was recently selected as one of Building Design+Construction's 40 Under 40 in 2009.

Mike Whaley is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. During the first 26 years of his career he worked as an Architect, his professional focus was on project management of corporate, healthcare and municipal facilities. In 2005, Mike joined the J. H. Findorff & Son team, where he serves as Director of the Preconstruction services. His role is to lead the early collaboration and integration between owner, designer and contractor. Mike's technology initiatives have spearheaded Findorff to be an industry leader in the use of Building Information Modeling and Construction Visualization software. This advancement in preconstruction has improved collaboration, project understanding while demonstrating increased efficiency in the field, and project savings. In addition to his BIM initiative Mike has been instrumental in the implementation of the first full three part IPD project for Findorff.

Josh Lowe is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee where he received a Bachelor of Science, Architectural Studies and a Certificate in Urban Planning. In 2004, Josh joined the J.H. Findorff & Son team, where he is currently a Construction Visualization and Integration Specialist. He is responsible for integrating trades during construction as well as promoting lean construction by leveraging the power of Building Information Models in the field to increase productivity. In addition to the utilization of BIM models for projects, Josh also is involved in the research and development of new BIM applications.

Case Study: J. H. Findorff and Son, Inc.

Established in 1890, J. H. Findorff and Son, Inc., is a southern Wisconsin general contractor and construction management company with offices in Madison and Milwaukee. While employing an average of 600 construction professionals, they complete more than $300 million in construction annually. Findorff self-performs concrete, masonry, carpentry, steel erection, and drywall with their own teams. Their primary markets include healthcare, education (K—12), higher education (two-year and four-year), and a mixture of other commercial projects.

Using Revit for Preconstruction Planning

Using an intelligent 3D model to plan construction phase activities has several advantages over traditional approaches. Plans and uninformed spreadsheets not only take longer to produce but expose the opportunity for errors and misinterpretation. A model-based approach can support such activities as creating virtual mockups, planning for site safety, and work staging. Contractors can also use Revit in ways similar to that of an architect, as demonstrated in other chapters of this book.

One of the very first applications of Revit for Findorff was realizing the visualization capabilities of 3D images. On a major hospital project that involved multiple tower cranes, an early Revit model was used to demonstrate to the Med-Flight helicopter team how the tower cranes would look as the helicopters approached the hospital during construction. This involved modeling the existing hospital and site as simple massing elements in one overall model with the helicopter landing pads. Combined with models of the tower cranes (including their swing zones as shown here), this model allowed multiple flight path approaches to the hospital to be simulated.

The model was then used to produce a series of animations that were presented to the hospital staff and flight crews. This mockup allowed construction to proceed with the confidence of the hospital administration, staff, Med-Flight pilots, and even field staff that the cranes and the helicopter approach would ensure the appropriate level of safety.

In another example, a Revit model of a project's major building components was linked to the project schedule in Navisworks, creating an animation, as shown here.

Upon review of the 4D simulation, construction team leaders realized the sequence of the construction would require that structural steel framing from the staging area be hoisted over part of the building that would was occupied. As this was an unacceptable safety condition, the construction sequence was modified, thus avoiding potential delays and unsafe conditions during actual construction.

From the very beginning, the Findorff project management staff realized the power of Revit as a site planning and utilization tool. A site utilization plan can include the basic elements of construction to determine where to place a job trailer or store materials. Families have been developed to represent typical job site elements to expedite modeling of sites, as shown here.

Beyond the placing of basic elements on the site plan, Revit is being utilized to create site models to analyze traffic and circulation patterns and sequencing for delivery of materials. In addition to site utilization, Findorff also uses Revit for schedule coordination, phasing and sequencing studies, detailed staging plans for specific field applications, and clash detection for our MEP trade partners.

