The Undertaking of a Complex Project

SHANNON COOPER: Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening. And welcome to Autodesk University 2021. I want to thank you all in advance for attending this class, The Undertaking of A Complex Project. My name is Shannon Cooper, and I'm the BIM manager at PTAC Engineering with 15 years of experience in the precast/prestressed concrete detailing industry.

During this presentation, if you have a question or comment, please feel free to type it in the comment section, which can be found on the class page. You can also recommend the class to others, if you would like, by clicking the recommend icon. Just a quick reminder that the class handout can be downloaded from the class page.

In this class, we are going to take a dive into a project known as 10 Ionia, Residents Inn by Marriott. 10 Ionia is a 13-story, 140,000 square foot, 147-room hotel located in Grand Rapids, Michigan. 10 Ionia is a modern, flat-iron structure designed to fit the confines of a 10,000 square foot urban lot. It also connects to a parking deck by a pedestrian bridge.

The president and design director of the architecture firm, Yamasaki, said that "the geometry was tough, there are no corners in the project." As you can see from the Revit model displayed on the right side of the screen, he is absolutely correct. The geometry was tough. But with the power of Revit and EDGE, we were able to create the exact geometry that the architect designed.

A few key stats I wanted to mention before getting started with the learning objectives. The precast model alone had over 100,000 total elements modeled, which includes the precast products, reinforcing plates, and other embeds. 5,672 yards of concrete, which is roughly 23 million pounds of concrete. 12,900 total man hours. And Kerkstra Precast did not have to recast any pieces, which was a great feat.

Now let me introduce you to the speakers of the class. First, we have Jordan Watkins. Jordan is the CEO of PTAC Engineering and is a registered professional engineer with extensive experience in structural design, detailing, and project management of precast/prestressed concrete structures.

Next, we have Chad Van Kampen. Chad is the Manager of Preconstruction for Kerkstra Precast, a division of Fabcon. He has been immersed in the precast/prestressed industry for 24 years. Chad serves in PCI as the Chairman of the FRP Committee, Chairman of Total Precast Structures Committee, Vice Chair of the Hollow-Core Committee, and is active with several other organizations exploring and promoting the use of new materials and technology in precast and prestressed concrete. He was also the project manager for 10 Ionia.

Now let me take a minute to briefly go over the learning objectives. First, Jordan will talk about how we successfully used Autodesk BIM 360 to coordinate and collaborate with all disciplines of the project. Next, he will discuss how we used BIM 360 glue to resolve clashes between trades. And finally, Jordan will talk a little bit about how we used EDGE to produce an accurate model, erection drawings, and shop tickets.

Chad will discuss how we used the model to fabricate steel forms. He will also discuss how we used the model to validate and repair field connections or conditions. And finally, he will talk a little about vertical integration with casting in windows.

JORDAN WATKINS: Thanks, Shannon. Happy to meet with everyone today to discuss the complex project, 10 Ionia, that was a great success for PTAC Consulting Engineers and Kerkstra Precast. First, starting with BIM 360. As most of you know, the BIM 360 platform provides a plethora of tools and workflows to allow for seamless collaboration across different enterprises within our project team. These solutions were critical to the success of the 10 Ionia project.

Obviously, as Shannon mentioned, this project had significant challenges regarding geometry and programming. The challenge was exacerbated because this original design was not intended to be programmed as precast. Kerkstra Precast was successful in converting this from a steel frame to a precast concrete structure.

PTAC Engineering, along with Kerkstra Precast, utilized modeling capabilities of Autodesk Revit and PTAC's proprietary software solution, EDGE for Revit, to show in great detail how this structure could be panelized and built by segmented precast components. Because this was a very iterative process, BIM 360 proved to be absolutely critical in providing updates to design intent in real time, truly expediting the decision-making process exponentially.

Beyond simply making communication more efficient, the team leveraged many of BIM 360's document control features, including submittals, to ensure all stakeholders were able to access the most up-to-date information without worrying about a lot of the traditional challenges that come with file purging.

In addition to leveraging the capabilities of BIM 360 for model work sharing and communication, the team also used BIM 360 glue for collaboration through clash detection. Because of the extremely tight footprint, the coordination of all trades through technology is arguably one of the main reasons for the success of this project. In addition to the very tight footprint, the structure required minimized floor-to-floor heights, requiring even further optimized trade coordination to ensure successful installation of all trades.

