Ir. Ronan Collins, was invited by Construction IT Alliance (CITA) as Keynote Speaker to share his BIM Manager and structural engineering knowledge and skills, leadership experience, management stories, and tried and tested BIM processes at the Smarter Cooperative Building Series on 5th of May 2016 in Ireland.
Ronan shared his thoughts on the new and exciting era for technology in construction. He explained how he sees BIM, VDC, VR, laser scanning, UAV, IOT and other tools such as cloud computing and social media are all intertwining to improve construction productivity and safety.
He also highlighted the challenges and barricades which are impeding innovation in the construction sector, despite the pending construction boom in the US paired with substantial investments in IT is fueling the rapid growth of new tools and apps.
CITA Presentation video Narration
The video script is included below for reference.
Presentation narration
This morning I’m going to show you what we’re doing recently and I’m gonna go back and do some verbally some comparisons what we’re doing for years and what we’re doing there in four years a lot has changed and then four years nothing has change. The challenges that we face four years ago were still the challenges we face today the the interviews there’s more and more people who know about them but the real question is how many people are actually doing it and getting value from it
The 90% reaction to the seeder survey is a valid reaction on an international scale everybody knows what it’s about people have tripped on the training they know what the software tools are but how many people are actually adding value from it that’s the real question and I’m a family man very proud of my family this is my wife and my son and for those of you who are on Twitter you can follow me on Twitter I’d be honest where I live in Asia Twitter is not very popular and we use LinkedIn we use other things but if you are on Twitter you’ll find me talking about being other things on Twitter I’ve got my whole life for the last 20 years has been around 3d construction 3d digital construction
I’ve spent the last 13 years running my own company promoting and advocating views have been in Asia and over those three 13 years we’ve completed something in the region of over 100 different projects across pretty much a global scale
We’ve seen more projects in Australia New Zealand we’ve seen projects in Hong Kong Macau Singapore we’re currently working on a major project in Malaysia which is using UK standards for Bing which is quite interesting and we’ve done projects here in Ireland over the years and we’ve also got because of our parent company we got a number of projects are doing in North America and I’m gonna show you one of our biggest projects in North America as part of this morning’s presentation
talking to Alan and the team of CITA before the presentation they wanted me to share with you my experience from overseas and just let you get a sounding board for what are people doing in other countries and all the projects we’ve been involved with to the last three to five years we go back and do a survey and we talked to the owners we talked to the architects dogs the engineers and we get some sense on this what we can improve on the next and I believe in continual learning if you’re not going to learn from mistakes you’re not gonna get very far they all have the same sentiments they wish they’d started doing bidding area they see the value that they understand the value of having the design in 3d they understand the value of having the information available to them and they just wish they’d started doing an area but what they find is when they start specifying bins
When a client starts specifying BIM and I’m going to show you the airport it’s Aria is example they have one expectation but then they get a completely different outcome and very often the expectation is that BIM is going to solve a particular problem whether that problem is lack of drawing coordination between disciplines whether that problem is lack of certainty around pricing and casting and quantity takeoffs what are the problems around certainty and the schedule certainty in the program they think that by specifying BIM at the beginning of the construction process the clients gonna get a better outcome what they discover is the specification of the technology tends to shine a very bright light on the failures of the processes on the ground these projects
where we have fundamental concerns about how architects engineers are communicating sharing information exchanging information painting highlights that very quickly
if you’ve got uncoordinated we find an age of I’m not sure I’m sure you’re all going 10 minutes over all the jobs here are perfectly coordinated we don’t have problems but in Asian context the design is never developed before we start construction
we’re basically going to design we’re going to site at sixty percent completion of design and we find lots and lots of problems on the job site
then highlight those problems but doesn’t necessarily provide a solution in that instance
I’m going to share with you some examples of that kind of thing I sat down yesterday in the Train coming up from
I go and I tried to figure out what we do for three or four key points I put across this morning and I think the four things I landed on having looked at all the different things we’ve worked on over the years what are the drivers for this and how the driver is different than ireland’s what the drivers are in Asia and I believe that the same the world over the drivers tend to be client drivers the drivers tend to be the contractors driver and it eventually becomes the consulting engineers driver but it tends to start with the clients or the contractors and then my bone or my kind of pedestal I’m standing on the moment of M business training education I know a lot of people here are involved in sharing about them sharing about knowledge doing training but Wiis industry a prophetic about training people