An interesting example of site phasing was a project that required a continuous concrete pour of more than 3,000 cubic yards. To further complicate this process, access to the formwork was more than 30 feet (10 m) below grade between and behind four existing buildings. To develop a productive solution to these issues, models of the concrete pump trucks with all of their characteristics for reach, swing, and setup requirements were developed. Then, using the site model and the models of the concrete pump truck, the project managers and site superintendants conducted multiple test layouts in the model, as shown here:

The model was also used to map the site access for all of the concrete trucks, including staging. The pour was completed overnight without moving the concrete pumps or adjusting any of the staging, as shown here. The Revit model is shown on the left. The right image is a photograph from the night of the pour.

Using Revit During Construction

Contractors such as Findorff are finding an increased return on their investment in training and development of BIM resources. During the construction phase, Revit can be one of many valuable tools in a builder's virtual toolbox. An example of this is using Revit models aggregated in Navisworks to allow all MEP trades to merge into the structural and architectural models for spatial coordination (shown here).

In this project, the team faced a start delay of six weeks due to a delay in getting an agency's approval. Working with all of the subcontractors, the team modeled every component above the ceilings and then agreed to a detailed sequence of installation. Many of the trades also used this as an opportunity to prefabricate many of their system components. Not only did the project recover the time lost in the agency review delay, it was completed two months ahead of schedule.

Construction Set-out Drawings

Concrete and masonry lift drawings are not new to the construction industry. Concrete superintendants and foremen have been doing lift drawings on grid paper by hand for years. Revit simply takes this process to a new level with increased efficiency and information. Findorff creates concrete lift drawings by building their own models of foundations using the architect's and engineer's drawings for reference. This allowed them to create a series of lift drawings based specifically on the exact methods of construction rather than solely on the design intent. One example of such a drawing is shown here:

Such drawings aid in the construction process by clearly identifying the work to be completed. They can contain a variety of intelligent information, including the following:

Advanced visualization based on accurate modeling techniques can detect potential design conflicts before they can adversely affect the on-site team. Such discrepancies are usually remedied by the modeler and reflected in the lift drawings for little or no cost. If such questions occur in the field during the installation of formwork or during a concrete pour, the cost in lost time would be substantial and probably require expensive change orders.

In addition to detecting and resolving potential conflicts in the execution of the design intent, the construction modeler will engage the project manager and superintendant to determine the optimal sequencing for each concrete pour. All major details associated with each pour are linked to the lift drawings as well as critical information, including volume of concrete, required labor, and productivity measures. These items are all generated from intelligent families of concrete objects that were created within Revit.

The use of modeling for foundations has progressed from simple foundation lift drawings to very sophisticated slab lift drawings, and the level of information and content in the lift drawings has expanded exponentially. Now lift drawings contain openings, sleeve locations, and embed information. In effect, contractors are now producing concrete field shop drawings, even modeling critical rebar areas if a conflict between rebar and formwork is anticipated. Detailed phasing models are also created using view filters to color specific parts of a model based on their construction order, as shown here:

Masonry lift drawings are a natural next step after the development of concrete lift drawings. The productivity savings from completing concrete lift drawings can be equally applied to the development of similar masonry documents. Masonry lift drawings coordinate information relating to masonry work, including but not limited to, openings, elevations, area of insulation, lintels, stone banding, sills, flashing, winter protection, block/brick counts, and manhours, as shown here.

Unlike concrete lift drawings, the breakdown on the pieces became less important and information was given based on individual elevations. The drawings then became planning tools for the field that allowed for more efficient and accurate brick ordering, crew planning, site utilization, staging/delivery management, and constant updated quantity checks throughout construction. This approach resulted in only a 1 percent variation from what was ordered to what was used.

Case Study: Tocci Building Corporation

Tocci Building Corporation (www.tocci.com) provides building and construction services throughout the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic, as well as program management and team integration throughout the United States. Through its affiliate company, Q5 LLC (www.q5thecompany.com), Tocci provides virtual design and construction (VDC) and integrated project delivery (IPD) facilitation to projects around the world. Managed by third-generation CEO (Chief Enabling Officer) John Tocci, the company began investigating and testing BIM software tools as early as 1999. By 2006, Tocci had selected the Revit suite of products for model authoring and mandated full use of VDC on all projects. Since then, Tocci has built a robust VDC team and trained all employees to utilize models on a day-to-day basis on projects.

