HOK’s 2nd Annual BIM Awards

In this feature article, we will take a look at the projects selected as the finalists in HOK's 2nd Annual BIM Awards competition. HOK is one of the leading architectural firms in the world and has been at the forefront of implementing BIM; we explored its BIM implementation more closely in the 2008 feature article “Technology Adoption and Implementation at HOK”. It is also a champion of the BuildingSmart initiative, with its CEO, Patrick MacLeamy, being closely involved in the organization (see the Viewpoint article on buildingSMART by Mario Guttman, written when he was Vice-president and Firmwide CAD Director at HOK). In fact, MacLeamy’s graph, now famous as the MacLeamy curve, is the most repeated graphic I’ve seen in AEC presentations advocating the need and usefulness of BIM.

HOK’s BIM Awards are an internal competition to evaluate and award projects within HOK that have exhibited exemplary use of BIM technology in one of four major categories; Design, Delivery, Collaboration, and Visualization. They were started last year, when they were judged by an internal jury. This year, HOK also had a similar competition, but with a jury comprised of outside experts on BIM. I was one of the five invited to serve on the jury, and therefore had the opportunity to review all the finalists’ presentations and get an understanding of their projects in order to deliberate on them to select the winners. In contrast to some of the award juries I have participated on, all of the finalists’ entries were of similarly high quality, reflecting the premium HOK places on the good use of BIM. Serving on the jury also gave me the unique opportunity to get an inside look at the projects located all over the world that were being done by HOK using BIM, and the methodology that was used. This perspective would be helpful to any AEC firm adopting BIM, which is why it is being shared on AECbytes through this feature article.

The winners of HOK’s BIM Awards (called BIMies) were announced at a special ceremony at Autodesk University on November 28. (Recall that AECbytes published two articles on Autodesk University 2011 last month: the highlights of the general session keynote and the innovation forums and the highlights of the Exhibit Hall from an AEC perspective.) This article first looks at all the projects that were selected as the finalists in the four different categories of HOK’s BIM Awards and then lists those that were designated as the winners. It should be noted that since the overall quality of the projects was so high, the choice of winner in each of the four categories was far from unanimous among the jury members. While each category had its own specific list of criteria, which will be noted as each category is discussed, there were some general criteria for all the submissions, including the innovative use of BIM tools and processes, effective team collaboration, and evidence of process change that enhanced the overall services provided by the firm.

Design Category

The main criterion for this category was to exhibit innovative approaches to the design process using BIM. There were three diverse projects that were selected as the finalists for this category, located in different parts of the world: the Wenzhou Lingni Peninsula Master Plan project in China; the Delhi Control Tower in India; and Phase II of the Oceanwide City Plaza, also in China. Let us look at all of them in more detail.

The Master Plan of the Wenzhou Lingni Peninsula, which is a 130 sq. km. reclaimed site at the Pacific coast of China, was developed to provide the framework for a sustainable city woven into the natural systems of a sensitive site that would synthesize human need, environmental stewardship, and economic viability. Revit Architecture was used for drafting and documenting the master plan framework and generating all planning diagrams. The plan framework was then brought into Rhinoceros via .dwg format for conceptual architectural design. Project information in both Revit and Rhino was also used to create physical models and in generating  renderings and animations by outside consultants. The use of Revit Architecture supplied the design team with realtime numeric information to make informed design decisions; it also greatly reduced the time required to produce planning diagrams by about 80%, so the team was able to spend much more time optimizing the design. Figure 1 below shows the BIM model of the conceptual design created in Revit, as well as the final rendered image of the master plan.

The second project nominated in the Design category was the Delhi Control Tower project (see Figure 2). This was the control tower of the IGIA (Indira Gandhi International Airport), one of India’s most important international airports, located in the city that is not only India’s capital but also a hub for business, technology, and tourism. HOK wanted the design of this tower to be unique and memorable; also, at 100 meters, it would be one of the tallest control towers in the world. It was sited at the centre of the airport’s main public forecourt, and was designed to have an open center, a flower-shaped Cab at the top holding the control room with ancillary facilities below, and two thin tower stems supporting the Cab that were sculpted to create the slimmest, most elegant profile possible. The most significant aspect of this project from a BIM perspective was that it made extensive use of the conceptual massing functionality in Revit Architecture to parametrically drive the form in the early stages of design, allowing the design team to fine-tune the shape of the tower as well as allowing the early analysis of the proposed curtain panels for its facade. The final design development and coordination deliverables were also done with Revit Architecture. While there was no overriding commitment from the team in terms of this project being completely BIM driven, various 3d models were developed to provide better project coordination.

