说明
主要学习内容
- Learn how intelligent models are used during the design phase beyond simply making construction documents.
- Learn how intelligent models are used during the construction phase of your projects.
- Discover the challenges of the intelligent model as a construction document and what it looks like when BIM is part of the construction document package.
讲师
- JPJeffrey PinheiroJeffrey is a registered architect in the state of Connecticut and has 19 years of experience in varying roles throughout the industry. Jeffrey began his professional career at the age of 16 working in a local architecture firm and continued gaining valuable experience at one of the largest architectural firms in the state. Born in Bridgeport, Connecticut, Jeffrey holds a Master of Architecture and a Bachelor of Science (Architecture) from the University of Hartford. Additionally, he obtained associate degrees in Architecture and Construction Management from Norwalk Community College. Jeffrey is a leader in the industry when it comes to the use of BIM (Building Information Modeling) and technology. He has spoken and taught classes at national conferences and is the creator of The Revit Kid.com (a worldwide resource on all things Revit and BIM related). Jeffrey currently holds the role of Regional VDC Manager for Turner Construction and also runs an online community dedicated to the education and advancement of BIM called "BIM After Dark".
JEFFREY PINHEIRO: Hey, everyone. My name is Jeffrey Pinheiro. And today, I'm going to be talking a little bit about using BIM, but as a contract document-- or as a part of the contract documents. Before we get into the content, I did want to tell a little story. So this story goes back to probably around 2012, maybe 2011. And this is a picture of a project that I was working on. This was my first time, maybe my second time doing construction administration on a project. So I was the architect going out to the field, reviewing submittals, RFIs, field changes, questions, and so on and so forth.
But I was not the person who put together the set of drawings. I just happened to come in to help with construction administration. And so the detail was very similar to this. It's kind of hard to see in this photo it was 12 years ago, or whatever, so it was kind of hard to find the exact photo of the condition. But there was a slanted roof, and there was a curtain wall that turned the corner. This was a library for a school. So it was a media center, I guess you would call it.
And there was a major issue with the way this curtain wall was turned in the corner and how it was interacting with the steel above. And so me coming into the project inheriting the project, sort of trying to figure out what was going on, I immediately went to Revit. Opened up the file and tried sort out, why was this not lining up? And it turns out that when I went to the wall section for this actual detail, I saw a little option in the properties view that said Do Not Display In Model.
So I turned the model on in that wall section, and right away, you could see the structural model was on. And the steel had moved, but the curtain wall was never updated. So from that day forward, 12 years ago, I decided to make it my life's mission to use the model as much as humanly possible. This resulted in a pretty big change order. It was somewhere around $200,000 or $300,000. Which for me, as a first time CA architect out in the field, felt like a lot of money and a big deal. So it really hit home with me, the detriment that could happen when you do things like turn the model off and aren't utilizing the actual benefits of BIM. Which is that utilization of systems and coordination.
So following that disaster in my mind, this is a diagram I made a couple of years later. And this diagram was meant to explain the current reality of BIM, and how we're utilizing BIM on the design and construction side of our industry. And more specifically, when the model is being used as simply a for-reference item and not as a contract document, what it means. And so this is the process as we know it. The architect or the design team makes, usually, 2D sketches, hand-drawn sketches, whatever it is of their design, programmatic bubble diagrams, you name it.
Then there's a three-dimensional model created using Revit, potentially, or ArchiCAD, or you name it, whatever BIM program you want to talk about. I'm a Revit user, so I'm going to constantly use the term Revit. Maybe the way you make a three-dimensional model, also known as BIM of this project, then you spent countless numbers of hours generating two dimensional documents from that three-dimensional model. Then the contractors, the builders, the trade partners, they go out to the field and they build 3D building in the real world, made out of 2D documents that were created from a 3D model.
And so the connection between this 3D model and this 3D building is the part that's for reference only. And so you can only take it so far when it comes to utilization of the model for construction as reference only before you have to start thinking about it as a contract document. So the whole premise of this presentation is to walk through an actual project where the model is a contract document. So drawings, specs, and model are part of the contract document owned by all parties.
And I'm going to shed some light onto what that looks like. And the benefits it has to a project when you take that step to making the model more than just a reference item. Before I jump in, usually, I don't go through a pretty big bio on myself when I do speaking appearances. But I feel like because of the content-- the topic of this content, I thought it was important to give myself a little street credit, so to speak, when I'm coming in saying, this is what you should do with your models. Because I know it's a very defensive and can be even a scary thought of using models of contract documents.
