Implementation of Advanced Work Packaging (AWP) on Industrial Projects

ROBERT GADBAW: My name is Robert Gadbaw. I'm with iConstruct. And then near the end of my presentation, I'm going to get Ben Bringardner up with Black & Veatch just to talk about some of the stuff that we're actually working with them on. I'll apologize-- I wasn't the original person for this class. He decided to go off and get married in Bali, but of all places, you would've thought Vegas would have been the place to get married.

So I'm basically the backup quarterback today. So let's get this thing going here. So we're going to be talking about iConstruct and our iWorkpack which is our forward application. But basically, we're across all sorts of industries.

These are just a few of our customers and quite a few of you are already in the room here. And we do many, many things, but I'm going to really concentrate today on the AWP kind of workflow that we have. But as you can see, we do a lot of different things.

So what I'm going to do-- and I'm going to go through a live demonstration of this kind of workflow here. But basically, we're going to take your original source files and we're going to massage that data. We're going to reconstruct it, we're going to add some information into the model.

We can append some data and then we're going to audit the model, meaning breaking up the model into viewpoints and selection sets. Once we've done that, then we're going to push it into our iConstruct AWP hub. So this is our iWorkpack. It's just an extension of our Navisworks application.

So we do all the heavy lifting inside Navisworks and then we're going to push this stuff into the cloud. Once we've done that, once we're in the cloud there, we can amend data, review it, approve these work packages, and then we can push this back out to your project controls. And then we can go right back into Navisworks if we wanted to.

So this is kind of an example of the types of files that you guys probably get. So here's what it would normally look like inside Navisworks. You can see how many different levels there are. But this is what we want to try to do for you afterwards-- we want to clean this thing up. We want to really go up to three levels.

We want a layer level, a group, and then items. This way, it allows us to be able to push data in at the same level on all the different objects here. So you can see right now up here, I've actually got it broken down by discipline, and then the equipment, and then all the data that goes onto each equipment.

So with reconstruct, we can remove the duplicate object types, because right now you've got the same kind of object type that goes up the tree. Some other things-- so we can align it up with the CWP and the IWP structure, and also remove those duplicates so you're not getting incorrect MTOs. So this is what we're going to try to do here. Basically, we got our Federated model. We're going to break it down by disciplines, and all the equipment IDs.

That stuff isn't changing, but all this stuff down below here is changing throughout the job. So we can always keep updating that information, and we're leaving the other data the same. So we're going to get into a live demo, so bear with me here.

So I just want to point this one out first, but this is a job here that was given to me here from Black & Veach-- a little example thing. But when you select on this, I've got an individual object, but if I go in here and select on first object, everything is selected because of the tree-- the way it's structured out here. I've got all these different groups down here, and then I get down to the item level.

So when you select it, it always goes to the group which is way up here. so everything gets selected. But I'm going to open up the new file. This is the exact same file that he gave me and I restructured it. So if I expand this out, you can see I broke it down by pipes and supports.

Now if I select on something on the screen, I'm actually getting like that work package. So I've really cleaned up that data to help you select the data and also be able to push more information into it. So we're going to go into the real job here.

So this is the original file that I'm going to start with. And I'm not going to reconstruct it here live, but I want to show you the file that I started with. So here it is. If I expand this tree out, you can actually see I've got multiple files from multiple sources.

So you got some MWDs in here, you got some DGNs, RCS files. We get down in here to the RVMs, we expand that out. Every single file is structured completely different, so it makes it really difficult to be able to push more data into the model.

So we want to clean that up. And so if I open up the file that I'm going to be using here-- this is the exact same file here. The last one, I had sectioning on it, so the model is a lot bigger. But if I go back here before I do this, you can look at the different sizes in the file.

This was almost 400 megs. This is now a 10 meg file. If I look at the structure tree now, I broke it up by all the disciplines. If I expand that out, here's all the equipment, and underneath each one of those are all the parts that make up that equipment.

So you can do this with any file. As long as we get it inside Navisworks, we can restructure it. So now that I've got it restructured, I now want to push some data into this model. So I've got a database and I want to write some data into it.

So if we zoom in here a little bit, I'm going to grab one of these. You can see here at this group level for my equipment, I don't really have any data here at this. I've got item and timeliner and that's it. So I want to write some more information in out of a database here. So project controls or work packaging.

So I'm going to come down here. I'm not going to rebuild this thing. I just want to show you what I'm doing. We're going to do data linking, and I'm going to say bring in this iConstruct data. I'm just going to load this. You can see up here, I'm going to bring in an Excel spreadsheet.