Phase II of the Oceanwide City Plaza project was a new 144,000 sq.m. mixed use development in Wuhan, China, consisting of twin 44 storey residential towers anchored by an outdoor entertainment district as well as a 6 storey retail building at the base (see Figure 3). The site sits within a new master-plan development forming, along with phase I, the bulk of the new urban center's commercial district. Being a large project with many buildings, it was split across four HOK offices, which brought forth its own share of challenges in BIM deployment and design collaboration. One team member managed the overall graphic standards of the model, while the data input from other team members populated the deliverables according to these standards. Material assignments to geometry were also managed from the beginning and evolved through schematic design. All of this information was stored in a central BIM database, whose detail level increased smoothly from the early days of concept design through schematic design. The lead designer was for the project was co-located with a BIM capable junior designer, which allowed for a close connection between the design intent and the BIM database, and consistent access to the latest state of the design. With graphic standards in place and maintained by the model, the design team was able to take on any changes, based on feedback by the clients, right up to the eleventh hour. Any deliverables needed for design presentations were extracted directly from the BIM model. Having a central database to control all facets of the proposed design and its communication, including program analysis, graphic standards, and visualization, allowed well-coordinated client presentations throughout the entire design process. Having renderings coordinated precisely with all other graphic means of communicating the design—such as diagrams, plans, sections, elevations, and schedules—meant there was less room for confusion on the client's side, allowing them to give design direction quickly and effectively.

Delivery Category

The main criterion for this category was to exhibit the best execution of project delivery using BIM, including any of the following: documentation, coordination, quality control, procurement, construction, construction administration, or facility management handover. The three projects that were nominated in this category included HOK’s own Bryant Park office in New York, the Master Architect for Gatwick Airport in London, and the HATCH project in Toronto.

The Bryant Park project was HOK’s new office space across from Bryant Park in New York, and in addition to BIM, HOK decided to use IPD (integrated project delivery) on this project as well, since it was an internal project and gave HOK the opportunity to not only experience the use of IPD from a design perspective, but also as a client. While the project was relatively small compared to, say, the Sutter Medical Center Castro Valley project, one of the earliest examples of the use of IPD (see the AECbytes feature “Sutter Medical Center Castro Valley: Case Study of an IPD Project”), it was still noteworthy as it was able to achieve successful project delivery with benefits such as zero change orders, minimal RFI’s, on-budget cost, move-in two weeks ahead of schedule, and certification of LEED Platinum for sustainability. The project has also won several design awards. IPD created a strong atmosphere of collaboration between the owner/architect, engineer, contractor, and key sub-contractors from the beginning of the project. A laser scan of the existing space was completed to provide a base for the BIM model. The primary design tools used were Revit and various versions of AutoCAD (used by the engineers and subs), with Navisworks as the common link to discuss problem areas and perform clash detection (see Figure 4). As in common in IPD projects, weekly BIM meetings were held, and these were specially crucial during the detailed design phase. These meetings were held in a "BIM room" at the contractor's office and were attended by empowered representatives of the owner/architect, engineer, contractor, and sub-contractors. The composite model was displayed on large screens at the front of the room to encourage open discussion about problems and potential resolutions. Each team member worked on a laptop to implement resolutions to his or her specific model and then immediately uploaded the revised model to be re-integrated into the composite model.

At the end of November 2010, HOK’s London office was appointed as the Master Architect to Gatwick Airport Limited (GAL), effectively providing GAL with a "go to" consultant to help in the strategic development of Gatwick airport. GAL had already recognized the value of BIM, and one of HOK’s key tasks was to come up with BIM-based tools and processes to assist in the design, construction and running of the airport so that it could reap the downstream benefits of BIM, including re-using the data for visualizations, walkthroughs, 3D coordination, 4D phasing and planning, 5D cost analysis, sustainability analysis, asset management, and facilities management. HOK produced a number of documents and templates to help GAL prepare for receiving BIM deliverables, which have been issued to GAL framework partners, helping to push the BIM focus through the consultant framework supply chain. All GAL projects will use these documents on all new projects going forward. HOK also developed a planning information model for the airport, which is an estate wide model with over 120 linked models (see Figure 5). Thus, HOK’s work on this project will enable GAL to adopt BIM and harvest BIM information for the long term, possibly even for facilities management, which we haven’t seen much of yet.

