In designing mission critical facilities, one of the most challenging requirements is to anticipate all possible scenarios that can affect system performance. Mission critical buildings involve high degrees of redundancy and complexity that are not encountered on typical construction projects.
 
Building Information Modeling (BIM) is vital to maximizing reliability and ensuring proper systems coordination through the early identification of conflicts in the design process, and the benefits continue with team’s ongoing coordination efforts during construction.

Balfour Beatty’s BIM teams  detect hard collisions between systems and assess issues such as required code and access clearances. This helps reduce field coordination issues and subsequent schedule delays. Either situation can be incredibly costly, so every effort at up-front coordination translates directly into significant risk reduction.

A recent Mid-Atlantic mission critical project highlighted just how accurate and valuable BIM technology has become. Our Virtual Design & Construction (VDC) teammates spent several months working to create the final model for this confidential, 100,000-square-foot facility’s two floors, including a significant component with state-of-the-art data center infrastructure.

Because data centers and other mission critical systems involve extensive mechanical, electrical, and plumbing (MEP) infrastructure as well as fire protection systems and raised flooring, the project necessitated interdisciplinary and early design coordination amongst the trade partners, architect and Balfour Beatty’s BIM team.

In any given space of the facility, the above-ceiling and below-floor layers of critical infrastructure could be as much as 10 feet deep and packed tight. With very little margin for error, design coordination has to be more than just careful – it needs to be flawless.

Each trade was responsible for creating and updating their models. On a weekly basis, BIM Manager Samuel Brownfield combined the subcontractors’ multiple models into a singular 3-D virtual model and ran collision detection. They subsequently facilitated regular meetings between all trades to identify issues and develop solutions.

Ultimately, the final coordinated model, after thousands of individual revisions in total, provided the project team with an accurate and conflict-free design on which they could confidently rely.

The Balfour Beatty BIM team’s modeling continued to pay dividends as the project continued further into construction. Much of the building’s structural designs had been delegated to a third-party engineer, and our project leadership and trusted trade partners quickly realized that the weight of MEP systems hanging from structural joists – a significant weight given the extensive infrastructure throughout – had not been considered in design.

The BIM team consulted MEP engineers and our trade partners, powerfully augmented in their spatial and structural analysis by the accuracy of our model, to verify the existing joist design’s sufficiency.

“The story ultimately has a happy ending for every stakeholder, because no re-work was required,” Samuel adds. “But our duty as Relentless Allies to our client is to proactively tackle problems with clarity and decisiveness.”
 
In the past decade, our industry has observed the evolution of BIM from a beneficial project adjunct to an absolutely necessary element of preconstruction that greatly enhances the quality and functionality of a finished product. With BIM’s unparalleled benefits, “Check the model,” has become the essential first step to processing a permit request, addressing a design inquiry or coordinating trade partner involvement.