Tocci performs work in the institutional, hospitality, and commercial markets and is nationally known as a leader in VDC and IPD. In 2009, Tocci completed the first pure IPD project on the East Coast, the Autodesk AEC Headquarters, with KlingStubbins and Autodesk, Inc.

Construction Visualization

Tocci is nationally known as a leader in virtual design and construction and has been implementing Revit for many years. They have used it in ways similar to those described in the previous case study on Findorff. Simple massing models are used to visualize major project phasing milestones, schedules and color filters facilitate preconstruction planning, and material quantities are extracted from the model to generate accurate bills of materials. One simple and innovative way Tocci utilizes the visualizations of a data-rich building information model is by placing high-resolution renderings throughout the jobsite. These images are extracted directly from the Revit project using camera views situated according to key work areas requiring clarification as shown in the following graphic. This enables subcontractors to better understand the overall design intent of a space while they execute their part of the work.

Another specific example of construction visualization is Tocci's use of phasing in Revit and some manual organization of geometry to generate visual construction phase projections'also known as a look-ahead. You can split objects such as walls and floors and then place them in specific phases, one for each week of a construction phase projection. Phase placement will drive both the data in your Revit views as well as quantity information in schedules, so it is critical that it is done carefully.

Using phase filters applied to 3D views shows where the project should be at the end of the week. The phase-filtered schedules communicate the picks of steel and volume of concrete to be poured that week (as shown here). For this project, the three-week projections were used to order materials and to communicate to subcontractors. This process helped keep the project on schedule and reduced material waste.

Planning for Integrated Project Delivery Using BIM

As described in Chapter 7, "Working with Consultants," collaboratively working in Revit requires advanced planning, often taking shape in the BIM execution plan (BEP). Although the BEP covers all BIM use on a project, Revit standards and protocols will be a large part of the BEP if a team elects to use Revit for model authoring or other BIM uses.

Although there are many BEP templates out there, including the buildingSMART Alliance's BIM Project Execution Planning Guide, Tocci Building Corporation uses an internal template that was originally developed in 2006 and has been continually refined since then. The concept of a BIM execution plan was developed in a digital charrette between Johnson & Johnson, KlingStubbins, Tocci Building Corporation, and EMCOR through the BIMForum (www.bimforum.org) to jointly streamline the BIM-enabled process. The concept was incorporated into ConsensusDOCS 301, BIM Addendum as the documentation that defines the level for which a building information model or models may be legally relied on. It has been incorporated into many other documents since then.

The BEP template and planning process described here was used by Tocci Building Corporation and KlingStubbins on the Autodesk AEC Headquarters, in Waltham, MA, the first pure IPD project on the east coast of the United States. On this project a single building information model, made up of several linked Revit files, was used during design and construction.

Design to Fabrication

In the IPD project for Autodesk's AEC Headquarters, KlingStubbins and Tocci had utilized, to the greatest extent possible, a process that supported the stewardship of data from the earliest design concepts through fabrication and installation. This process is perhaps best illustrated in the development of custom wood ceiling panels for a special customer area of the project. After a concept was conceived by the architect with input from the builder and fabricator, custom families in Revit were created to optimize the layout of the panels.

Once the panels were arranged throughout the space in the desired configuration, modelers from KlingStubbins and Tocci were able to collaborate with fabrication modelers at RB Woodcraft in Syracuse, NY, to further refine the design based on optimal constructability. Autodesk Inventor was then used to assimilate the form and generate 2D shop drawings.

When the custom panels were installed, it completed the vision of both the design and construction team while controlling cost, reducing waste, and keeping the project on schedule.