And we can do a SQL Server, access, database, whatever. And this is the file I'm bringing in. So basically, what I'm saying here-- I want to match this, so I'm saying I want to apply this data to the groups and the items. I'm going to use this BIM data tab.

I'm going to create a new tab called iConstruct data. And I'm basically going to link up-- if this BIM link here matches this name here, I want you to write in all this extra information into the model. So we'll go back in here-- I'm going to close that.

Let's go back up to our model. I'm going to go data link, and I'm going to go iConstruct data. So all it's doing is finding that match. If it finds the match, it's going to physically write all this information in there. Now there's quite a few steps I'm going to go through here today, but the very end, I'm going to show you how to do it all hands free.

Once you've done it one time, you can just basically sit back and let it do it for you at night. You can schedule it-- say, hey, 7:00 o'clock on Thursday night, I want you to go do this, this, this, this and this.

So now if I OK this-- go ahead and select that. And now we can actually see here I've actually added this iConstruct data. So this is all coming out of the database and I'm writing this information in. Now this is the stuff that's partially going to change throughout the project.

So now that I've got that in there, I want to put in some work packages. I don't have any work package numbers in here at the moment, so we can either do this manually or we can-- if you've got a database of all these work packages, we can do it that way. So same thing. I'm going to go back up and select all my data.

I've got one here called iConstruct work pack. I'm just going to run it. This will go a little quicker because there's not near as much data that's trying to write into the model. And now if we select that, you can now see I've got a work pack number right down here.

Now let's say I want to add in manual work packs. So let's say I want to do that one. Let's add all these in here as one work pack. So we've got a tool in here called "Append Data." Append Data allows us to write a new property into the model.

It's gotta go under a user defined tab. So that tab I created called iConstruct data, that's a user defined tab. You can write to that tab or change any of the data on it. So once I've done that, I'll go Append Data.

There is where I'm going to write the information to the iConstruct data tab. Then the property name is going to be work pack number, and I'm just going to call it "wp001." It's going to apply it to the group. So I'm not going to apply it to each individual item. I'm just going to apply it to just the group of it, but I could do both.

I'm going to say create this tab if it doesn't exist. And while I'm at it-- while I'm here, I'm going to go ahead and change the color to green so at least I know I've done it. So if I go OK here-- I had it setup to notify me if I'm changing anything.

So this was the original work pack number-- this is the new one here. I'm going to say yes to all and go OK. Now if I select on this, you'll now see I've got work pack-- wp00. Same thing on this one. This one did not have that data tab before.

The database I had didn't have that information, so it automatically created the tab and threw in that work package. So now that we got the work packages, I want to break these up into viewpoints and selection sets-- if I want to. So I have a tool here called "Audit." So Audit allows me to go through and break up the model by any property whatsoever.

So I could be running one, saying break it up by the discipline. So I've got selection sets and viewpoints of all the different disciplines, or all pipes, or whatever it might be. So I want to do it by a work package. So I'm just going to come down here and show you the set up here again.

So this is my Audit, so I'm going to do work package just so you can see what I'm doing-- it's already done. So I've called it just iConstruct work pack. I'm basically saying use the autofilter and only audit the items I have selected. If I don't have that checked, it's going to go through and do the whole entire model even though you're not even working down there yet.

All I'm going to do is go to the iConstruct data tab, and I want to break up the model based on that work pack number, and go ahead and generate me a selection set and a viewpoint. So let's close that. So now I'll just come up here. Let's select everything once again.

Let's go to audit, and I'm going to go iConstruct work pack. So this will take a few seconds here-- not too long. And it's done. And that's what actually happened here, as I now have a viewpoint of every single work pack that I have in this model.

So now we got those. We also have over here selection sets also, so we can select it that way. This is a great tool too to be able to go through and find every single work pack, and then you can see the items that aren't. So once I've actually created this, I've got all these selection sets, so I can highlight it and say, turn all those off. So if there's any pieces left behind, you can also check to see what's missing.

So now we've got that. I want to generate a report. So we have our own report engine built into the product, so we can customize this any way you want. I just threw one together here. So we're going to come down to Standard Tools and we're going to go View Reports.

So I'm going to run this work pack report. And let's just go ahead and grab a couple of these in here-- let's grab that one and that one I just created. And like I said, if you want to customize these, you can go into it, but let's go ahead and run this.

