Why BIM is a Game Changer for Masonry
Most architects will probably never work on a project with the staggering convolution of a Disney Concert Hall, but they will work on projects that require sophisticated detailing. In these instances, which include most projects in today’s development portfolios, BIM can simplify an architect’s job in many ways.
This is why BIM has been dubbed a “game changer,” and as such opens the door to many advantages over conventional “longhand” techniques that have been part of the construction process for centuries.
Reducing Human Error With BIM
Computerized models have great potential to reduce human error. If an effective planning effort has been made and is carefully reviewed and shared, BIM has the potential to dramatically reduce mistakes by streamlining the process, from planning through ordering all the way to completion of the project.
Orders can be extracted directly from a quality BIM model, providing an exact representation of unit types, colors, textures, and quantities. With confirmation of the accuracy of the model, the exact product order can be delivered, eliminating the usual waste factor in sizable orders. Because the software can break down and provide a better understanding of the construction project, there is a smoother implementation by contractors and subcontractors.
Clash detection
An integral part of BIM modeling is clash detection. After each discipline—structural, MEP engineering, environmental engineering, etc.—has created an independent model it can then integrated in a single multilevel model.
Clash detection identifies where the separate models have incompatible parameters, or an out-of-order time sequence that might cause design changes, higher materials costs, and the accompanying cascade of schedule and budget overruns.
In the past, clash detection was performed on site as opposed to in the design phase when constructibility issues can be resolved before construction begins, saving vast sums of money and time and producing a better building.
Quantity Takeoff
A key part of any project, take off and estimating has been a tedious, time-consuming task. In the masonry field, the traditional method has been to cost out a project longhand, and then add a margin to the bid based upon the complexity of the job to cover all the intricacies that hand calculations cannot account for. For complicated architectural jobs this margin can be as high as 25 to 30 percent to cover unforeseen conditions.
BIM modeling can substantially decrease the time and effort involved, and derive a more accurate result. Field experience is full of case studies that have followed the cost of contractors’ mistakes in estimating and ordering. In 2011, for example, designers of a Chicago Public School specified 67,000 ground face units, and subsequently followed two paths: the contractor’s cost numbers and ordering methods and a modeling program to determine the same issues.
While the modeling effort provided what in hindsight was an accurate cost figure and ordering scheme, the designers went with the contractor’s decisions, and ended up requiring 12 add orders, additional mold set up fees and freight costs, and experiencing significant delays and color variation problems.
BIM Excels for Product Optimization
Masonry manufacturers typically have tremendous flexibility to produce exactly the right specialized unit to resolve just about any design condition but if these unique products are not located and accounted for during the QTO process, those units will never appear on the job site. This is another area where a BIM solution controls both the cost of masonry projects as well as the final aesthetic of the installation.
BIM has the capability to identify unique products, optimized for individual customers or projects, and for a faster, more efficient construction process in order to create better buildings with less effort.
Reliable Models are the Key to Prefabrication
While prefabrication reduces field labor cost and time and increases accuracy in good quality construction, it requires highly reliable models to be successful. BIM models can achieve this level of accuracy via specifications, finishes, sequences, and a three-dimensional visual for each building component.
Provided that BIM relates to fabricators’ software, building elements can be manufactured according to precise specifications and delivered to the job site on time, in many cases curtailing costly and time-consuming field cutting.
Since architectural masonry typically involves a manufacturer-applied design treatment to various faces and edges, like ground face or bullnose, it is essentially a very large prefabrication problem that is ideally suited to a BIM solution.
BIM is the Future of Masonry
Masonry is a trade as old as man, always evolving and changing. Advances in building technology have driving the development of civilizations. BIM for masonry is the next big shift in how we build our world. Are you ready?
