2007 Third Annual BIM Awards, Part 1

Earlier this summer, the winners of the 2007 BIM Awards hosted by the AIA TAP (Technology in Architectural Practice) Knowledge Community were announced. Inaugurated in 2005, this marks the third year in which the Awards are being presented, serving as a great way to track the progress of BIM (building information modeling) adoption in the AEC industry. In 2005, 22 projects were submitted for consideration of which three were selected as the winners and three received honorable mentions (see AECbytes Newsletter #21). Last year, the number of submissions was significantly higher at 41, of which six won awards and one received an honorable mention. These award-winning projects were described in a two-part series on AECbytes: 2006 2nd Annual BIM Awards, Part 1 and 2006 2nd Annual BIM Awards, Part 2.

This year, I was invited to participate as a juror for the BIM Awards, giving me the opportunity to study the projects more closely and deliberate on their merits with my fellow jurors: Robert Ivy, editor-in-chief of Architectural Record; Renee Cheng, Head of the Department of Architecture at the University of Minnesota; Douglas Garafolo, Founder and Principal of Garafolo Architects; Michael Kenig, vice chair of Holder Construction; and Dana (Deke) Smith, executive director of BuildingSMART. This article takes a detailed look at two of the main award-winning projects. The other two projects that won BIM Award citations will be discussed in the September issue of the "Building the Future" series, in which I will also share some of my perspectives as a juror for this year's BIM Awards.

Award Winners and Honorable Mentions

32 submissions were received for this year's BIM Awards, out of which four won citations and five received honorable mentions. This year's submission categories were slightly different than last year's and are listed below, along with their respective winning entries. As you will see, some of the categories did not receive any submissions that were compelling enough to win a citation or even an honorable mention, indicating that the implementation of BIM in some aspects has still not advanced as much as we had hoped.

Category A: Creating Stellar Architecture Using BIM

• BIM Award Citation: Loblolly House, Taylors Island, Maryland, KieranTimberlake Associates LLP

Category B: Design/Delivery Process Innovation Using BIM

• BIM Award Citation: Benjamin D. Hall Interdisciplinary Research Building at University of Washington, M.A. Mortenson Company
• Honorable Mention: Food and Drug Administration Headquarters, White Oak, MD, RTKL
• Honorable Mention: US Coast Guard Web Enabled BIM Projects, Onuma Inc.

Category C: Outstanding Sustainable Design Using BIM

• No Award Winners or Honorable Mentions

Category D: Outstanding Design for Fabrication Using BIM

• BIM Award Citation: Loblolly House, Taylors Island, Maryland, KieranTimberlake Associates LLP
• Honorable Mention: Noyes Campus Recreation Center, KieranTimberlake Associates LLP

Category E: Support for Human Use and Innovative Program Requirements Using BIM

• BIM Award Citation: Royal London Hospital, HOK
• Honorable Mention: Open Geospatial Consortium Open Web Services, Onuma Inc.

Category F: Academic Program or Curriculum Development

• No Award Winners or Honorable Mentions

Category G: Jury's Choice

• BIM Award Citation: GSA National BIM Program -- Highlights from 2006 and 2006 Pilot Project Successes, GSA
• Honorable Mention: Opera Theatre, Sydney Opera House, and Western Colonnade, Arup
  

The general criteria on which all the submissions were judged included documented quantifiable benefits in cost, schedule, or quality; clear depiction of using interoperability to gain design benefits; effective team collaboration; process change that enhances overall architectural services; demonstration of how design expertise is being used and embedded in BIM tools; and cultural change in the way design services are carried out. Each of the categories also had additional criteria specific to that category. In general, emphasis was paid to real-world projects as opposed to technology demonstrations, and projects demonstrating the work of teams rather than individuals.

It should be noted that the submission guidelines for the Awards specified that the submissions should not identify, on any graphics or text, the identity of the firm that was submitting the entry. A project could be entered in up to two submission categories.

Let's take a detailed look at the award-winning projects in Categories A, B, and D of the BIM Awards.