So the whole point of this slide is to really run through real quickly who I am. And the fact that even though I may seem young to some of you guys, I have been doing this for a very long time. And I feel very confident in the conviction that I'm going to have when I talk about this process to you guys today. So my name is Jeff, as I mentioned before. As you can see, my history in the architecture, engineering, and construction industry started at a pretty young age.
In 2002, I started high school as a freshman in high school. And I immediately knew that I wanted to do architecture. I always liked drawing. I always like art. And I found out that whether it was right, wrong, or indifferent at the time that I could do architecture and art. But then also, potentially, get paid for it. And so that's where architecture kind of came into play. So I went to high school and learned architecture in high school. Because it was a technical high school. I was actually able to work during a work study program the second I learned how to drive.
And so 2005, when I got my license-- my driver's license, the architectural license, I joined a small firm and was able to go a couple of days a week during high school and work at an architecture firm. As you can see, I went through, and then went on to Norwalk Community College, got my associates in architecture and construction management. As well as worked at an A&E firm for about five years. And then joined Turner Construction. Throughout that time, I created a website called the Revit Kid, which some of you may be familiar with. So that was in 2009, over 15, 16 years ago now.
But then, as you can see, I went through the entire process of getting my bachelor's in architecture, master's in architecture. All my independent hours. And then of course, getting my license. At that time, I really wanted to learn the construction side of things. And I already got my license, so I was good there. And that's when I joined Turner, in which I have actually been at Turner Construction since. So I've spent about half of my career-- which at a young age of 36, I've been in the industry for almost 20 years now. And I've spent half of my career on the architecture side, the other half on the construction management side. All revolving around the use of BIM.
And so part of that, again, is I usually don't go through this, but I feel like it's extremely important because I'm coming in here telling-- making a statement about a process that will impact a lot of what you do. But I feel confident in the sense that this is going to be the better way to do a project for you, regardless of the project. This is just an image of me out at Centerbrook Architects, which is here in Connecticut.
One of the other things that I've done throughout my career is went out-- go out and meet with design teams, and architecture firms, engineering firms, and contractors and talk about these exact things. And understand where they're coming from, where we're coming from. And really get a sense of it. So I feel like I have a really good beat on the pulse of the industry, especially locally. And this is a moment in time-- and I'm going to explain throughout the entire presentation why I think this is a moment in time-- where I feel confident that I can say, the model should be part of the contract documents.
So a lot of design firms are already using BIM, whether you're an engineer or an architect. So we're pretty far-- or we're kind of already starting that process. So the good news is a lot of you guys watching this presentation at home are probably already using Revit, so that's great. The bad news is, we need to talk about the challenges we face currently, even though we've adopted BIM, or Revit, as our tool.
And so some of the things that happened over the last 10 to 15 years when BIM really took traction in the design industry is we've kind of adopted some bad practices. And what I mean by that is we've adopted Revit, or BIM, as a tool for creating 2D documents, too. Or 2D documents as the end result. Because understandably, that's what we do as architects is we create documents. And so we're modeling for the sake of two-dimensional documents, right. We've adopted it as another tool just to make drafting happen. And that's kind of hurt us because then we just created all of our templates and processes and everything around the old model of creating two-dimensional documents.
And so what that does is it still creates the ability to have miscommunication of design intent. It still can create RFIs, and lots of issues in the field because of the drafting side of what we do. And because if our end goal is only making 2D documents, we might cut corners in the models. And then, of course, that also can result in construction errors. Or those issues I just talked about in the story in the very beginning of that curtain wall. And so an example of this, just to show you as far as information design, intent is looking at this image here in Revit.
And you can see very much so it says a 6-inch gas line. So on the drawings, it says a 6-inch gas line. But if I look at the actual model, when I select it, it's a 4-inch gas line. And so this is a very extreme example. And I hope all you engineers out there-- I hope you guys aren't actually doing this. Because this is something that I haven't seen in a while, thank God. But it's something you saw for a little while. And it was because, well, we're just going to model all the pipes that whatever size, and then we're going to document them at whatever size we need because all we're doing is creating documents.
