BIM Approach to Construction Management
Infrastructure projects are booming
India is slowly but strongly emerging as the economic powerhouse of the new world order. Services and manufacturing sectors have primarily led the charge of India's growth engine. However without commensurate growth in infrastructure, India's growth may be severely stifled. Analysts estimate poor infrastructure shaves around 1 to 2 percentage points off India's economic growth. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has said that building infrastructure will be crucial for India to achieve a growth rate of 10% in next few years. Government has planned USD 354 Billion investment in infrastructure for the 11th five year plan (FY 2007-2012), with another USD 150 Billion to come from the private sector.
Construction industry is experiencing a boom due to the size and volume of infrastructure projects across airports, power and steel plants, railways, ports, roads & highways. Construction sector accounts for nearly 45% of the total investment in infrastructure and is expected to be the prime beneficiary of the surge in infrastructure investment in the near to medium term. As a consequence of this many tier one and tier two construction companies have huge order backlogs. There is tremendous pressure on them to deliver these projects on time and on cost, which is seldom achieved. Hence it is necessary for construction companies to adopt newer and efficient project management practices that can translate into higher savings and thus higher profits.
Current approach to managing construction projects
Indian construction industry is highly fragmented in nature and is resistant to adopting modern technologies related to construction planning and scheduling, material cost estimation, project monitoring and virtual collaboration between different parties. Many construction projects still follow a paper-based approach for design co-ordination on site, manual techniques for calculating steel and concrete quantities and disintegrated way of communication between the contractors on the project site and consultants back in the office. This leads to design and constructability issues, process delays due to site clashes and unclear lines of responsibilities thus ultimately resulting in wastage of resources and overall delay in project schedule.
Tekla's BIM based Approach
Tekla offers the promise of Building Information Modelling (BIM) for managing and execution of construction projects. A Building Information Model is a data-rich, object-oriented, intelligent and parametric digital representation of the facility, from which construction managers can extract relevant views and data required for construction on the site. This approach provides:
Tekla feels that construction companies and general contractors can be the front-runners in perpetuating the adoption of BIM in the construction sector. More than 70% of project cost consists of cost of construction. Effective construction planning and site management enabled by model-based approach can significantly influence delivery of a project on time and on cost. Investments made by construction companies in BIM will start yielding high returns when they start integrating with popular 3D/BIM enabled tools already used by designers, detailers and fabricators. This will bring the entire construction process on a BIM platform.
Tekla Structures for Construction Management is a BIM platform that supports the requirements of contractors, subcontractors and project management professionals. It enables schedule and cost control and facilitates real-time communication and collaboration by managing the fragmented nature of both project planning and project progress data. Since time dimension is added to 3D geometry Tekla Structures for Construction Management enables 4D visualization of the structure.
Construction managers can use the structural model provided by engineers and fabricators to plan and schedule structural components, estimate quantities of steel and concrete and calculate associated costs. Data from other engineering models, spreadsheets, schedules, web pages and company databases can be imported into the Tekla model. Alternately construction managers can model the whole process from pre-construction to construction planning and site management within their Tekla models. They can update and monitor impacts as changes occur in the project. Visualizing the structure in its 'as-built' condition and locating the various tasks can show the entire site team an exact way to proceed.
India is slowly but strongly emerging as the economic powerhouse of the new world order. Services and manufacturing sectors have primarily led the charge of India's growth engine. However without commensurate growth in infrastructure, India's growth may be severely stifled. Analysts estimate poor infrastructure shaves around 1 to 2 percentage points off India's economic growth. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has said that building infrastructure will be crucial for India to achieve a growth rate of 10% in next few years. Government has planned USD 354 Billion investment in infrastructure for the 11th five year plan (FY 2007-2012), with another USD 150 Billion to come from the private sector.
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| Figure 1: Unorganized project collaboration |
Construction industry is experiencing a boom due to the size and volume of infrastructure projects across airports, power and steel plants, railways, ports, roads & highways. Construction sector accounts for nearly 45% of the total investment in infrastructure and is expected to be the prime beneficiary of the surge in infrastructure investment in the near to medium term. As a consequence of this many tier one and tier two construction companies have huge order backlogs. There is tremendous pressure on them to deliver these projects on time and on cost, which is seldom achieved. Hence it is necessary for construction companies to adopt newer and efficient project management practices that can translate into higher savings and thus higher profits.
Current approach to managing construction projects
Indian construction industry is highly fragmented in nature and is resistant to adopting modern technologies related to construction planning and scheduling, material cost estimation, project monitoring and virtual collaboration between different parties. Many construction projects still follow a paper-based approach for design co-ordination on site, manual techniques for calculating steel and concrete quantities and disintegrated way of communication between the contractors on the project site and consultants back in the office. This leads to design and constructability issues, process delays due to site clashes and unclear lines of responsibilities thus ultimately resulting in wastage of resources and overall delay in project schedule.
Tekla's BIM based Approach
Tekla offers the promise of Building Information Modelling (BIM) for managing and execution of construction projects. A Building Information Model is a data-rich, object-oriented, intelligent and parametric digital representation of the facility, from which construction managers can extract relevant views and data required for construction on the site. This approach provides:
- Access to information from different sources like architectural, HVAC and structural in a single model to construction managers
- Ability to see and analyze the facility in near-real-life fidelity
- Checking and elimination of conflicts between the different engineering disciplines
- Organizing all project information related to design, detailing, erection sequences and cost estimation in a consistent manner so that it is available to all as per their scope
- Sharing of information between upstream and downstream participants related to construction process through industry-accepted digital formats
- Information to the owner for operations
Tekla feels that construction companies and general contractors can be the front-runners in perpetuating the adoption of BIM in the construction sector. More than 70% of project cost consists of cost of construction. Effective construction planning and site management enabled by model-based approach can significantly influence delivery of a project on time and on cost. Investments made by construction companies in BIM will start yielding high returns when they start integrating with popular 3D/BIM enabled tools already used by designers, detailers and fabricators. This will bring the entire construction process on a BIM platform.
 |
| Figure 2: Project data sharing between different parties through a BIM approach |
Tekla Structures for Construction Management is a BIM platform that supports the requirements of contractors, subcontractors and project management professionals. It enables schedule and cost control and facilitates real-time communication and collaboration by managing the fragmented nature of both project planning and project progress data. Since time dimension is added to 3D geometry Tekla Structures for Construction Management enables 4D visualization of the structure.
 |
| Figure 3: Salient features of Tekla Structures Construction Management |
Construction managers can use the structural model provided by engineers and fabricators to plan and schedule structural components, estimate quantities of steel and concrete and calculate associated costs. Data from other engineering models, spreadsheets, schedules, web pages and company databases can be imported into the Tekla model. Alternately construction managers can model the whole process from pre-construction to construction planning and site management within their Tekla models. They can update and monitor impacts as changes occur in the project. Visualizing the structure in its 'as-built' condition and locating the various tasks can show the entire site team an exact way to proceed.
NBMCW July 2011
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