Loblolly House

This was the most exceptional project submitted for the BIM Awards this year, judging by the fact that it won the BIM Award citations for both of the categories in which it was submitted: Creating Stellar Architecture Using BIM, which recognizes outstanding quality of architectural design achieved through the use of BIM; and Outstanding Design for Fabrication Using BIM, which looks at how BIM enabled fabrication rules and techniques to be incorporated into the design. The jury was unanimous in the agreement that the Loblolly House deserved the award for both categories, even though it was a highly unusual decision. To put it simply, none of the other entries in these two categories came close to the standards demonstrated by the Loblolly House project. Once the jury deliberations were completed and the winning firms' identities were disclosed, it didn't come as a huge surprise to find that the Loblolly House was a project by the firm, KieranTimberlake Associates, famous for their work on prefabrication that is captured in their seminal book, "Refabricating Architecture." Some of the firm's preliminary explorations with using BIM for more efficient and effective modular design and offsite fabrication processes were described in this AECbytes article published in February 2006: BIM Symposium at the University of Minnesota. Evidently, the firm has come a long way since then in its use of BIM.

The Loblolly House, completed in 2006, is a single family residence of 1,800 SF located on Taylors Island, Maryland. It was named after the tall pine trees that characterize its site on the Chesapeake Bay, and the design concept was focused on fusing the natural elements surrounding it to its architectural form. The house is composed entirely of off-site fabricated elements and ready-made components, assembled from the platform up in less than six weeks. An aluminum scaffold system provides both the structural frame and the means to connect other elements and components to it with the sole aid of a wrench. The idea was to enable not just swift assembly at the site, but also speedy and whole disassembly in the future, allowing the parts of the building to be relocated and reassembled in new ways instead of being wasted. Figure 1 shows some exterior and interior views of the project after completion. The exposed scaffold detail can be seen in the top right image.

A desire to better understand the building and its elements led to the application of BIM as a tool for the design, development, fabrication, and assembly of the Loblolly House. Each component was modeled to accurately illustrate its building materials and finishes, and this information was subsequently used by the contractor to precisely fabricate the parts in the shop. As a means to improve the fabrication method, the model was incorporated with additional parameters dictated by manufacturing limitations and other restrictions. It was the BIM methodology that made the simultaneous off-site fabrication of this project possible. Without the geometric and dimensional certainty afforded by the closure of the parametric model, parts could not have been assembled in advance to the required tolerances. In addition to the benefits of designing in 3D, BIM enabled more efficient structural and mechanical coordination, better management of parts and schedules for procurement, a clearer approach to assembly sequencing, as well as a way to control fabrication and decrease assembly and construction tolerances. Virtual construction of the model allowed the team to refine the design prior to its assembly on site and detect and resolve conflicts before they they caused delays, wasted resources, and increased cost. The virtual model became the sole source of information from which all details, schedules, part lists, and fabrication drawings were derived and it was used to collaborate with the fabricators and engineers instead of drawings. Figure 2 shows some views of the BIM model of the Loblolly House.

Some more specific examples of the design and construction of the Loblolly House using BIM are captured in the following sequence of images. Figure 3 shows how the model was used as a tool to help design the cedar rain screen panels that form the facade. The pattern of the rain screen was actually composed over a photograph of the forest, and the wall panels were then developed and refined within the virtual model. Figure 4 shows the components of the structural aluminum frame created with embedded data such as manufacturer and distributor information, model name, size of profile, length, and cost. Since these components were first assembled virtually in the model, the project team was able to accurately catalog sizes and quantities and submit an order via e-mail using the list derived from the model. As the model developed and the number of components increased, the challenges of assembly and sequencing become more apparent. The BIM model was used to develop a sequencing schedule, shown in Figure 5, which clearly defined the assembly strategies for each day, reducing wasted time and avoiding possible conflicts.

Benjamin D. Hall Interdisciplinary Research Building

This was an another compelling project that was almost unanimously selected by the jury as the winner in the category, Design/Delivery Process Innovation Using BIM, which looks for innovative processes and tools used to realize a project, quantified benefits in efficiency and quality, satisfaction of design intent with lower delivery costs, and new forms of collaboration and/or partnering. The project was born from a Design-Build-Operate-Maintain (DBOM) competition sponsored by the University of Washington to address their need for a building to house scientific research that was to be delivered more quickly and cost effectively than their conventional process allowed, and with fixed costs of operations for 30 years. The competition was won by the construction firm, M.A. Mortenson Company, who collaborated with the architect and operations and maintenance partners to deliver the new $25 million Benjamin D. Hall Interdisciplinary Research Building. The core-and-shell project was completed in March 2006, and tenant improvements are being phased over the next three years as space is leased. The contractor-led DBOM team is also fulfilling the 30-year operations and maintenance needs in the facility.

