BE Magazine Volume 5, Issue 2 - (Page 25) BUILDING The first step was finalizing process design, in which ownership of various model entities, communication mediums, and exchange frequencies were determined. Each team member placed files for exchange on a Web site, allowing each team member to have an up-to-date version of all design models. This greatly decreased the amount of coordination that needed to take place in construction administration. Structural engineers worked directly with Bentley programmers to develop a RAM translator in parallel with the project design, which contributed significantly to an efficient workflow. Without the translator, there would not have been a direct link between the structural analysis and documentation models. The BE Award Winner Banking on Data Management Facilities data consolidation pays off in time savings for South African bank PROJECT Glickman Tower OVERVIEW S Organization NBBJ/Korda Nemeth BE Awards Category BIM for Multiple Disciplines Project Objective Accelerate design and construction of 10-story medical building RAM translator allowed team members to model changes in the analytical model, then directly export them to the production model in Bentley Structural. The production model was then used to generate 2D construction drawings and was referenced into the other models. “The project’s fast track required the release of structural packages early in the overall design process, which led to many changes as the design evolved,” said Mathew Grant, a designer at NBBJ. “Design work was further complicated by the tight urban site and the presence of an existing building on one side and the pavilion under construction on two other sides. The design itself also proved challenging as the Glickman Tower needed to appear to be part of the pavilion for a more harmonious street front. This led to many design iterations, all of which had to be developed for presentation to the client.” During the course of design development and construction, various team members modeled the building. 3D coordination was a crucial requirement of the contract documents, so the design team passed its models on to the coordination team, which then transformed the model to include an additional layer of manufacturing and construction information not present in the design models. “The Bentley suite of software permitted a team spread across hundreds of miles to work as one and complete a complex fasttrack project on schedule and with a set of highly coordinated construction documents,” said Grant. “There is also interest in possible uses for the model once the Glickman Tower is occupied, so the BIM model will live on.” tandard Bank Group, one of four major full-service South African banks, operates 746 branches in South Africa and 241 on the rest of the continent. Managing the facilities data for these far-flung locations proved tricky and time consuming, with documents stored in different formats and locations. The bank’s operations division engages one premises department in each of the nine provinces in South Africa. These departments cover a 1.2 million-square-kilometer area and serve offices as far as 1,600 kilometers apart. They perform all architectural and engineering activities related to bank branches, including CAD plan designs, floor layouts, renovations, and maintenance requests. The operations division also engages a team of air conditioning and electrical engineers. A typical branch renovation project involved gathering data from distributed sources different in terms of both storage and geography. The data came in a variety of formats, including paper, CAD drawings, electronic documents, and photographs. The premises departments spent considerable time tracking down this data and converting it into a format that could be used for planning the project and directing the construction process. Standard Bank realized that each project lost considerable time to requesting data and waiting for the data to arrive, not to mention the occasions when incorrect data was sent. In addition, the bank had no way to view a single, holistic representation of project data. So Standard Bank set out to improve management of its facilities data and decrease the time needed to locate documents. The first step was to draw up a hefty list of specifications for a data management system able to handle information in multiple formats: documents, spreadsheets, 2D and 3D CAD design files, 2D and 3D CAD models, GIS information, videos, and photo images. PROJECT OVERVIEW Central Premises Information Repository Organization Standard Bank of South Africa BE Awards Category Building Distributed Enterprise Project Objective Streamline access to up-to-date facilities data for close to 1,000 branch offices Volume 5, Issue 2 | BE MAGAZINE 25
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