we actually don’t bring up people and bring skill levels up the way we should and part of that is around competitive free tendering prior to that to do with staff attrition part of that to do with the cycle of the economy were in five years time the whole thing’s gonna go go go down again
why we water train people up etcetera etcetera
training is a huge issue and in the last sorry the last year and more specifically the last six months it’s becoming very very clear that the big big players in Silicon Valley the googles the apples the Intel’s they’re looking the constructions in a very different way and they’re looking at what’s happening at the UK around data requirements this Kobe drop system site capturing of information laser scanning UAV for the photogrammetry all of these new technologies the technology sector in the u.s. is looking at our construction industry going we can make some serious money on this
it’s tracting in some very very interesting it’s a very powerful new technologies and then certainly last but not least we had a conference call yesterday with the speakers and one of the key points is what what do we do about legislation our regulation how do we actually do we follow what they’re doing in the UK is an example that we can follow from Singapore or Hong Kong well it what are people doing and my opinion is legislation takes too long and it’s an axe that shouldn’t necessarily wielders but we have to start doing this in self regulating
having the association assaulting engineers involved having enterprise area involved etc etc that’s a step in the right direction in terms of an opinion I think we should be following the UK standards to Pearce 1192 standards I think we should be looking at the the ideas that they’ve set out and those standards the vision of certain those standards and I think in errands it’s an obvious no-brainer that’s what we should be following
a couple of couple of kind of questions I’m gonna pose and hopefully resolve in the presentation in terms of engineers let me speak to consulting engineer is the first thing they do is they say well I’m going to use a tool like Revit or ArchiCAD or Tecla one of these products because I can improve my own productivity I can prove how quickly I can produce drawings I can often improve the quality of drawings they can actually then use the models for better coordination between disciplines
if you’ve got a structural engineer a mechanical engineer and electric engineer operating and then you can generally develop the design quicker and more thoroughly and the funfair bit mad you can also use the object for visualization presentation but what we’re finding is if if it’s instigated by the architects and the engineers on their own then it basically gets hand as a contractor but there’s no value to the client
the real challenge is how the clients specify and get value from this whole proposition and again what we’re seeing is trying to specified BIM for clash analysis I’m now going we’re not getting the value it didn’t it didn’t solve the problems we thought we would now we’re gonna use the Peirce 1192 and we’re gonna try and capture the data and what we’re going to what you’re gonna see in my opinion in the next three to five years there’s lots of clients gonna get lots and lots of information lots and lots of data and they’re gonna go or what am I gonna do with this
the next the next challenge is going to be what are we going to do with all this information that we’re gonna get from this process
the main thing we’re seeing is it’s actually been driven not by the client for by the consultants either to my own team in Hong Kong this is Queenie and Roger queeny’s my accountant emerges one of my technicians and I’ve used this slide basically Queenie Sonny chase Roger for some information about billing
we can actually get money from all of our clients but the purpose of this slide is talk about training education I don’t believe that we actually have enough companies in the industry I don’t believe that enough people have been trained to enough depth of knowledge that we can actually do this efficiently and I think we’re all making the same mistakes over and over over again
the way we’re using the technology is the way we’re exchanging information the way we’re sharing information with the contractors the way we’re getting access to the contractors information can all be done better and I think and I’m talking about an agent perspective and hopefully some people in the audience will disagree with me which would be great but in principle I don’t think we actually have 90% capability I think it’s far far shorter net we have 90% awareness I don’t think we’ve got 90% capability and how a new technology is going to impact our worlds this is one of my screen to have to see this I know this is this is a Gilbert and his dad and his dad is wearing a virtual reality headset called oculus rift and he’s doing a construction safety training module
we’re using virtual reality to do construction site safety training and we think these new technologies cannot be ignored
virtual reality augmented reality laser scanning even 3d printing they’re all new technologies that we have to figure out how to get into our workflows and last but certainly not least this is a snapshot of a cover of this construction industry council in Hong Kong not the construction in Council you’re aware of the CIC in Hong Kong have actually created a road map for been for Hong Kong and as part of that road map we’ve created a building information standard now living in Hong Kong they have to have their own they have to have their own version of everything