And so it's just going to create this PDF, but it can be saved out as an XLS or whatever you want. And this is just an example. Like I said, I just threw this together. Listing the work pact number and the area and stuff, and then down in here, we've got our equipment numbers and percent complete, things like that.

If I come on down, there's my other one. So I could grab them all and generate one big report for these. So now we've got our work pack information in there. We've broken it up by work packs. I now want to do a status visualization on all this.

So we're going to do what's called color coding. Color code allows you to take a database that you have. We're going to run it on this model, and I want to color things based on percentage of complete. Once again, I'll just show you what this looks like-- what I'm doing.

So basically, I've got a database. Once again, this ones just an Excel spreadsheet. I'm going to match up the equipment number with the equipment number in the database. And all I'm doing here is saying if this value here is true, color it red. If that that value is true, color it blue and so on.

So let's close this. We'll select everything in the model once again. So let's do a color code, so we'll go percent complete. So it's going to run through it. It doesn't take too long and it's going to color everything. And we're going to get a report out of this also.

There, it gives you a little legend and there's colored. So you can have multiple of these for your different type of status tracking here. So I'm going to create a viewpoint out of this, so let's just right-click on this, and we're going to go viewpoint and I'm going to save a viewpoint. And let's just call this one "percent complete."

There it is, and we'll get a report out of it. We're going to come down in here. Same thing-- it's just a different report that I'm going to run. Let's run this one. It's going to look a little bit different.

Still going to give me a plan view. We can generate an elevation view if we wanted to too. But that's just that report there showing me all the colors and everything. You can have multiple of these.

So one of the big things before I push this up into the Forge is this is kind of something that you're going to do on a regular basis. You got new models, you gotta reconstruct it, you gotta do this, you gotta add data to it. I did a few steps in there. It didn't take too long in this little model here-- it was a big model.

But what we have is what's called BIMflow, so we can automate this entire process. So I'm going to bring up BIMflow here. I'm going to just kind of do a little bit of one. So basically, you can go in and create your own job. So I'll go, hey, let's go New here.

I'm just going to call this "au test." I'm going to take that and I'm going to go to Design Workflow. What you're seeing in here is these are all my iConstruct and Navisworks activities. Coming on down farther, I've got some standard activities, and then I can get into some more advanced stuff.

So this is a matter of just drag and drop. So you could actually say, hey, let's start Navisworks. Once Navisworks has been started, you could say, hey, I want to open up a model here. Let's go open Model Activity. So I could open a model and I could specify the model that I want to run. Once that's done, you might-- that's when I did that data linking before, so you can actually go in and find your data link here.

So you can drag in your data linking and you can go and specify the database that you're using, or your-- so the work pack or the iConstruct data. So you start building this thing up. I've actually got one here that I am going to run.

It's doing exactly the same steps I just did that took me 15 minutes or so here to do. Basically, what we're doing here is I'm starting Navisworks. I'm not going to open a model because I've already got one open, but I'm going to grab everything on screen.

I threw in a little note. This note here is just telling me what it's doing. We like to do that because some of these BIMflows might take 15 hours to run or more because you've got a lot of stuff you're doing. And so you may set it up-- say, start at 5:00 o'clock at night. When you come in in the morning, it may still be running, and if you don't have these little notes in there, you have no idea where it's actually at in the process.

At least with those notes, you say, oh, yeah, it's almost done-- I'll go have that cup of coffee or whatever. But basically, I'm going to do the data linking. So I'm going to do that one. I'm going to put a little delay in this-- not much-- just so I can show you that it's working.

Then I'm going to select everything again. I'm going to run in the work packages. And then I'm going to come on down in here, and then I'm going to audit the model-- break it all up. And then once I've done that, I'm going to do a View Report, send it out, and then I'll finish it off by doing some color coding on it.

So what I'm going to do here is I'm just going to start a new-- so I've got a blank one here. Let's open it back up just so you can see I don't have any work packages in here. So now we're going to automate this whole process. So let's go in-- and this doesn't take too long here. So let's go back to my BIMflow.

Let's just minimize this and we'll just run it. You should see here it's starting it. It started running the BIMflow. It's doing the data linking of the equipment. So you're going to see this is the longest process right here at the moment. It's going to add in all this data, and I've got like a 15 second delay just so I can show you that the data has been added in there.

And then it's going to go through adding in the work packages, which is pretty quick, and then it'll audit the model. So there it's all done that portion of it. If I'm quick enough, I can click in here. There, you can now see I've got this iConstruct data-- has been added to the model.