Throughout this process, hundreds of clashes were resolved prior to construction commencing, saving hundreds of field man hours that come with remediating very uncoordinated construction projects. Not only did the digitization of this process contribute to the success, but the buy in of all members of the team ensured each challenge was remediated in the most successful way for all trades.

This image is a great example of how the coordination process needed to be very iterative. As design elements changed throughout the project lifecycle, new clashes were presented every day. In this example, the pipe location was coordinated to be contained within a precast concrete opening but through design changes became a problem once again. On a project of this magnitude, the coordination effort would have been in vain without the use of technology.

Now moving on to our EDGE for Revit solution, which is the proprietary solution that PTAC Consulting Engineers has developed for the precast concrete industry. So in addition to leveraging out-of-the-box Autodesk Revit for the design and detailing of 10 Ionia, PTAC Engineering also utilized our proprietary software, EDGE, as mentioned. EDGE for Revit is a suite of tools that enhance the Revit experience for the precast concrete workflows. EDGE for Revit makes modeling concrete structures on the Revit platform more intuitive and simpler than ever before.

The custom content provided within the EDGE for Revit package gave users the ability to easily model the complex geometry, such as the intricate radial sections, on the 10 Ionia project. If you recall, Shannon mentioned there's not a corner in the entire project. In addition to these complex radius sections, all of the complex additions-- all of the complex reinforcement bins were required for these members to be handled through our EDGE for Revit reinforcing tools and workflows.

Finally, once the three-dimensional model was complete, translating this information into accurate product takeoffs, erection drawings, and shop tickets was a simple, intuitive task. With all the schedules, erection drawings, and shot tickets being derived directly from the three-dimensional model, change management, which was inevitable with such a complex project, was made simple.

Any geometric and dimensional change made in the model was automatically reflected on all the relevant erection drawings and shop tickets, allowing PTAC to adjust form drawings in real time due to these design changes. This also allowed for real-time product take offs and estimates for Kerkstra Precast to allow the design team to understand cost impacts associated with such design changes.

In addition to the geometric changes occurring, connection and hardware modifications were constantly occurring to accommodate many different design requirements. This did not create a problem, as all material counts and requisitions were maintained real time through Autodesk's Revit capabilities. PTAC often was required to partially order material as various portions of the design were finalized, which was made simple through EDGE for Revit's custom scheduling utilities.

Finally, because of the short schedule allotted for the design and fabrication of these precast components, continuous tracking of the project was of utmost interest to all stakeholders. PTAC leveraged EDGE for Revit's project management utilities to track each precast members-- each precast member the design process, giving the entire team greater insight into the true progress of the project.

This video should give you an appreciation of the many complex challenges that needed to be resolved throughout the project. From no corners on the structure, as Shannon mentioned, to varying grade elevations, creating a digital twin of the structure was necessary to ensure success. Additionally, because the design of the structure-- because of the design of the structure, there were not many lateral resisting elements that could be considered for structural design.

Because of this, PTAC was required to not only use the stair core as a lateral resisting element-- was required to only use a stair core as a lateral existing element, causing a significant design of the core itself and the foundations that supported it. With this heavy reinforcement required, the digital process used for the project was even more critical.

Finally, to further optimize the project, the design team decided to vertically integrate the precast structure as much as reasonably possible. Kerkstra Precast did a great job of doing this by installing windows into the precast concrete at the fabrication facility. This reduced extreme labor, field labor, but as you can imagine, required even further level of accuracy to be represented in the model itself.

Another quick video is going to show the final product of our precast field services team for the 10 Ionia project. As with most AEC projects today, the end deliverable to our customer is still two-dimensional drawings. Until the industry overcomes this paradigm, it is of utmost importance that the drawing and model are connected throughout the entire process.

Unfortunately, many design professionals depend entirely too much on the annotation of the drawings beyond the model itself, causing the possible disconnect between the model and drawings I'm referring to. This can lead to many issues in the field that could not have been anticipated through technology. Because of this, it needed to be ensured throughout the entire process for 10 Ionia that the model and drawings were always connected.

