Multi-Disciplinary BIM at Work at GHAFARI Associates

The BIM movement is rapidly gaining in momentum, and many individual architectural, engineering, and construction (AEC) firms have already made significant progress in implementing it. As a case in point, simply visit the website of any of the leading BIM vendors and you will find that they feature several success stories of individual AEC firms who are using their BIM solutions. Examples include Hiller Architecture (Revit Building), Total Mechanical (Autodesk Building Systems), and RTKL (Revit Building) for Autodesk; NBBJ (Bentley Architecture), Arup (Bentley Structural), and FaberMaunsell (Bentley HVAC and Bentley Structural) for Bentley; and Orcutt/Winslow Partnership (ArchiCAD), Oppenheim Architecture + Design (ArchiCAD), and Webcor Builders (Virtual Construction solutions) for Graphisoft. BIM has become the main focus of any technology-related conference in the AEC industry, for example, the AIA Technology in Architectural conference (see AECbytes Newsletter #21), the Technology for Construction conference (see AECbytes Newsletter #18), and the upcoming joint Ecobuild Federal and AEC-ST conference.

While there is no doubt that the implementation of BIM within each building discipline has more than enough benefits to justify deploying it, the ultimate dream of the AEC industry has been seamless cross-disciplinary collaboration. This dream could never have been even remotely realized using 2D CAD-based processes that simply replicate the process of manual drawings. However, the intelligent model-based technology of BIM has made the idea of cross-disciplinary collaboration a distinct possibility, and some multi-disciplinary firms have already leapfrogged into exploring and implementing it. GHAFARI is one such firm, and this AECbytes feature article explores how it is deploying multi-disciplinary BIM in its practice.

Overview of GHAFARI

GHAFARI is a multi-disciplinary firm providing full-service architecture, design and engineering solutions, manufacturing engineering solutions, professional staffing solutions, and consulting services to a global client base that includes the aviation, automotive, corporate, industrial, healthcare, education and government sectors (see Figure 1). It was founded in 1982 by Yousif B. Ghafari, PE, and is a privately held corporation with its headquarters in Dearborn, Michigan. It also operates full-service offices in Chicago, Illinois and Indianapolis, Indiana. Combined, GHAFARI has over 800 employees nationwide.

Some of the firm's current major projects include the new General Motors Lansing Delta Township (LDT) Assembly Plant, Detroit Metropolitan Airport (DTW) North Terminal Development, Wayne State University Engineering Development Center, and City of Southfield Michigan Fire Station Expansion. The firm's growth and success is highlighted in several rankings including #123 in the Engineering News-Record (ENR) list of Top 500 Design Firms, #5 in the ENR list of leading manufacturing plant designers, #1 in the ENR list of leading automotive plant designers, and #2 in Crain's Detroit Business list of leading architecture/engineering firms. It is also a multiple member of the Inc. 500 list of fastest-growing companies.

Outlook on Technology

Technology was and continues to be a passion for Yousif B. Ghafari, who founded the firm and continues as its Chairman. He started the company 23 years ago by converting paper drawings to electronic drawings through the use of computer-aided design. Being a forerunner in CAD technology in 1982, it is hardly surprising that GHAFARI is today a forerunner in the application of BIM technology across the design/construction supply chain, continuing to build upon the vision of its founder to use technology to improve quality, accelerate delivery, and keep the company always a step ahead.

From a BIM implementation perspective in AEC, GHAFARI also has the advantage of having done a lot of work in the industrial and automotive sectors where 3D technology has been around for close to 20 years and is routinely used across the supply chain to improve quality and help save time and money. In these projects, GHAFARI combines 3D/4D software with lean design and construction methodologies, and has pioneered direct digital exchange with all its supply chain partners. It builds a digital model that includes design data from all of the trades and uses this to identify interferences in the design process. This allows the design/build team to develop virtually "collision-free" solutions along with other benefits such as reduced RFIs, reduction in field changes, tightened contractor bids, and improved information flow throughout the design and construction process. The result is a higher quality design that is not delayed during construction because of rework. GHAFARI has won recognition for its work in this area, including Bentley's BE 2005 Award of Excellence in the "BIM for Multiple Disciplines" category jointly with General Motors for its work on the LDT assembly complex mentioned earlier. Another of its recent General Motors' projects—a 442,000 sq. ft. addition to a Global V6 engine plant in Flint—was also featured in the cover study of the Oct 10 edition of ENR magazine, where GHAFARI not only used BIM for design but acted as the technology integrator for the entire design/construction team to deliver the project to the owner interference-free prior to construction.

For GHAFARI to use BIM for its AEC work, it was simply a matter of applying the same methodologies and workflow, albeit with different tools. The 3D lessons it has learnt from the automotive industry have given it a head start in applying BIM technologies for the design and delivery of its commercial and educational projects. It is deploying BIM across all the design disciplines (see Figure 2) and, progressively, into the construction supply chain as well.