It's going to take off here, and again in a second, it's going to add in the work packages. But like I said, we do all this heavy lifting in Navisworks. We just find that having too big of a model, pushing it up into the cloud, it gets it a little clunky.

Navisworks is a great tool for this. They can handle some massive big data sets, and we can massage all this data, clean it all up so then when it does go up into Forge-- stuff is easy access too. Because Ben was mentioning the data inside your tree that you really want five rows up, we want it actually down at that item level if we can, or the group level.

So this has just finished up those. It just made all those viewpoints here, and the last thing it's doing is color coding it. And once again, it can all be set up to do it at nighttime for you. We've got some pretty advanced ones that we've done, but this is real simple. I threw it together this morning just so I can show you what I did there.

So if I turn everything on here, it's all done. BIMflow is finished. I don't know why I looked up there. And there it is. So now what I want to do is-- we're done with Navisworks and the iConstruct. We now want to push it up into the Forge into our iWorkpack.

So we're going to come in here-- let's bring up Google here. Hopefully the internet's good. My guys told me not to do it live, but I'm going to. So [LAUGHS] here's my projects here. So I'm going to add it. We're going to create a new project, so let's go over here and let's go Create Project.

I'm going to give it a name here. Let's just call this one "au test 4". Let's just go 004. We're going to choose our file, so I'm going to do this one here. I'm just going to go Open, and we're going to go Create.

So we'll see how fast the internet is in this room here. So that button should go nice and green again when it's actually uploaded it to the Forge. Usually, it takes about 10, 15 seconds here.

If not, I'll open up the one-- there it is. So it's done there. Now I'm going to go in-- it's going to switch here. Come on-- there it is. So I can add different users in here, give them their roles. So we can add all that.

We can also go up and edit our statuses. So you might want to create your own statuses. I'm going to be working with this work pack status in here so you can do all that. So let's go back into iWorkpack. And then here's my new project down in here.

So I'll open this up. If it takes too long, I'll jump into one that's already done. A few seconds. Now we'll jump into another one. It's the internet. Uploading it's the hardest. So this is the same job basically.

So there's the same job-- I just upload it earlier in here. So what we can do is I can go in and I can manually create some work packages, which I'll do here. So I'm going to just come in and find some data I want to make a work package out of. So I'm going to say, let's go in here and grab this. Let's grab all these here.

And I'm going to come up here and give it a work pack name. So I'm going to go "work pack 05." And I'm going to go Save and Append. And we're going to come over here, and there's my new work package 05.

And I've got this on isolate and focus on that work package. Now what I did earlier, and I was going to do in this other job, is basically how I got all of these work packages in here was I built them based on that property. So I just type in work pack number and go Generate.

It goes and finds all those work packages you already added in Navisworks, and it will then go and create all the different work packages for you. What I did here was just a manual one. Now if I want to add anything else to it-- let's just turn that off. And we can go in-- oops. What is it?

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

ROBERT GADBAW: Oh, escape twice-- that's it. So we want to add in maybe some more data in here. So I can just grab a couple of these, and all you do is just add that and that's now part of that work package.

Let's go in here and turn those back on. So there's our work package and there's one that I just added-- I skipped that little piece of pipe. But like I said, if you've got the property like I did here, it would automatically go through and create all those.

Now we want to look at our statusing. So if I take this work package here, let's go in and edit this so I can change any of this data in here-- the disciplines. But down in here is my status, so I want to set the status on that. And I'll say, well, that's actually approved, and I'll submit it.

And now we want to see what this looks like. There it goes. So we can come on over here and we can check everything, and it's going to color code this. There it is, and that's where I put it on Approved in here.

I can turn everything on here. Let's go back in-- let's set this back up here where I don't have any on. Let's zoom out here, and that's the statusing on the whole entire job right now. I've got that checked in there.

And we can create viewpoints in here, and we're doing some more other things that's coming with it. So if I want to just create a viewpoint here, I can just basically come in here and set that viewpoint wp05 and save a viewpoint. And now I haven't updated it yet.

So there it is, so I can jump between those viewpoints. That's it for me right now. I want to get-- well, hang on. Sorry, no, I'm not. I'm going to go back into here real quick. So iWorkpack strategy in here-- so our strategy here is to build an agnostic, flexible, powerful platform that focuses on a strong 3D planning tracking hub that integrates with clients' existing project tools. So we're not trying to replace what you're currently doing.