Mortenson is well known in the industry for its use of BIM—it also won one of the TAP BIM Awards last year for its work on the Denver Art Museum expansion project. It was committed to using BIM in all aspects of the Benjamin D. Hall project, and created the role of a Design Coordinator to manage interdisciplinary model creation, coordination, and interoperability. The building's programmatic challenges included the site's curved shape, significant slope and shallow water table, along with noise and vibration from an overhead interstate highway bridge, on-site parking requirements, and building access. Although zoning regulations implied a maximum of five stories, the DBOM team proposed a six-story project with a tight floor-to-floor height, providing 14% more leasable floor area than was requested. They analyzed and validated this concept, which called for careful integration of MEP systems, with a 3D model (see Figure 6). BIM technology also assisted in designing the appropriate building set-backs to meet zoning requirements and in the development of a 1½-story below-grade parking garage with entries on two grade levels.

Visualization was an important aspect of the use of BIM on this project, not only for the project team to quickly comprehend complex spatial conditions but also to verify zoning envelopes and code clearances volumetrically. The real-time design visualization of the model was useful to the end-users of the building as well, providing them with an understanding of their proposed tenant improvements and enabling them to revise the design before it was built. BIM supported the study of various solutions for sustainability, contributing to LEED Gold certification for the project. During the construction phase, the model was used to analyze constructability and communicate last-minute design revisions while work was underway in the field, substantially reducing rework on the project and contributing towards increased safety on the job site. BIM was integrated with time to develop 4D simulations of the project schedule to optimize it, allowing the project to be completed 40% faster than the owner's traditional delivery schedule (see the top image of Figure 7). The BIM model also captured details of the complex underground conditions of the site, including existing and proposed utilities, dewatering, excavation, shoring, tiebacks, laydown zones, hoisting, and placing (see the lower image of Figure 7). This allowed coordination and communication with local review agencies and utility companies, enabling the project to proceed without costly delays.

In lieu of a detailed set of 2D construction documents, the team relied heavily on BIM to coordinate all building trades and systems, including architectural, structural, and MEP systems (see Figure 8). With an emphasis on face-to-face collaboration, designers and detailers solved problems in real time, and worked with interoperable clash-detection tools to sift through potential conflicts in the building. Using BIM, over 1,500 systems conflicts were detected and resolved before they became problems in the field. The use of BIM for coordination resulted in an 80% reduction in RFIs compared to non-BIM projects.

BIM was also used for quantity takeoffs of building materials, elements, and system components, allowing subcontractors to better understand their scope of work and bid accurately on it. They were able to fabricate, assemble, and install building systems with no errors using shop drawings extracted directly from the coordinated model. The ability of BIM to isolate and analyze any scope or area of the building in detail allowed the prefabrication of several components including rooftop mechanical equipment, multi-trade corridor pipe racks, plumbing carriers, framed wet-walls between toilet rooms, and entire electrical closets, as shown in Figure 9. During the construction of the building, all revisions to the work were documented in real time in the model, developing a 3D, as-built record of the project. This as-built model continues to be used and updated when inserting new tenant improvement work into the facility.

The DBOM approach to the Benjamin D. Hall Interdisciplinary Research Building represents a first-of-its-kind, landmark delivery model for the University of Washington. BIM was and is being used in all phases of the project lifecycle—from conception, through design and construction, to operations and maintenance—and has proved to be a valuable factor in the total cost of ownership of the facility, which is 26% below the owner's proforma.

This concludes the first part of the third annual BIM Awards that were presented earlier this summer. Stay tuned for a discussion of the other award winning projects in the September issue of the AECbytes "Building the Future" series.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the AIA TAP Knowledge Community Advisory Group for the permission to use the material from the BIM Awards submissions in this article.

About the Author

Lachmi Khemlani is founder and editor of AECbytes. She has a Ph.D. in Architecture from UC Berkeley, specializing in intelligent building modeling, and consults and writes on AEC technology. She can be reached at lachmi@aecbytes.com.