And so that's one of the challenges that we face with the adoption of BIM and what we've created as far as a potential risk in our current state of being. So instead, imagine a world where the relationship between the drawings and the model is no longer questioned. You can utilize a three-dimensional or a two-dimensional view for whatever purposes you need. Whether that be fabrication, whether that be communication, whether that be coordination between systems.
And what you build versus what the 3D model shows versus what the field person puts in the field versus what the two-dimensional drawings show, all of these things are confidently connected. And so that now you have not just one piece of information, but you have multiple sources of information to understand the project. Even to the point where you're comfortable enough to say, yes, go ahead. Print on the floor with a robot our layout of the project. Not only that, but let's take the coordination model-- a fabrication-level coordination model and even print the penetrations from the three-dimensional model onto the floor and build openings into our storefront based on that information.
When you get to that point, then you're really starting to see a connection between your original design intent, what you modeled way, way back in the project, and then what you build in the field. Which of course, is the ultimate goal. This is Dusty. This is a little robot. We have a couple of different robots now that we're using. But you can see it's actually printing the layout onto the floor. And it's also printing things like wall types, door types, penetrations, center lines of doors, ceilings, ceiling heights, and so on and so forth. Of course, fully extracted from the model.
So some of the challenges to adopting and establishing this process that I hear, and that we've talked to when I think about this case study that I'm going to show you guys throughout this presentation is changing what we would consider established processes. So if I was there live with you guys, I'd ask you to raise your hand. How many people there-- how many people out there have a checklist for construction documents?
An SD checklist, a DD checklist, a CD checklist. All those things are checklists that we have for, this is what we need for this. This is what we need for that. This is what we need for that. So when you-- those checklists are set up with that old two-dimensional drafting end goal in mind. And so, obviously, it's a workflow disruption when we start using BIM as another piece of this. And those checklists are going to have to change. I know when I worked at a company, an A&E firm, we had a checklist that-- I think it was actually scanned in because no one wanted to retype it. And it was that old of a checklist for the CD, DD, SD phases.
And so those things are going to have to change. And obviously, there's plenty of people who are going to have resistance to change. But when you begin to think about the model as part of the contract documents, then you can actually think about and structure your checklists a little differently. And it creates a different focus on that piece of it. So, yes, checklists are going to have to change. Understand that is a challenge. Challenging your current processes is something that's going to be hard to overcome. But well worth it when you go down this pathway.
And then, of course, the challenge that we can't forget about is, of course, the contract language. The liability concerns and the contractual the lawyers of it. Anyone who's watched Suits before, this is Harvey from Suits. When I was trying to think of a lawyer to put on screen, this just came in mind. But yeah, it's always a discussion whenever we talk about models in general. But especially, when we're talking about models as a contract document, is the liability concerns. And of course, yes, I understand.
BIM provides a higher level of detail. And with that, there's the potential to have implications of model information versus 2D versus 2D versus 3D, et cetera. And so understanding that it's a challenge and that contracts-- you've had contracts similar to checklists forever and ever and ever. And we don't want to change those. And so on and so forth. But contracts are meant to change. Lawyers exist in order to amend contracts. That's part of their role is to make contracts work for you.
And then the other piece of it that I really want to make people aware of when it comes to this scary side of the legal side of things, is that-- I can't think after my 20 years in this industry using Revit pretty much the entire time, using BIM pretty much the entire time, I've never seen a good model produce a set of a bad set of drawings. So what that means is that if you spend this time-- and this is exactly what happened on this case study, this lab project I'm going to be talking about.
If you spend the time, with that concept of, this model is going to exist alongside drawings and specs, your drawings are going to be better. Unanimously, across the project that I'm talking about today-- unanimously, the contractors, trade partners, et cetera, said that this was one of the best sets of drawings they have ever seen. Part of the reason, in my opinion, for that is the fact that the contract relationships created a focus on the model similar to the focus that we usually have on just the 2D drawings.
The good news is most of the people on this presentation here in this virtual room have probably already adapted BIM. You've already adopted Revit as your tool. So you're pretty much one step there. That used to be-- 10 years ago, that was the part of-- it was, oh, my God. We can't even think about using this for construction or for documentation. We haven't even learned Revit yet. So we're finally beyond that piece of it. Which is great. So we're taking the steps there.