they’ve got their own concrete codes which are the same as BSA or no they’ve got their own steel codes for the same as UK standards they’ve got seismic codes which is from California and some from Beijing and they have to have pin standards and they had to have the Hong Kong BIM standards which is great but they’re all based on pas has had many –
the whole Hong Kong system is actually a very true reflection of what’s happening the UK marketplace
it’s the same road map it’s the same logic it’s the same process it’s just called the Hong Kong BIM standards
in Hong Kong the government will not legislate for the use of BIM in Singapore the building construction authority for comparison has mandated that all the government projects must deliver models and data to opinion standards which again is very similar to the UK standards
so they’re the Kinnick eat four key points one is around the the use of BIM why are we doing it another is around training in the need for more training which I’m going to shed some more light on and then the third key point is obviously the use of technology
I’m going to show you two or three case studies to highlight some of issues and these are jobs that we’ve recently completed when I was here four years ago one of my slides indicated that it was a major airport terminal starting construction in Hong Kong that terminal is now complete and we’ve learned quite a lot of lessons hopefully the video works there we go
this is Hong Kong International Airport it’s actually a reclaim islands on the west side of Hong Kong City the steelwork was designed by Arabs working in jumps with mots and this is the construction site there is 19 bridges for 20 aircraft for this terminal
it’s a major international terminal it can cope with the a380 in multiples inside the building is a exposed ceiling which is a triangulated curved ceiling which proved to be very entertaining to build and here you can see it the access to the hoist there’s also some tensile fabric
so that’s just a flavor of the project give me some details it’s 100 something square meters
it’s a million square feet of space and the skylights are north-facing and they were part of the problem in his 20 parking sense
it’s a very very long building at 700 meters from end to end if you stood it on its end we wanted to tell us billions in the world cross-section it’s relatively simple you’ve got the airfield at the bottom at the ground level there’s no basements there’s no underground structure in principle you have all of the airfield facilities at the ground level you have no rivals level which is got a lot of phantom space and then you’ve got the departures level which is the open air exposed environment
this is the actual construction model and we turn this in LOD 400 model and I’m hoping that some of you will understand the difference between LOD 311 400 but if you don’t we can take questions and this is this is where it goes horribly wrong my brother sir he’s an architect I’m how many people hear of an architecture profession before it starts lagging alone ok great
I could be very careful it’s an X and on this project the architect shows a profile for the roof which is actually the same profile as the wing of a plane
it’s not actually a barrel roof it’s actually continually changing geometry and they’ve created a fantastic interior space but they created a very complicated construction process
lessons learned from this project the airport authority specified the use of BIM at the beginning of the design process
when they commissioned the architects the engineer the architects and engineers signed up to a contract but they had to deliver BIM
they had to actually design the project using BIM processes and what the client said was you must do it they’ve written or wrote in the document you must provide a 3d flash analysis model you have to cover the entire project
all areas of work have to be designed in 3d all the building services all the airport systems and the objective was to identify as many classes as possible Jori detail design phase demonstrate that they were resolved and then maintain the models excuse me and then handle it contracted now that all sounds fantastic the one flaw in that specification was that the owner the airport authority didn’t specify that the consultants had to generate their drawings from the models
what we what happened was the consultants did not commit during Revit or ArchiCAD or peckler any of those things except the roof jump tree where they had no choice but the rest of the building was all documented by traditional 2d means
all of the E&M systems were documented 2d all the structural concrete was documented in 2d and all the internal systems were documented duty and then they took all that to the information gave it to a big shop in China and generated the 3d model to give to the owner
basically you had a scenario where the design wasn’t done in two dimensions and then there was a separate 3d model they met the objectives of the specification they delivered a 3d crash analysis model but every time they change it to be drawing the model was immediately out of date
by divorcing the two they had a huge problem
the learning the airport already had is that for the next project they’re going building another runway they’ve been building another Airport terminal because Hong Kong is trades like that they don’t to international runways is not enough we need a third one the third runway program is all going to be based on level 2 bin from the UK and a-come have been given a contract to write all the bim specifications to make sure that the next terminal is designed and documented using BIM processes
there’s been some very good learning by the airport authority on that project the roof was designed using some very very complicated algorithms it’s a very complicated whiz-bang software but the unfortunately didn’t detail the roof I was a design and build component