GHAFARI also leverages its BIM expertise in the form of consulting services outside of its own commissioned projects. These services include BIM consulting to full design/construction teams for both industrial and commercial projects, assisting clients with pre-qualification for BIM suppliers, and BIM enabled project management and deployment. Its customers for these services include large industrial and governmental agencies as well as select subcontractors, contractors, and architects.

Another example of GHAFARI's technological bent lies in its use of 3D High Definition Surveying (HDS) with laser technology for existing manufacturing facilities. HDS enables a more complete, accurate, fast visualization and modeling of complex structures and sites through precise measurements attained at less cost than conventional methods. This capability, offered only by a few A/E firms in the United States, makes GHAFARI one of the top five firms nationally in the design of manufacturing facilities.

With this technological overview, let us move on to see how GHAFARI actually uses BIM for its AEC work.

Overall Approach to BIM Implementation

GHAFARI maintains a dedicated IT group that focuses on overall support and maintenance of the company's infrastructure and existing systems. There is no dedicated "BIM" or "CAD" group as such. Instead, BIM is integrated into the project teams of architects/engineers who have full control on how to best use BIM to meet their project objectives. There is, however, an independent Advanced Technologies Group that was created to lead the development and application of new design and delivery methodologies for GHAFARI business units, particularly utilizing 3D/4D technology and lean design/construction principles. The Advanced Technologies Group manages the overall BIM deployment and assists project teams to better utilize the BIM approach to improve current practices.

GHAFARI sees BIM not simply as a transition from one CAD system to another, but as a breakthrough technology that affects project workflows, team roles, project delivery methods, and the level of detail for the deliverables. At the same time, it also views technology, in general, as a tool that supports overall project objectives, and rather than applying technology for technology's sake, it pursues the use of BIM where it makes business sense for a project's particular delivery approach. Since its projects vary widely in terms of their scope and the services that GHAFARI is offering, each project is carefully assessed to see how BIM can best benefit that project's workflow. The case for implementing BIM in a project is particularly strong if there is an opportunity to use the BIM model downstream during construction.

Thus, GHAFARI's decision to use BIM and the extent to which BIM is used depends upon the specific needs of each project. It defines the objectives for a project, analyzes the workflow, and applies the technology to support that workflow, including which application is most suitable. On some projects, BIM is used early on during the schematic design phase to provide alternative solutions quickly and effectively through strong visual representations, while at the same time the data in the BIM model is used to extract area calculations to compare with the project requirements. Plans, elevations, and sections are also produced from the 3D model and used throughout the early phases of the concept generation.

As these projects transition from schematic design to detailed design, GHAFARI continues to assess if BIM is the most appropriate method of delivering those projects, especially for integrated structural and MEP services. The level of detail of BIM implementation will depend upon the project and the scope of GHAFARI's services as well as other factors, including the owner's interest in BIM and as mentioned earlier, the potential for using the model downstream during construction. An example of a current project in which BIM is being used is shown in Figure 3. The project is now about to start CD phase. The architectural design documents (DDs) was done in BIM and GHAFARI continues to use BIM to complete the CDs for all disciplines and to improve coordination.

As BIM is deployed on projects, additional care is taken to ensure that all teams in the firm are made aware of the potential and the benefits of the new 3D technology. A concerted effort is also made to share best practices and lessons learned with teams new to BIM.

Comfortable with Multiple Solutions, Multiple Platforms

I had attended Bentley's BE 2005 conference over the summer (see AECbytes Newsletter #20), where GHAFARI won its Award of Excellence in the "BIM for Multiple Disciplines" category, mentioned earlier. This had led me to mistakenly peg GHAFARI down as a "Bentley firm," and I was surprised to find, in the course of researching this case study, that GHAFARI was equally at home with Autodesk solutions as well. It was one of the first firms to acquire Revit (before its acquisition by Autodesk) and use it.

Because of the size of the organization and the range of integrated services it offers, GHAFARI is able to support multiple BIM platforms. It has also found that there is no single software solution or platform that meets all the requirements of all its projects. This makes GHAFARI continuously assess each project's needs and select the best-in-class technologies to support that particular project's requirements. Thus, it typically uses a variety of software platforms and connects them together, wherever possible, using industry standard formats.

The specific software tools GHAFARI uses includes:

• Autodesk products, including AutoCAD, the Autodesk Architectural Desktop family of products, and the Autodesk Revit based products.
• Bentley Microstation and Triforma based BIM products, including Bentley Architecture, Bentley Structural, Bentley HVAC, Design Series, and other related products including Interference Manager.
• A variety of other intelligent modeling tools on the manufacturing process side including CATIA and ProE.
• Navisworks and Bentley Navigator for integration, collision analysis, and simulation (see Figure 4).
• Various 3D structural analysis and design software tools including solutions from RAM and Risa Technologies.
• Increasing use of Bentley's ProjectWise for project collaboration, especially on projects that require collaboration across multiple offices and where the BIM is an integral part of the delivery.
• PDF as the default for electronic documentation, unless required otherwise by clients.