Like the HOK project at Bryant Park, its work on the HATCH project was also to design a corporate office space in Mississauga, Canada (see Figure 6). Undertaken by HOK’s Toronto office, it was created as a pilot project to test its BIM approach, concepts, and strategies, which are now being incorporated into Hatch offices globally. Hatch supplies engineering, project and construction management services, process and business consulting and operational services to the mining, metallurgical, energy and infrastructure industries. HOK created a Canadianised BIM library to hold details for the interior office spaces, and used 3D Revit families as placeholders. In fact, it created Hatch-specific "standards" families which were later implemented on additional floors in the same building and all new Hatch project locations. It created specific schedules for better communication with all consultants, and the use of BIM allowed it to deliver the project on time and more efficiently, with less people.

Collaboration Category

The main criteria for the Collaboration category were to demonstrate creative approaches to team collaboration within the BIM platform, including multi-office projects, integration of external team members, and/or the use of innovative technology. There are four projects nominated in this category: the Francis Crick Institute in the UK; Bengaluru International Airport T1 Expansion in India; University of Chicago; and the KMC Medical Center in Germany.

The Francis Crick Institute is a consortium of six of the UK's most successful scientific and academic organizations. The project was the development of a science facility on 3.6 acres of land at Brill Place in the King’s Cross area of central London (see Figure 7). The design team, HOK, was co-located with the client, project manager, and contractor in one office for this project. A large number of BIM tools were deployed collectively, including Revit, Navisworks, Codebook, Bentley Structural and Microstation, AutoCAD MEP, AutoCAD Architecture, CADMeasure, and Autodesk Design Review. A BIM Strategy document was prepared by HOK initially for internal use, and it later incorporated input from all design consultants to define collective procedures as well as contacts, file naming conventions, building level names, sheet naming strategy, and zone allocations, scope of modeling work, and file types accepted by all parties involved. Since the document evolved as a collective agreement across the design team, it proved very effective for collaboration. The team has regular 3D/BIM design meetings as well as bi-weekly Navisworks coordination meetings to minimize clashes and resolve issues which have not been picked up in 2D or other meetings. Internally at HOK, it was mandated that every item approved for the project must be in the BIM model, ensuring all models were up-to date. For those consultants working with other CAD and BIM applications like Microstation and Bentley Structural, the IFC was used to bring their models into Revit, if they were needed for design, or directly into Navisworks for design coordination. The use of a Codebook database was also important, as it allowed the connection of room and furniture data with the main models. The vision was to allow this data to be used for procurement as well as downstream for asset management later.

The Bengaluru International Airport project involved expansion of the existing terminal T1 building of the Bengaluru (commonly known as “Bangalore”) International Airport in southern India. As it commonly known, Bangalore is the main technology hub for multinational companies in India, and the city needed to expand its airport capacity to keep up with the greatly increased traffic. HOK first created a Revit model of the existing airport from its “as-built” drawings, and designed the expansion on both sides of the existing building. The size of the project and its complexity called for the use of multiple consultants including structural engineers, MEP engineers, baggage handling systems engineer, facade engineer, airside (apron) planners, local architects (in India), retail consultants, landscaping consultants, signage consultants, commercial advertising consultants, and dedicated consultants for IT and construction. The diversity of the teams involved made information management very challenging, but the use of Revit as the main BIM application made it a central hub of information. Most of the consultants were also using either Revit or AutoCAD, which could be imported into Revit. Even the complex roof geometry of the project was designed and refined using Revit (see Figure 8). The baggage handling system was developed using intelligent blocks which allowed its speed, direction, orientation, and length of conveyors to be analyzed for maximum efficiency. The use of Revit enabled the design team to export an adjacency plan spreadsheet and program of requirements that were issued to the client for continuous evaluation.