the onus was left in the contractor to develop the details and the documentation the design for the roof system
the architect generated a surface which dictated the actual top level of the roof and it was dictated by the air traffic control tower
the air traffic control visualization over the roof the aircraft was the design criteria and from that surface down the whole roof had to get detailed below that surface I reproduce the seal model and they produced a primary section model only
I don’t know what’s happening in the Irish marketplace but in the Asian context the consulting engineers do not do connection details they don’t do secondary steel details they don’t do cleat details they pass all that down to the contractors and in
doing they they basically don’t do the detailing at the design stage and they wait for the problems to occur on the construction site
that’s the difference between a fabrication model in a design model the fabricators were using Tecla and erips were approving the Tecla models as part of the process but when we started doing the detailing of the construction site we started uncovering some very very complicated problems the first thing we uncovered was that people had overlooked the maintenance requirements you have this roof which is spanning 30 meters across the arrivals and departures of the airport’s it’s stocked full with fire sprinkler systems column systems air-conditioning systems etcetera cetera but you have to get to and the walkways which are these purple blocks are threaded up and down through this roof unfortunately when we started doing the detailing you would have to be about yay tall to qualify as Amazings engineered to work in the airport to be able to move between the trusses
I definitely would not get a job working in the maintenance department at Hong Kong Airport we’ve solved most of them by reconfiguring the walkways but the modeling shown one key issue there wasn’t enough detail done at the design stage and these problems should not have been discovered halfway through the construction phase on site and this is I’m not sure if this is just an Asian phenomenon but this is the problem of going to site a 60% design we had not actually resolved some very very fundamental challenges and then when you get to the roof system the roof was made up of prefabricated cassettes who would actually fabricate the actual cassettes on the on the ground and hoist them in fear because sex were also detailed in Tecla by the subcontractor for the roof system and then they were then covered with a standing seam roof
there was all of the exchanges between the subcontractors one subcontractor doing detective steel or detailing and the other subcontractor doing the detailing for the cladding system the challenge was if you were the cladding contractor your program your milestones are much later than the steel contractors and the main contractor served we’ve learned very very quickly that he actually had to get the roofing contractors on boards with the resources what their staffing with their engineers or the Detailers before they could complete the steel detailing to identify cleat locations would enter fide bracket locations in separate sector even though the fabrication drawings were not needed for the roofing system for many many months they had to bring them on board earlier and that was a very interesting learning for the make the tractor in terms of they call it best if managed
BIM is that their acronym within gammas is best if managed and what they mean by managers managing the subcontractors when do they have to start doing their work when did they release information how do you control the information sector etc
if you’re on site one of the things that we’ve learned over the years and I think I’ve only made this point when I was here the last time you have to have the team on site
for this major project we had a dedicated construction site office and there was hundreds of people in the office but the bim team was one key component
gamin construction with the main contractors gamut appointed our firm is that BIM managers
we were on site to manage all of the interfaces and what we term management is very important we’re not doing the modeling
basically each of these circles is a subcontractor
the cladding system the curtain wall system for the envelope was done by a company called condo and there are a hunk on Chinese facade company the ceilings were done by a company called colemak which is a Korean Hong Kong company craft projects to the roof cladding system and then gammon have their own steel work division
they did the steel work in-house and last but not least all the building services are E&M or mep depending on which vernacular you used to we’re all done by Gammons own subcontracting division of E&M said the team of people required to deliver that project involves technical managers been managers coordinators engineers and ultimately models and technicians all up at the peak we had 70 people working in BIM on that project on the site doing anything from pipe work detailing to see what detail incredibly telling and just managing that team of people alone was a task unto itself and to do that we attempted and I say we attempted good we failed we attempted to use sophisticated project planning techniques using primavera p6 on the like to actually plan out all the activities for the bim team
we had a schedule which identified when contractors would submit their models when if those models will be audited and checked when the coordination workshops would take place and then allowed time for revisions amendments and then basically two iterations of detailing coordination all of the milestone submissions had 812 weeks windows to get the work done across many many subsets of the projects and they were all back tied in to the contractors delivery schedules