For early design exploration, GHAFARI rarely relies on the use of physical models, and so far, it hasn't used a tool like SketchUp in a big way either. Instead, GHAFARI has successfully used Revit Building to efficiently explore design alternatives and produce all related documentation including plans, elevations, sections, and reports as well as high-end visualizations to best communicate those design alternatives to clients. Depending on project complexity, these early schematic models are further developed into construction documents in Revit itself or in Bentley Triforma-based applications, especially for structural design and MEP coordination. The choice of platform depends upon which is best suited to the nature of the project and the preference of the client. GHAFARI is currently in the process of evaluating the recently released Revit Structure.

GHAFARI anticipates that it will continue to use multiple platforms, and sees no reason to narrow its choices down to a single platform. This makes interoperability a critical issue for the firm, not just for internal multi-disciplinary collaboration but also for working with contractors, detailers, and fabricators, all of whom use diverse platforms and tools. GHAFARI would like to see the vendors of BIM applications show stronger support for open standards, and for interoperability standards to be developed that are flexible enough to accommodate accurate data exchange at the appropriate level of detail for the task at hand. It sees the CIS/2 standard developed for the structural steel industry as an excellent example of this kind of flexibility, since it supports steel data exchange from analysis to design to manufacturing representations in a format and level of detail that are appropriate for a range of design, detailing, and fabrication tasks. It would like to see similar standards for exchanging architectural, mechanical and electrical information from analysis to design, detailing, and manufacturing systems. Much of this falls within the purview of the IFC standard, which GHAFARI supports by being proactive and participating in the IAI's IFC standards meetings. (For more on CIS/2 and IFC, see these AECbytes articles: The CIS/2 Format: Another AEC Interoperability Standard; The IFC Building Model: A Look Under the Hood.)

Benefits Derived from Using BIM

Given the multi-disciplinary nature of the firm, the coordination between the different disciplines is critical and the primary reason for using BIM at GHAFARI is for coordination and interference avoidance, in addition to the productivity and efficiency benefits that drive most individual architectural and engineering firms to deploy BIM. The Design/Construction teams meet almost on a weekly basis for 3D model reviews and interference resolution strategies (see Figure 5), and on a recent project, the design/build team had enough confidence in the 3D model to issue it for construction even before 2D documents had been fully created. GHAFARI is continuing to look into using 3D models as the final deliverables for construction as opposed to 2D documents.

GHAFARI's other experiences with BIM resonate with those of other firms who are implementing it, both in terms of benefits as well as challenges. Teams can now afford to spend more time designing rather than drafting, leading to better design quality. The quality is also improved by the ability to successfully integrate analysis results into the design, such as with structural tools. From a user perspective, orienting new users to the new BIM workflow is always a challenge. However, GHAFARI has found that most users, once they go through a project where 3D was used, would prefer to continue to use 3D on subsequent projects.

At a higher level, GHAFARI is realizing the same significant benefits with BIM in its AEC work as it has for its automotive and industrial projects: savings in avoided interferences, reduced first cost, and time to market advantages. BIM continues to be seen as an enabler for minimizing wasteful practices along the industry's 2D/paper based supply chain, and when properly orchestrated, it goes right to the bottom line and delivers projects faster, better, safer, and at lower cost.

And finally, besides the faster, better, and less expensive design deliverables, BIM is proving to be, at least for the near future, a strong differentiating factor for GHAFARI and is opening up new opportunities for future work.

Conclusions

GHAFARI keeps up the attempt to stay current with the latest software and hardware technologies. It continuously analyzes its delivery workflow and processes and creates a road map for how to best use BIM technology to improve them. If it makes business sense, it invests its own development resources to filling in gaps in existing BIM technologies and creates tools that better support its workflow and processes.

Thus, it's not that GHAFARI finds the existing BIM solutions to be perfectly adequate. They are not, and can be improved significantly. However, they are mature enough to be successfully deployed in making even multi-disciplinary BIM a reality today. The argument that "the tools are not there yet" simply doesn't hold true for AEC firms look for reasons to avoid taking the plunge into BIM. However, what is definitely needed is a passion for and belief in technology, which is what has propelled GHAFARI into the leadership role it enjoys today.

Acknowledgments

Many thanks to Samir Emdanat, Manager of Advanced Technologies; Robert Mauck, Vice President of Advanced Technologies; and Rick Scimeca, Marketing Communications Manager at GHAFARI for their assistance with 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.

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