It has always been the intent of the EDGE for Revit development team to ensure that all tools and workflows remain as model-centric as possible to minimize required embellishments in two-dimensional drawings, really striving towards that true digital twin while not forgetting the great need to maintain the drafting integrity required for a quality end product to our customers.

For those of you that are not familiar with precast, the design effort for a precast specialty engineer is a bit unique when compared to that of a typical structural engineer. As previously seen, the precast specialty engineer is required to create erection drawings for field use but also create shop tickets for fabrication use of each individual precast component. This video shows some of the shop tickets created to make the 10 Ionia project a success.

For a little insight, 10 Ionia had 1,700 pieces of precast concrete on the project. As you can imagine, creating each of those drawings to fabricate these elements could be an extremely cumbersome task. However, this burden was reduced with EDGE for Revit allowing for the automation of the production shop ticket process. EDGE automatically generated full shop tickets for multiple precast members at once while also automating tedious tests in the process, such as dimensioning, culling out elements, and creating schedules for bills and materials. EDGE for Revit also allows users to finally harness the power of Autodesk Revit within the precast concrete design and detailing workflow for this significant portion of our project.

Finally, as previously discussed, EDGE for Revit was leveraged to aid in generating form drawings required to produce these extremely complex shapes. Through this digital effort, the team identified how these forms could be used for many different shape configurations with many different add-on on materials. Chad Van Kampen with Kerkstra Precast will discuss this in greater detail very shortly.

The use of these prefabricated forms ensured grid consistency and quality on the project while ensuring parity with the design model at all times. This is just one more great example of a complex precast form that was created for this project. With that said, I happily turn this over to Chad Van Kampen with Kerkstra Precast to discuss the fabrication and construction process in greater detail.

CHAD VAN KAMPEN: Thanks, Jordan. A little background for everybody, at Kerkstra, when the client walked into our office on this job and he put the drawings down, he had a big problem on his hand. And that problem was that the owner had a minimum required square foot for each room in this hotel. And the steel structure that they had currently could not meet that. So the contractor had to figure out a way to get his square footage back or the client was going to walk on the project and go build the hotel somewhere else.

The only real way to get rid of columns on the inside is to make the exterior load-bearing. And when we looked at the exterior with the curves and complex geometry, we immediately knew that this was going to be a challenging project, the most challenging of it being how do we push it through our plant and do it successfully. Kerkstra had just come off another very successful BIM project with PTAC. It was a large cheese factory where mechanical was the big challenge. And we immediately thought that they would be a great addition to this team to look at the exterior of this thing and then see how we can get it to work.

Typically in a precast plant, forms are built out of wood. They take a lot of time. They take a lot of materials. They are glassed with epoxy resins, which are hazardous. And they're not easy to dispose of. And on a project like this, there would have been extremely high amount of waste if we were to build the forms out of wood.

The project has three radiuses on it. The problem with the radiuses is they're not all the same shape. There's projections and there's indentations and there's protrusions as you go up the building. And the owner had wanted this building to mimic a building that was built there back in the late 1800s, early 1900s to kind of bring back some of the history to the building. So those elements were very important to the architect, and he had zero interest in getting rid of them.

The original exterior was stone and EIFS, so he could get away with a lot of stuff. And he wanted it in precast. So when we started looking at how to do this after we got into the model with PTAC and we started looking at the exterior, we realized that wood forms were clearly not going to make this project any easier for our plant.

Our plant production manager and the bed manager, which runs these projects, requested that we look at a different way to form this, which was unique for a precast plant, which was steel. A lot of the steel forms we have in our plant are for long-line production because we make the same shape over and over again for several years. Never changes. In this case, would not be that way. We would have to find a way to make these forms economical for the project.

Using EDGE Revit and BIM and working with PTAC, we were able to determine that we could get a steel form with a base radius on it like you see in the upper right-hand there. And we could actually form or make additional pieces that would click into place to make the various shapes. So we could just add and subtract these different pieces into the form for the single radius, and we could get all the reliefs and projections that the architect wanted as we went up the building without building a new form.

Having Revit and EDGE to determine and actually look at these pieces in 3D made it much easier and probably was the key to the success of the forming, when without that we would have not been able to make forms that were as easily to use and as economical as the ones you see here. So we saved approximately 15 wood forms.