the key driver was predominately the concrete structure and the steel work structure all the milestone dates for those those structures drove the BIM deliver program now it all sounded great the beginning the project and we all had dates and refined up to it but it all went horribly wrong and all went horribly wrong because these mechanical contractors they had a different program they had different milestones they had different payment terms which were much much later
basically they did not read provide the resources when we needed them
again the learning in that project was why we got it all done ultimately we should have had the MEP guys on board earlier they should have been incentivized and paid earlier to have the engineers to staff available for the project in stage they did it in traditional contract where they didn’t need to produce top drawings until halfway through the project
they didn’t have engineers available at that point in time
while we had a big program it proved very very difficult to actually implement and as a result this is just a pre that’s the actual model as a results one of the things that we struggled with was builders work drawings and again in Hong Kong builders work drawings are they and wall elevation drawings are done by the site work scene
they’re actually done as shop drawings by the contractor staff they’re not provided by the architect not provided by the engineer they’re actually done on-site by the team on-site our plan was to use a duct work cable trays pipe work to drive the ena and coordination and produce all the builders work joints if I have a pipe in a model I can automatically put a hole in the wall if I have ten pipes crossing a space I can automatically populate all the holes requires those pipes and if I do that that’s fine if I build that wall with those openings that’s fine but if those pipes then start moving around you’re going to be spending a lot of money on coring because the holes are in the wrong place
to be able to use the technology to do the wall elevations you have to have a frozen mechanical electrical layout but if you don’t have the engineering resource on the job and that’s not frozen you can’t generate the wall elevations
it’s one of those you’re stuck between a rock and a hard place you’d like to use the models to produce drawings but you know whether you’re gonna have to start doing coring probably know if anybody who’s in the coring game in Asia they were all drive around in Mercedes and BMWs of course chlorine is a very lucrative business I’m sure I’m sure nobody makes any money Corinne in this country and you can produce drawings anybody who’s seen been we know we can produce the drawings from these tools but it’s fundamentally we haven’t got the processes right and this is what Ben keeps showing up if we don’t the processes right we can’t get the value of the proposition
we did the wall elevations based on the information we had at the time and the contractor took basically a gamble that he would do less scoring but he knew he’d still be doing quarry and one of the funny anecdotes the the the CEO of that construction company Gannon is it gentleman called Thomas Cole and Thomas is a very very strong advocate of Ben for construction and he knows me personally and we’ve done a lot of work together over the years when he would do is Saturday morning walkthroughs in a construction site as they were nearing completion there was still guys on gantry scoring and Thomas turn around to the site foreman it says is rollin paying to these because his Thomas’s vision is that the Ben was working he shouldn’t have people on site boring
One of the things we learned in this project is the value of laser scanner how many people here have seen or used laser scanning on their projects okay but third of the room I can guarantee you by this time next year you’ll all have seen it okay if you haven’t seen this technology already by this time next year you’ll have seen some version of it or have some exposure to it laser scanning is ultimately going to change the way we survey buildings both during construction and existing buildings it is a quick it is be readily cheap but more importantly than all of those things it’s safer and when I say safer when we started scanning the site amid fields we had to scan the barrel vault roof we have to get a survey done of the underside of the steel work to complete the detailing for the ceiling system and when you’ve got a ceiling which is partially complete on-site the only way to get to it is either on Terry Pickers or put guys enhances the hangout the steel work or do laser standing from the deck
you don’t have people actually at risk at Heights falling arms you at risk of falling
my big big sale and laser scanning is safety it is a safer way to scan and survey buildings one little anecdote about this slide if anybody’s worked in the construction site you can know instantly that that’s a very inefficient site because there’s
many ceiling panels missing there are 900 different types of ceiling panels in that roof some of them are left out because of sprinkler heads some of them are left out because it calms some of the left out because they couldn’t find the right panel the right time and the actual installation of that ceiling is actually very very difficult
the architecture we’re using Rhino and dynamo and all these fancy things we need to get the architects to understand that they need to rationalize these designs them 900 panels across a 700 meter roof is probably over the top a hundred different panel types would be nice but 900 is probably pushing it
this is a laser scanning and for those of you who’ve never seen it a laser scanner is basically creating a point right and if you tune it the right way you can get points at three to five mil in terms of the spacing you get it right down to one or two mil if you like and they’re extremely accurate