The next steps are revising the contracts. It's creating standard models and QC processes that are model-centric, not just drawing-centric. And then, of course, believing in the idea that a good model is going to create the good drawings. And that it'll benefit the projects in the long run. So onto the case study project that we're here to talk about today. This project, unfortunately, has to be super private. So I can't mention any names.
But I did show a lot of great examples. So this project is a lab project. And I'll show a little example of where the project is currently, as far as in the field. But this is an overview of our BIM 360 page. Or server, I guess you'd call it. And so this project started a while ago. So it's in BIM 360, not ACC, unfortunately. But BIM 360 has its pros, too. And so what this diagram showing-- and you don't have to read everything right now. Actually, if you look at the handout, I zoomed into some of this so you can get a sense of it.
But it's really how it's focused on the fact that beyond what I mentioned before of the contracts and the processes, and the fact that a lot of people have already adopted BIM being a step in the direction where we can say this, the other piece of being-- for me, being able to confidently say that the model can be a contract document is a tool like BIM 360, or Autodesk Construction Cloud, now familiar. Without this tool, two, three years ago, I would not confidently say that I want the model to be a contract document.
And why is that? That is because until a tool like ACC or BIM 360-- I might just skip between both of those terms for you guys today. I'm sorry, but it's the same thing in the reference of this presentation. But the reason that I can confidently say it today, other than the adoption of Revit and all the other stuff that we're talking about, is until you give-- until you democratize the model, until you give access to people beyond just the VDC Revit technology specialists, the ability to access models, it can't be a contract document.
You need people from the guys swinging the hammer up to the owner to be able to access the information in the same model the same way they would access a PDF, or a spec section, or a drawing. And so the crux of this, the glue holding all this together is a server or a setup like this BIM 360 one. And so what we have here is the host location of our server, of our project. And then all the different things that we're going to do-- that we're doing from it.
And so it opens up this door of real-time access to information for things like estimating early coordination, logistics and construction planning, and constructability reviews, and so on and so forth. And so I'm going to zoom through. And this presentation, what we're going to do is we're going to talk about each one of these little buckets. But all this is showing is that we have a centralized location for all of our models. And then we're able to link, and view, and pull information from them at a real-time basis at any moment in time.
And by we, I'm not just talking about the Revit specialist. I'm talking about everyone from the estimator to the project manager to the owner to the acoustician, you name it. Everyone has access to the information and the ability to use it. So this is just an overview. I'm not going through each of these, but we're going to show them-- I'm going to show examples of each of these as we go through-- as we go through the presentation. As far as where the project is today, this is a little aerial view of it from a week or two ago from the drone.
And what you can see is down on the bottom of our screen, there's an auger in that little hole. That's going to be a large laboratory addition. On the top top of the screen where there's more site work going on, that's actually some utility work. But also there's going to be 271 geothermal drills-- or geothermal wells that are 800-feet deep. It's like four years of drilling to get all these in in order to replace the current steam generation for this campus. They're going to be replacing it with geothermal.
And on the top right, you could see a smaller building going in between these two buildings. It's at steel about right now. That is a chemical storage building for these labs. And that's under construction right now. And then the building right in the middle of your screen now above that red excavator, that's going to actually get demolished and there's going to be-- where those trailers are and so on and so forth, that's going to be a huge laboratory building. So this is a nine-year project that-- and of course, the garage on the right is actually getting demolished. And there's going to be a brand new garage built, too.
So the reason I show this is to show the sheer scope of the project. But also what was kind of neat about this is it gave us the ability to start on that building on the very top, which was the chemical storage building. And use that as-- it's a $36 million chemical storage building, which may not sound that much in the scheme of a $1 billion project, but it's actually only a 14,000-square foot shed, basically. So a lot of money for a 14,000-square foot shed. But it's a shed that hosts holds highly explosive and highly flammable chemicals.
So anyways, it's a small enough scale that we've used that. And that one's, of course, 50% under construction now. So we've used that as our jumping off point to test a lot of these things out. And then we're taking the lessons learned for the bigger parts of the project as we go through, as far as the model as a contract document. So now digging into those little bubbles you saw that sort of surrounded that diagram before, I'm going to just show a bunch of things that we, as the construction manager, are doing on this project because of the fact that a model is a contract document.
