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The question from the Owner is, of course, "How can you put your faith in a small consulting firm to be able to complete such a challenging project?" On a normal schedule there would be questions as to a small firm's capability to provide the electrical design for a 230,000 sqft facility in a timely manner. Then add the process electrical for all of the manufacturing equipment. And to top it off, require it to be done so that design & construction could start and be finished in 8 months. And, when our engineering fee came in, the fee was the lowest by a significant amount.
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How would a very large consulting firm handle a project like this? First, they would look through their employee base of numerous engineering project managers, professional engineers, designers and drafters to figure out a "team" to do the project. They would assign a project manager, a professional engineer (or 2) that would have expertise in both facility and manufacturing, at least 2 designers and 2 draftsmen that know how to do CAD. That would be a total of 5 or 6 people to complete the project. All of these would have to be trying to pass the information along. The project manager would spend about 25% of his/her time on the project. The PE(s) would spend about 15% or 20%, the designers about 50% and the drafters about 50%. A large portion of that time would be spent trying to pass information around and keep it correct. The result would be the equivalent of 2 or 3 people working on the project.
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How would IEI approach the project? One person on the project with comparable backup when, and if, required. How is that? Because in a small firm the individuals are broadly experienced and capable. In a large firm it is virtually unheard of that a project manager or PE would be proficient in CAD.
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For this project, IEI founder David Exe, PE took it on to complete the project. This provided one point of contact, one point of decision making, totally integrated design and CAD. For backup, IEI had the complete backup of its affiliate firm, Lindell Engineering. That firm typically completes 150 to 200 projects a year and has a team of 4 experienced electrical employees. Not a large firm, but highly capable and productive.
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How would that work to immediately integrate a major project, such as a 230,000 sqft manufacturing facility between 2 companies 1000 miles apart? That is where BIM 360 is the game changer.
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The project was set up in the Fisher Construction Group (FCG) BIM 360 site for their own operation. They developed the building model in Revit Release 2018. This included the architectural, civil, structural, hvac and plumbing. The Owner established their arrangement of the process equipment in Autocad in-house. IEI had already progressed significantly in the project using the preliminary Autocad backgrounds and doing the cad work in Revit Release 2019, prior to receiving the Architectural Revit Release 2018 model.
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IEI set the project up in the IEI BIM 360 site. The Revit models were updated from the FCG site to the IEI BIM 360 site and linked to the electrical model. The electrical model in Revit 2019 was uploaded back to the FCG BIM 360 site where it was integrated into the Navisworks model for collision review. IEI invited all pertinent personnel to the IEI BIM 360 site along with the Lindell Engineering electrical staff to provide total backup to the owner, if required.
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The overall plan set for the electrical consisted of 79 drawing sheets which were updated continuously during construction with progressive redlines from the project site to assure the 4 electrical contractors with 80 journeymen working 24/7 had up-to-date plans during construction.
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One very unique consideration of the project was that the owner wanted as much of the process electrical as possible to be under floor. That required coordinating all of the electrical for the process equipment, from multiple vendors, to be routed under the concrete prior to the floor being poured in the 230,000 sqft facility. Typically the conduit penetration locations would be located as an X & Y distance from the closest column. Based on the broad experience of IEI, it was determined that each vendor would supply their Autocad drawing with the conduit penetration locations shown. IEI took those Autocad drawings and integrated them into a single Autocad drawing with all of the coordinates identified in a table based on a single base point established for the facility. This allowed for a surveyor to locate all of the points from a single point of reference. The table could be reviewed and confirmed immediately prior to installing the conduits which placed the responsibility for the locations on the vendors who were providing the actual locations. The coordinate points were then located by the site surveyor with extreme accuracy. This system worked as planned and significantly reduced the time and effort to locate and install the conduits. This was possible because the PE was proficient in BIM 360, Revit and Autocad.
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The application of BIM 360 allowed the Owner to take advantage of the many benefits of using a small consulting firm to do the work, having the security of complete backup, coordination with the overall design and construction team while enjoying a significantly reduced fee. BIM 360 is truly a game changer. It allows the small consulting firm to actually have experience, schedule and cost advantages over the large firm.
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