You can see in the lower right how big these pieces are. I got some more pictures later on that will actually put a person next to them so you can actually get a little bit of a view on how large these pieces actually are. And then try to imagine back to these photos if we were to build these out of wood and the materials that would have required. So this definitely was a much more economical solution than wood forms.

The other benefit to steel forms is the fact that they don't warp, bend, or require any finishing. Concrete heats up when it cures. And during the curing process, that heat generates expansion of the form. When it cools, it contracts, you get cracks in the wood and the joints. You get screws that pop.

With steel forms, we did not have to worry about any of that stuff. So we didn't have to worry about reconditioning the forms halfway through the pour. This was especially important to the city of Grand Rapids and the owner and the contractor because the nose, which we're looking at in the photo here, faces a very large entertainment district in the city of Grand Rapids.

There's an arena. There's several concert venues. There's also a public support building that's right adjacent to this. And there's a school of art and design that's across the street too. So the nose of this building was extremely important. It was very high-profile.

And they could not afford to see any mismatch of those pieces on the nose. So these things had to be perfect. The steel forms held their shape. They didn't expand and contract like wood forms do. They didn't crack. They didn't warp.

And as you can see by this picture, the nose of those pieces matched up perfectly. There was no need to do any corrective actions or fixes on these pieces. And that top piece that you see there has a very large cornice on it. And once those joints are finished, it looks like one piece.

The reason we did this in two pieces was for shipping reasons. They were both cast on the same form, just a left hand and a right hand. And again, that's something that, using the EDGE Revit and BIM, we were able to look at and make sure we could do it in the same form.

What you're seeing here is just gray, structural concrete. It was finished with a high-performance coating system. The lower levels of this building, the lower three floors, which are highly visible from pedestrian traffic, were done out of architectural, exposed concrete to simulate limestone, which is what the original building that was here from the 1800s was made of. It was hand-carved limestone blocks.

Another thing that kind of popped up unexpectedly on the project was the foundation. So, the cores are designed to mimic cast in place. It's called emulative design. And one of the things you have to do with emulative design is you have to maintain the design intent of a cast in place core, which is continuity of rebar, load pass deflections. All that has to be maintained in the core. So PTAC's engineers were very diligent in running the core through several different undulations as we went through openings and door movements.

And we used RISA-3D to figure that out. And what it ends up doing is it generates 312 connections on the foundation that are done with what we call a mechanical connector. And that is a piece of rebar that projects from the foundation. And it goes into a sleeve that is cast into the precast concrete. Each one of these bars has a tolerance of plus or minus three-eighths of an inch. So when you're in construction for cast in place, that is extremely tight tolerance compared to what they're used to.

The foundation is 36 inches thick. And it's a mass pour. And when they were pouring the mass pour, they started on the north end and they let it flow to the south end, which is essentially the tip of the foundation where it's narrow.

And the cage shifted an inch. Now typically, in a construction project of this size, your matt foundation and rebar shifts an inch, it's not a big deal. But it drug all of our projection reinforcement bars with it. And they were pretty much all out of tolerance. We couldn't fit most of our sleeves in there.

The other problem was with the area requirements for the owner, the core walls could not shift with the rebar cage. We had to maintain the core position. And when I say that, we had an architect that was very concerned about half-inch differences in the precast because that's how tight the space was for the owner's hotel room requirements.

So what we ended up doing is surveying the foundation. We surveyed each one of the rebars. We sent that information over to PTAC. PTAC adjusted the foundation projection bars in the foundation drawings in the model. And they were really able to determine what bars were off and what bars were OK.

We had a multitude of solutions. We had several pieces that were not fabricated yet, so we were able to move the connections in that piece to accommodate the ones in the foundation that had moved. We had several pieces that were cast, but we were able to either adjust them or adjust positions of the bars and the foundations so that they fit.

And then we had a couple of locations where we actually had to fix the rebar. But we were able to actually model those and make sure those worked. The foundation was corrected in short order, and the core was built in the proper location with very minimal impact to the job site schedule or otherwise.

So here's a picture on your right of what these pieces actually look like and how big they are. And that's two of our erectors standing there, Joe Hook and his son, on one of the first curved pieces that we put up on the job site. That is a simulated limestone piece. You can see how many relief locations there are in that panel.