you can pick up cleats you can pick up brackets in these examples you can see the wheelbarrow stand the sight you can see the safety railings set reception and because it’s relatively quick you captures data once and you use it for multiple to multiple things now what we discovered was and this is where the learning is if you can buy laser scanning with LOD 400 models and others fabrication models
the model used to fabricate the steel if you then survey the steel and overlay the data sets you actually get a very very quick appreciation of where the sealers in tolerance where the steel is out of Tolerance where the potential issues
a lot of people start the world of laser standing as we call the stand of BIM they go into a space like this they scan the room and then they have a bunch of guy who’s trying to make a Revit model based on the scan that’s actually very very inefficient it works but it’s very inefficient when you actually have the model and you’re using it for construction and you can laser scan in an afternoon and overlay the date of the point cloud on the model in the same day you unlock a huge potential value and the speed at which we can now scan accurately and safely and verify what’s installed on site is incredible and what’s interesting is we don’t do the scanning
let me just show you this is a fixed link bridge
in case you in case you don’t have organic architects to in fancy curvature we also do this for all the normal structures
this is a rectilinear of steel trust prefabricated in china ship the site in the barrage hoisted into position by crane and then have to be clad on site and when we scanned it this is the video the skin
this is actually multiple scans
we’ve got kept in this video of probably 30 scans and the kenai usual CD the white spheres they’re the actual survey targets
this is a 3d point cloud scanned on the job site and it took the team I think it was about four to five days to scan that entire structure now the advantages we can use the point cloud over and over and over again
we can measure trust the trust distances we can measure verticality we can check cleats we can check the the relationship between the steel and the concrete etcetra etcetra cetera we don’t have to keep going out there with measuring tapes and talk stations observe it and again when you overlay the point clouds on the steelwork the reason we did the link bridges was to make sure the cleats were installed within tolerance and wherever the cleats were out of Tolerance we inform the subcontractors to amend their detail shop details
that the purlins and their fixings would accommodate what was on the jobsite again trying to speed up and reduce the works on site
the laser scanning the one key rule around laser scanning is if you’re seeing everything at oh I need to get this technology do not go out and buy the equipment okay go to a surveyor who has got the equipment’s their registers their license the equipment is calibrated they know what they’re doing and get them to the surveyor job and do three or four jobs and then start to see is there value new then acquiring the technology because in Hong Kong the surveyors are actually independent from the contractors or not they’re not on the contractors team two separate companies
our organization we don’t do the laser scanning we employ qualified licensed surveyors who’ve got calibrated registered equipments and then we get the accuracy what we’ve seen is the contractors go out and buy these things they cost a huge amount of money and then they never get used because they don’t have to use them the guys go back to their total stations different subject
my one lesson is if you’re seeing anything I need to buy the technology don’t subcontractor get somebody who knows what they’re doing and get them through the survey and I believe there’s probably two if not three companies in Ireland who are actually doing the survey
make use of them building services how many people here are involved in mechanical electrical or E&M thank you you guys are the number one target for the guys who don’t know what you’re doing in BIM every time I go into projects all the enn guys they’ve got no idea there but no idea how to put in pipe work that no idea what they’re doing and it’s not true but for some reason the building services fraternity seem to be delayed the later guys to the party when it comes to bin if you’re involved in concrete and steel work you’ve probably doing 3d modeling for the last 15 years anyway but if you’re doing pipe work layouts duct work layups cable trail ads you may have only just come to the party recently and in Hong Kong up until recently we would actually provide a service or we would take to the information and generate 3d models and we would find problems we point the finger and say that’s not coordinated that’s not fixed we’ve now moved to the point where we’re telling the contractors we will do the coordination for you we will do all the site coordination as a service of contractors we would produce all the enm models this is a project that we’re working on the moments in Hong Kong and I’m running out of time
I’m quickly gonna jump through some of these slides
this is a 3d model of a podium structure which is a mixed-use podium structure and we’ve linked that model back into the building fabric
we’ve got an architectural model structural model and an inner model
historically we would make that model and then run a clash non-support and then we either tell the consulting engineer they had a problem or we tell the subcontractors we had a problem that was a dish that’s an additional been consulting role make the model point a finger we’ve learned that doesn’t actually work you’re not actually adding any value all you’re doing is refereeing and referees are the most hated people on the pitch last time I take