We're currently working right down here with the BIM360, Aconex, Procore-- that's what we're currently working on. I'm going to get Ben to come up and just kind of talk about the stuff that we're working with them on right now, and then we'll open it up for any questions that anybody has. So I'll pass it over to Ben. And you just press Enter [INAUDIBLE].

BEN BRINGARDNER: So just real quick, we've been an iConstruct user for probably two years now. Used it on a couple of large VPC projects where we did a lot of what Rob showed in terms of reconstructing the model. And a lot of the purpose behind that was to put the model into the fields language, or receive and create models in the language of CAD technicians, which is great for the design side of our business.

But our field staff need to be able to easily and simply navigate that, and so iConstruct is really helpful for us to convert that language-- basically translate it to their language. Now we're kind of taking the next steps and looking more specifically at advanced work packaging. We've always had this interest in using-- or having a model based interface for advanced work packaging would allow our field staff or coordinators to interact with the design in a more literal way.

Up until now, they've had to work off of PDFs, make lists in Excel, and then go grab supporting documentation through kind of an interpretation of the design. And we have this great model resource sitting right there ready to go. So we're working on a proof of concept that integrates an existing work packaging system that Black & Veatch built and has already been using for a while now called Package Manager, and that tool is all list based.

And up until now, it hadn't had a component list feature coming from the model. But we're in the process of converting our work packaging tool to read directly from the model and import that component list-- basically, a BOM effectively, and allowing our coordinators to select off that list directly. On the other side, we now have this opportunity through iWorkpack and Forge to have the visual side of that relatively easily, we're thinking. So just Spacebar?

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

BEN BRINGARDNER: OK. And these are just kind of our proof of concept, I guess I should say, around-- we have a list of our work packages. This is actually Package Manager. And if you want to see that particular work package or all work packages color coded in 3D, you would click one of these buttons in the work packaging system and then see that identified in 3D.

And we're just going to show, I think, four different concepts we're working on right now. Super simple stuff. The next one is you're in a work package and you want to look at the specific component from that work package. You want to know where is this pipe spool at.

You can then click on that 3D button and it jumps over-- identifies that pipe spool in 3D. And the next one is you need to update the status of the component. So now that's 100% complete. And then you want to see statuses in the models, so you update 3D. Jumps across to the 3D and shows you the updated version of status in 3D.

And then the last one is updating status from the 3D model. Say you're in the field-- your foreman is more comfortable maybe in 3D. It goes through and can select a couple of components, say, update status in the 3D model. Then you see that reflected in the more list based package manager tool.

So really pretty simple concepts, but we're just trying to start that bridge between this more list based tool with the actual literal 3D interface. And the whole goal here is just to make it more simple for people to have that better integration and simpler, more literal conversation of what's your work for today. And that's all I've got.

ROBERT GADBAW: So our tool is a legacy tool. First of all, it has been around for a few years, but it's integrated with our time and attendance system as well. So as people come in and out of the site, we're recording their time in an entirely separate productivity tracking system.

There's a lot of debate internally right now because our work packaging tool is a little bit more cost focused than it is work planning focused. And we really want to give the field coordinator a work planning focused experience rather than a cost focused experience. And so we're starting to look at how do we start to separate those, and maybe iWork packages is part of that conversation as we move forward.

But that's sort of a next step-- probably a 2019 kind of initiative for delivery at the beginning of 2020. Anything else? Yes?

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

PRESENTER: [INAUDIBLE] the first integration on the list is going to be the integration with BIM360 docs. Basically, we will connect your project with a BIM360 account somehow. And this is how we will get all the models and documentation, and connect it to specific work packages.

ROBERT GADBAW: Anything else-- any other questions? Mark, again.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

ROBERT GADBAW: No, we can all get that setup.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

ROBERT GADBAW: Yeah. Next week.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

ROBERT GADBAW: You'll be in Perth? OK. You missed it, then.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

[LAUGHS]

ROBERT GADBAW: That was the only open window we had.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

ROBERT GADBAW: Yeah.

[LAUGHS]

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

ROBERT GADBAW: Nah, just let us know when you're back in and we'll figure it out. Well, great. Well, thanks everybody for coming. And like I said, if you've got any questions, just reach out to iConstruct and we'll answer them if we can.

We've got a booth too, so if you want to stop by the booth, then we got the developers here and everybody, so if you have any other questions, you can always stop by the booth. Thank you very much.

[APPLAUSE]