Preconstruction is just a term for design for the contractor side of things. So that's just what we call it. Preconstruction, construction, and then so on and so forth. And so we have preconstruction. We'll call it, bidding in the middle, which is when we're bidding and procuring out for the subcontractors. And then, of course, construction. So throughout preconstruction, there's a lot of great things that we can utilize the model for. And one is quantity takeoff.
There's a huge benefit to being able to utilize models for quantity takeoff. We utilize a tool called Assemble, which is an Autodesk product that connects to BIM 360 and ACC. And so what's really neat about this is there's-- on a project of this scale, especially, there is a lot of studies and pricing studies between the architects and ourselves. So they might do a quick design scheme. And they might say, hey, what's the cost of this? What's the impact of this? If we change this, what's the cost of this? What's the impact of this?
And so what we've done is we set up a process where when the architect generates a design option, let's say, it's as simple as going into Assemble and publishing the latest from BIM 360. And then our estimating team can actually just jump in and look at it and say, OK, here's the variance between these two walls, and then do a pricing. And so for those who haven't seen Assemble, it is like an ultimate pivot table and filter tool for Revit. It is incredibly powerful in that sense.
But the key here is that our estimating group, they can go on, update the models pulling from BIM 360. And these guys don't have Revit. They don't know Revit. They will never open Revit. But because of this setup that we have, the architects just saves to central, or publishes the latest model. And then our estimator just simply says, boom, I want the latest version Assemble. And they get to do it. The other thing that's really cool about Assemble is that we are able to publish that information from the model to tools like Power BI.
And why is this important is that when it comes to estimating, yes, as a large construction management company, we have a huge database of costs. We have our own costs, our own estimates, our own bidding information. So we have real time costs of items, unit pricing, and you name it. But there's still nothing better than being able to get a direct unit price from a trade partner. So I learned pretty quickly when I joined the construction management side that a lot of what an estimator does is getting accurate unit costs from the subcontractors.
And so what we've done here, if we were to use Assemble, we'd have to invite non-contracted trade partners into our server, which we did not want to do. And we also typically would ask them to do their own take off to give us unit pricing, which takes time off of them. And isn't the greatest thing when you're trying to get a nice little budget number from these guys, knowing that they are going to have to bid the project anyways. So by creating these dashboards you see here, we're essentially giving the trade partners a quantity takeoff of whatever we're asking them. So if it's ductwork, if it's concrete, you name it.
And then we're just sending this link, we're calling up and saying, hey, take a look at this project. Take a look at the scope. Take a look at some of the quantities. And give us an idea of what you think the unit pricing would be for ductwork. Done. And so this has become a huge hit because it's obviously making it easier for the trade partners to view the axis-- view the information. But it's also making-- they're giving us the unit pricing faster. And we're able to react to them as we do things like estimating our project.
When it comes to the fact that we're living in this environment of a real-time model, we had to really, really quickly figure out a way to manage the live model versus the milestone publishing model. So even though the model is a contract document, it's important-- the contract itself is still structured traditionally. SD, DD, CD, so on. We still have contractual deliverables for each of those things, and so on and so forth. So in a world where now we can actually-- right now, I can go on and I can open up Revit, and I can view the last sync from the design team-- the last time they synchronize with central. So I have real time access to that information.
But we still needed to be able to milestone it. So we utilize packages in design collaboration in BIM 360, or ACC, again, depending what you want to call it. And we utilize that as our ability to package the models and save those moments in time. So if we wanted to look at the officially published DD models, or officially published DD drawings, we would utilize that information. Which worked out really well and still working out today. Even during construction, we're using that for bulletins. We're packaging and then creating bulletins for that purpose.
Sometimes I might use the term advanced coordination. But what this is really referring to is early coordination. Similar to what you may see and you may be familiar with on the construction side for model-based coordination, when we have access to real-time information, we can also help and assist with the three-dimensional coordination process. And so what we've done throughout this project, and the subsequent phases of this project, is we've gone through, and working alongside the design team, we've had clash meetings, coordination meetings. And we reviewed as many systems as we can. And then we utilized the issues tool to manage that.
So with that-- you can see this is that chemical storage building-- what we've done is we went into construction on this project knowing that there was only about 18 to 19 real clashes that existed in this model. And I will tell you that we've went through the 3D coordination process during construction already. And it was one of the smoothest 3D coordination processes I've ever been a part of. And mainly because it was focused on during design.