what we’ve decided to do is we decide to get our hands dirty
we’re now actually doing the engineering and coordination and we’re reroofing pipe work we’re rereading duct work we’re really rooting cable trays and we’re generating proper fully coordinated fully detailed enn systems and from those systems we’re ensuring that the coordinated structure architecture that they’re maintainable they’re accessible from facility management purposes etcetera etcetera and then we’re using the models
here’s a simple example this is a corridor alignment that we’ve coordinators and we’re using the models to explain to the architects where they have to make changes to the ceiling layouts or we’re proving that we can actually do the coordination within the ceilings and going back to the wall elevations because we’re controlling the models the word in the engineering of the models we’re driving all the wall elevations
we’re putting openings in the walls and we’re putting them in once and then we’re done
we’re not moving around the pipework and if we do we know which openings have to be fixed from that we’re producing what we call CFCs I guess you produce some here in Ireland as well but we call them in Hong Kong they’re called combined services joints which is basically a technical term for layering lots not to CAD files on top of each other I prefer to call them coordinated service joints
in our business we’re producing these CSDs
we have sprinkler layouts doctoral clerics cable tray layouts etc etc builders work layers
the model is driving the 2d documentation but the engineering is in the model all the coordination is in the model all the engineering all the discussions all the interactions and it’s all on site
the team doing this are actually on the construction site with the trades with the subcontractors day in day at work shopping solving problems and the thing that we couldn’t figure out for years was if the model is correct and if the drawings come from the model how do we make sure it’s built correctly on site because anybody who’s been on the jobsite and tries to control a fire strength or subcontractor or an electrical subcontractor whoever gets on the jobsite first wins if you walk into an empty construction site and you’re putting a pipe you’re gonna put your pipe in straight lines you made to be you don’t give two shits about the other guys excuse my French but then that screws up an entire process
what we’re doing we’re taking laser scanning and we’re laser standing the project week-by-week installed by install and we’re actually supervising the site installation and then we’re taking the laser scans and we’re overlaying them back on the BIM model to make sure the pipe work is as we engineered it the doctor work is as we engineered it and where it’s not we very very quickly demonstrate to the contractors the scale of the problem that the potential you have
if the pipe is installed in the wrong place we can work around that we do but in this case here where the pipe work and ductwork are installed too low you have a major problem with the future ceilings
we basically can identify very very quickly very early on before we start hanging ceiling frames or high ceiling systems that that dr. it has to be reconfigured
we can get the guys on the jobsite to fix it pretty quickly once the guys on site realized how quickly we can do this they then started paying a lot more attention to what information were given in the first place because they know that we’re gonna come and serve it within a couple of hours
it’s very in tune to psychology change in terms of popularity we’re getting away with it and then they’ll be given a change order may be paid to take it down now we’ve actually somewhat changed the rules again and in the interest of time I’m gonna speed this up excuse me might jump into the slide for one second and everybody here has heard of 4d right anybody here and sports fans believe any any NFL sports fans in here no I didn’t think
yeah we’ve got one the only American in the room and the NFL basically is one of the biggest builders of major structures in North America and they’re currently building a new stadium in Atlanta Georgia and we got involved the project to our parent company can-am Panama are doing the steel fabrication of this project and I don’t have the numbers with me but to give you a sense of what we’re doing we’re using a 4d cycle to actually plan out the erection of the steel work and we’re doing it because when you erect these major stadiums the challenge is you have to lay down all the steel work in the actual stadium sports dome and then you have to lift these trusses up into space these blocks are representing the trusses that get installed the blocks in some cases are over 600 tons and they’re getting lifted by the some of the biggest range in the world but every time you assemble the trust in the ball you have less working space then you have a crane problem
what we’ve been doing was noise or some ham
this is a time-lapse system and you can see the cranes assembled inside the ball what we’re trying to do is they’re trying to preempt all this planning
we’re actually doing every single move every single crane every single truss and it’s done week by week on the jobsite and the reason I’ve brought this up for today’s presentation is I want to show you something that this actually has got some cool music to the hand how many people here have heard of DGI UAVs how many people have used UAV whew every construction site now and within three to five years we’ll have one permanently on-site doing you new baby photo granting service this is a UAV footage this project and while it’s a cool factor what the contractors have realized is that a huge UAV scan a job site every week it wins hands down when you start doing progress reports delay claims delay planning etc cetera instead of site photographs you have basically got a 3d you can create 3d models in these these things but you’ve got a 3d video from elevation of your site