So these things are cast what we call flat or horizontal, and they have to be rolled vertical. And the only way you can do that without damaging the piece or causing cracking is to actually determine the center of gravity. Now in a flat piece, which is typically what we deal with, it's real easy. But when you get into curved pieces like this with multiple thicknesses in the same panel, it becomes extremely complicated to find the correct center of gravity.

They are actually rolled twice. So they are rolled once when they're pulled out of the plant and stored in our yard, which is the picture that's on the left, where we inspect the face and all the surfaces to make sure we're meeting the PCI tolerances. They are then put back flat in the casting position until they're shipped because they can't be shipped vertical. They're too tall.

And then when they get to the job site, they're rolled again. So they're actually rolled twice, which puts tremendous stress on these pieces. So the center of gravity and its determination are kind of supercritical on these pieces because if we start developing cracks in the first roll, they're going to become accentuated and may even fold the piece the second time we roll it.

So PTAC was able to determine the correct center of gravity. We were able to get these pieces off the bed and rolled with no impacts. We had no panels that cracked. We had no issues with the lifting devices. All the pieces were hung straight. And especially when you get 13 stories in the air, you don't want a piece that's hanging kind of wonky because it gives-- it's very hard to put those pieces in position when they're not hanging straight.

As Jordan mentioned earlier, we pre-glazed all the precast, which is kind of unique for a project like this. And one of the things the pre-glazing process created for the architect was complications with the interior finishes. As you know with a hotel, they're very particular on their interior finishes and how things look.

And so the clipping system for these windows had to be developed with the architect through BIM coordination of all the other stuff going on inside that window, shades, bulkheads, lighting, shutters, all that stuff, so that the clips were not in the way of the windows. So there were several meetings between PTAC and the architect, Yamasaki, and ourselves to determine what clipping system worked, where to put those clips in, and what to do with the interior finishes around that area to make it work.

So the panels were pulled out of the form finished. Windows were glazed in our yard with the clipping system that was selected. They were caulked on the inside only.

And then what you're seeing on the left is actually our test run. And that's where we actually took one of these panels and drove it around the city of Grand Rapids to make sure it wouldn't break or fall out. So we did not break a window on this job. All those windows made it to the site intact. And it was a great success. And one of the benefits to the project of doing it like that was the inside was pretty much dried and protected from weather during the rest of the construction.

So here you see a floor pour that was done just before we put the lid on it and allowed the weather and rain to stay off of it. And then while we're up above working, windows are in, heat's on. It was getting kind of cold towards the end of the project and the mechanical and other trades were working in a temperature-controlled environment without a bunch of plastic covering the windows.

Another big thing with this project, which the contractor was, I think-- this is the top thing for the contractor was that the success of the project was really on the mechanical end for them. You can read that quote from Kurtis there. But the core had all the mechanical units in it.

The hotel units were stacked, which was pretty easy. But there's a large retail center down below with various different restaurants. And all the major mechanical equipment and the exhaust goes up through the core and into various floors.

And the majority of the effort was, on their end, was coordinating all those different mechanical trades to make sure everything fit. And once we got through the mechanical trades and the clash, we knew where all the rebar was, and we knew where all the mechanical was, they had very little issues going through the precast where they expected to go through the precast.

There's tolerances that created some issues, but we were able to go back to the model with PTAC, take a look at a couple of adjustments, and usually got the issue solved without cutting more openings or expanding more openings. So from a contractor's point of view, the use of BIM and EDGE Revit really shines on the mechanical side of the building and how we solved all their mechanical design issues they typically see on a conventionally constructed project.

SHANNON COOPER: All right, all right. Thank you, Chad and Jordan for that presentation. During the entire erection of 10 Ionia, a webcam was recording 24/7 so I was able to get my hands on this recording. So at this time, I would like to present to you the time lapse for 10 Ionia.

We hope you enjoyed this class. If you did, please recommend this class by clicking the recommend button on the class page. If you have a comment, please feel free to leave the comment in the comment section as well. On behalf of PTAC Engineering and Kerkstra Precast, a division of Fabcon, thank you for attending Autodesk University and our class.