The third project that was selected as a finalist in the Collaboration category was the William Eckardt Research Center at the University of Chicago, a new state-of-the-art center for Physical and Computation Sciences that also houses the new Molecular Institute. In addition to administrative and research spaces, the new facility would contain clean-room space and related support and core facilities including imaging, synthesis, SIMS, optical and other physical science laboratories. Revit, Navisworks, and Sketchup were the main tools used on the project, with Revit being used for conceptual design, documentation, collaboration with design assist contractors, program verification, and area take-offs, and Navisworks deployed for interdisciplinary clash detection and visualization and Design Assist contractor coordination (see Figure 9). The project included some intense MEP laboratory programming, and the utilization of Navisworks allowed the team to not only achieve a highly accurate level of coordination, but also visualize and identify problem areas quickly and effectively, well before submittal deadlines, thereby reducing addenda to the document set. The University of Chicago, as an institution, was very interested in verifying and representing its program requirements. This was done via Revit by the use of scheduling, room parameters, and color coding. The construction manager, consultants, and trades were ecstatic with the accuracy of the BIM model. Although this project was not an IPD project, it was treated as an "IPD lite" project, with the integration of design assist contractors and their use of the BIM model as a "design reference model" for constructing their own models. Although this resulted in some duplication, the intention was for the contractor to utilize as much of the architectural and MEP models as possible.

The final project in the Collaboration category was KMCMC, a 124,000 sq.m. hospital project in Germany. It was a large project that was broken up into multiple buildings, and contained thousands of rooms (see Figure 10). The project A/E team consisted of a full team in the US, and consultants in other countries.  The two main tools used were Revit for BIM and dRodus, which is a database tool. The use of dRofus allowed  multiple teams to set room based parameters that were tracked in Revit and returned to the database.  The parameters that were tracked included finishes (both for design and costing), German code requirements (daylighting), and area calculation designations (as different agencies track areas differently). The use of program validation tools vastly increased the efficiency and accuracy of medical planning.  Graphically tracking parameters routed through a database allowed many teams to visualize the data that was specific to them in a shared model.

Visualization Category

The main criterion for the Visualization category was to exhibit innovative approaches to visualization processes, or the creation of unique visualization deliverables such as stereoscopic (3D) renderings, virtual or augmented reality, or animations. The two projects that were nominated in this category included the Kavuklar Mixed Use project located in Turkey and the Iowa State Penitentiary project in the US.

The Kavuklar project in Turkey was a 25,000 sq.m. site that would host both retail and residential developments, along with several levels of below-grade parking. As shown in Figure 11, the quality of the visuals was astonishing, even more so given that the project was finished and delivered in just under two weeks. Two fully thought-out schemes were completed in this time frame, and all areas were scheduled and tracked in Revit to assure program validation and keep scope drift from creeping into the project. Autodesk’s Project Vasari was also a key application in this project’s toolset. (See the article “AEC Technology Updates, Fall 2011” for more information on Vasari.) The Kavuklar project team created Vasari models using smart parametric families to explore façade options and quickly add detail, which were then run through CFD, energy, and solar analysis, and then moved into Revit where they were visualized in the cloud.  Graphics sketches were created on top of the renderings using Adobe Ideas on an iPad, the branding boards were built-up from these images to large format sheets in InDesign, and the final presentation was then assembled from these pieces in PowerPoint.

The final project nominated for HOK’s 2nd Annual BIM Awards was the Iowa State Penitentiary, which was an eight building campus with an 800 bed maximum security prison located on a 130 acre site. Some of the early massing on this project was done in Rhino, but Revit was used exclusively for design and documentation beyond the initial studies. The nature of the project made sightlines very important, for which extensive visual studies were done. This was done by bringing the Revit model into Ecotect, as shown in Figure 12. At the same time, cameras were placed throughout the campus to detect where blind spots and security risks were located, and these were also taken into account when finalising the design. A certification of LEED Gold was achieved for this project.

List of Winners

The projects that were declared as winners in the four different categories of HOK’s BIM Awards are listed below. As mentioned earlier, the decisions about the winners within the jury were far from unanimous, pointing to the overall high quality of all the projects that were selected as finalists and that have been described in this article.

• Design category: Oceanwide City Plaza
• Delivery category: Bryant Park HOK Office in New York
• Collaboration category: Bengaluru International Airport Terminal 1 Expansion
• Visualization category: Kavuklar Mixed Use

In general, I think it is a terrific idea for any firm to have this kind of internal competition, which can only help to push its state of technology adoption further and faster. And since it is within the firm, the competition can only be healthy, because no matter who wins, it is the firm that benefits.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank HOK for inviting me to serve on the jury of its 2nd Annual BIM Awards and for sharing the finalists’ presentations with me, which has provided the basis for the project descriptions and images used 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.