you don’t need a helicopter you don’t need to get a plane to fly by you get a UAV which fits inside the size of a laptop case and you can send it on a predetermined path and you can fly that pad every week
you can have basically week on week on week records of your construction site using UAV technology of course when the guys see the camera flying around they all start waving the camera hey but this is this is silly to scare this project these these trusses are 100 feet tall and they’re spanning 250 metres there’s their colossal pieces of kit now last couple things and I made sure you’re on virtual reality and I mentioned safety which is one of my my key things we’re using up this rift oculus rift is owned by Facebook and they have these virtual reality headsets Google have a thing called Google cardboard
you can stick your phone in your face it’s the same impact but what we’re doing is and we’re working with a company Australia but we called Newton low in Australia you can lower developed a system whereby you create a construction site in this case this is at highest Hong Kong construction site and you put deliberately dangerous conditions in the job site
it might be working at Heights it might be moving up SEOs movie cranes it might be a lack of guardrails etcetera etcetera and then you basically put the virtual reality goggles on scene your Foreman the guys who know how to find them prevent accidents the guys will be non job site for the longest period of time they put on the goggles and they basically go around the construction site and they identify different constraints and they’ve got in the room ten or fifteen trainees and the trainings get to see all that for the senior guys doing and then each trainee then puts the virtual reality goggles on the game system has changed slightly
they the dangers are manipulated
they’re not exactly the same as previously but they’re all still there terms of welding a height guardrails etc and then the trainee has to find all these conditions while all of his mates are watching
all of a sudden you’re bringing people into a real virtual real construction environment and while people talk about VR for our potential flight crews and getting the client to see how the bathrooms lay – I think this is huge being able to actually take a building system for a construction project generate a site-specific training tool that you can use for construction site safety training and then develop systems and results out of that training is very very important and the guys in this company you’re looking at eye tracking software they’re looking at motion tracking software to figure out how are people actually identifying these how do we improve people’s recognition of safety hazards etcetera etcetera and what’s proved interesting in Hong Kong is while we started doing this to the contractors the insurance companies have picked up they’re picked up and going hang on a second what’s this all about how can we use this to improve and reduce accidents on site
if the insurance companies start paying attention you know you’re onto something
in wrapping up because I’ve only got two or three minutes left I know we started a little bit late but and I have got hopefully shared some experience and some ideas I spent in the last six months I’ve been in Singapore I’ve been in Kuala Lumpur I’ve been in Seoul in Korea I’ve been in Hong Kong I’ve been in Macau and obviously I’m here today I’ve been around aged quite a lot recently and it’s saying in all those different cities in terms of what’s happening they’re all looking at PS 1192 which is going to become the European standards which the Americans are gonna adopt under the buildingSMART fraternity which the Chinese are going to adopt to the mainland China everybody is following the same logic the same data structures the same processes
whether you’re sitting there well maybe to do that maybe should this from my experience both from our organization also working with the Hong Kong government it’s become the benchmark that we’re all going to follow
that’s that if you don’t know about it that’s your first point of codes we learned about systems in bed I make this point every time I make the presentation we need to train educate and inspire more and more people about these technologies are you volunteered to come here this morning a contact allen whore a couple of months ago and said look I’m in Arlen for three weeks if you want I’ll come and do a presentation I loved getting an opportunity come and talk and I love sharing over what we’re doing our project
hopefully it’s a few more people step up and do this we got some good speakers here after me this morning more people understand the pitfalls and I don’t like over selling this because there’s too many people hyping this up and over selling people need to learn about the mistakes about not scheduling things properly not getting contractors involved area enough not doing enough detailing these are the key issues that we’re facing and last but not least if you’re not looking at virtual reality laser scanning even 3d printing and even old men to reality which is the next generation of technology it’s going to come and it’s going to appear in your workplace very very soon
again the googles the apples the Facebook’s they’re all looking at it they see our industry as a huge opportunity and they’re going to come and play it’s gonna be really interesting what they do
hopefully you’ve all taken something out this morning’s presentation and all that for me to say is thank you all for your time this morning