It was a stress and an important aspect of our project for not just the construction company, but also for the design team and the owner as well, to make sure that these models were going out to bid with the drawings. And, there was an obligation to have these as clash free as humanly possible. Again, not just for the sake of doing it, but because we know that if we do that, we're going to have less issues in the field if we resolve them ahead of time. And so, again, just showing how we're utilizing the model coordination tool within BIM 360, or ACC, to utilize this process and do it in a more collaborative way.
During preconstruction, as the contractors, we also do a lot of logistics and planning. Which is basically sequencing, and construction, and what this thing is going to look like at certain moments in time. And things like supportive excavation, and you name it. And so utilizing live models, again. So if they wanted to-- if the design team had an option that they wanted to us to study as far as how that impacts where the cranes going, or how we're accessing the site, we utilize BIM 360's viewer and a very model-centric approach-- you can see some of these markups here.
Working with the operations team, we had the ability to react to design changes. But also react to and present and communicate our plans to the owners. And then have this sort of full-time working scene where we were able to look at different phases, different moments in time. And really just study how we were going to build this project. And then, of course, when we hit construction, we've spent a ton of time figuring out and executing these logistics.
I mentioned before, during the coordination piece, we did utilize the central issues tracking, which is the Issues Tool within BIM 360. And we actually use this not just for clash detection, we use it for constructability reviews, value engineering items, schedule items. The Issues Tool during preconstruction became our way of communicating between the design team and the construction manager. And so here's an example of just a constructability review item. And the cool thing about it is it can be on a two-dimensional drawing. It can be on a model. It can be on a spec.
And so this is the-- when you're thinking that the model is part of this typically two-pronged approach-- which is the contract documents, the specs and the drawings. Now it's specs, drawings, models-- then you also need to have it the ability to track comments between all three of those mediums. And that's exactly what this is. It gives us the ability to track comments regardless of whether it's a spec, a drawing, or a 3D model.
So as you can see, a lot of stuff during preconstruction, which again is design phases. That would be SD, DD, CD, all the stuff that you might be familiar with with the design piece. And you could see how there's a really close relationship with the design team when we do that. And there's a lot of information that we're able to extract. But also, coordinate and feel more comfortable with because of this model-centric approach to what we do. So when it comes to bidding and construction, this is obviously, where the rubber meets the road when it comes to the model as a contract document.
Because now we're going out to the market of subcontractors-- of trade partners. And we're giving them a new piece of information. In the past, we gave them models, sure. But there was always that EFTA that said, this is for reference only, this is for reference only, this is for reference only. So yeah, we used it as much as we can. And we did use it probably beyond what the EFTA said. But it was always, the drawings always [? drive, ?] the drawings always [? drive. ?]
Because now the model is part of this piece of it, we need to make sure that it was at least on par with the rest of it, with the rest of the contract language in the 2D, in the specs. And so there's a couple of things that really came into play in the bidding, other than just the actual contract language. One is making sure that the trade partners can access it. I'm sure there was a moment in time-- I don't remember this moment in time. But I'm sure there was a moment in time when we transitioned from bidding out full sets of drawings to bidding out PDFs.
And I'm sure there was a moment when that happened where we needed to make sure that the trade partners knew how to open PDFs, how to print them, view them, do whatever they were doing with PDFs. Well, now we're at a new moment where we need to make sure the trade partners have the ability to view the model, because that is part of what they are purchasing with us. That is part of the process of bidding. And so we did a couple of different things to make that happen.
The first was, obviously, they had access to the Revit and CAD files for this project. So Civil 3D, Revit files, they were all part of the bidding package. So the subcontractors that are familiar with those, they had the ability to pop them open and do what they needed with them. For those that weren't, we needed to make sure they had the ability to access it, too. So what we did here is we actually utilized the Autodesk Viewer. And so anyone who doesn't know, if you go to viewerautodesk.com, you log in with your name, you actually can upload any file type that ACC accepts. It's on essentially a similar platform.
You're able to upload those, make them viewable. And even do like password-protected links. And then you can view them on your iPad, on your phone, on your desktop, on your laptop, you name it. And so what we did is, you could see here, we took the federated model, and we actually published them that way. And then we had-- I held a whole bunch of information sessions so trade partners that maybe were never part of a three-dimensional model-- maybe they've never seen a model in their entire lives-- hopefully, that wasn't the case for all of them, but some of them, maybe.
We gave them the ability and the access to the information so they felt comfortable with the language that we were providing. And the fact that this was another piece of information for them. And if you remember in the very beginning, I said democratizing BIM. And the fact that platforms like ACC-- this is the viewer of ACC-- those are what allow this to be possible. When it comes to the actual construction process, 4D is kind of a weird term in the industry in the sense that it's the amount of effort to produce it.
It doesn't always equal out in the value added and the amount of time for maintenance, and so on and so forth. So one of the things we did is we called it schedule building, or 4D sketching. Because what it is it's not true 4D in the sense that we're not linking elements directly to a P6 schedule, or an activity on a real Gantt chart. However, we're building it from it. And technically, you could do it. What we did here is we really just we utilized Assemble to plug-in things like sequence numbers, bid packages, you name it. And it became just a way for the schedule team to quickly visualize their approach and check things like critical path and overlap, and so on and so forth.
So again, utilizing Assemble. Because the other thing that Assemble does really well is you're able to input data into model elements in a separate database outside of Revit. So you can click an element and say-- really make any parameter you want and plug it in there on the web browser. So that's basically what we're doing here. And then in turn, that same process, we also utilize that for tracking in the field. As a construction management company, a couple of things that are really important to us-- one is staying on budget, and the other is staying on schedule.
And so by utilizing the same tools that we were using for quantity takeoff, which already have the quantities in them-- Assemble has quantities in them-- we have the ability to plug-in things like date installed. And then extrapolate that information into a dashboard like you're seeing here. And our field teams, again, completely separate from Revit-- from the Revit technical specialists, they're able to click the elements, put a date in. And then see the information to see are they trending ahead, behind, or so on schedule.
And so this is actually Power BI, which again, you can see, this is pulling from Assemble. So it's kind of bringing it full circle. And the great thing about it is because it's a model-centric approach, a lot of this information is obviously already there. And then whenever we have a bulletin published, because now we're in a construction, by the design team, we're able to quickly pull that into Assemble. Republish it to Power BI. And then we have an updated model for that as well.
Finally, field coordination. And part of the reason why I'm calling this field coordination is what you're going to see is-- I'm an architect working for a contractor talking about BIM. So obviously, the first thing anyone's going to think about before they even step into this virtual session is 3D coordination. Because when you think of BIM or VEC with a contractor, the first thing you think about is MEP coordination in 3D. Which is exactly what we do. We do it on every single project. It is the bare minimum of what we do.
But you'll notice that even in this image here, you'll notice there's some masonry blocks. If you look closely, there's some studs in the walls. If you look closer, there's actually some grids in the ceilings. There's some drywall on the walls. Because of this requirement that the model be a contract document, there's also an owner requirement of LOD 400 for very specific items. And so it may seem a little crazy that every single CMU piece is in there, and every single stud is in there, and every single fire spill, and you name it, general trades item is in there.
But what it became is our coordination effort is not just MEP/FP anymore. So we basically had to Model Coordination meetings a week. Now we had MEP/FP to keep those guys geeking out in their detailed stuff. But also we just had a model coordination meeting. So it wasn't just MEP/FP anymore. It was our masons, our concrete guys, rebar, lab casework, cold-formed metal framing, ceilings. Everybody was in there because we were using the same process we typically did for MEP/FP, and we were utilizing it for their systems. And so I'm going to have an example in a minute of what that sort of results in. When you do that.
But the other thing to note too is that-- here's the geothermal fields that I mentioned before, 271 of them-- is that same concept that we use for the viewer to bid is also the concept we're using for field coordination. It may not just be the actual act of clash detection, but it's also the ability for anyone out on site to access this information in a 3D form. And so here's a little view that we created that just shows structural elements for the new items, and the underground utilities. New, existing, and the geothermal. And so now when you're on site, whether you're on an iPad or up on your desktop or your laptop, you have the ability to access this 3D information at any moment in time.
When it comes to coordination, how I mentioned, we're going beyond MEP/FP. One thing that people think about all the time is just clashing. Clash, clash, clash. Which is super important. Making sure that your buildings-- making sure your systems fit and things don't clash is super important. But there's another piece of the word coordination that I think is just as valuable, if not more. Because it probably impacts a lot more bid packages and trade partners. Is the coordination of non-MEP/FP systems and shop drawings.
So this right here is a set of shop drawings for a stair. This is a monumental stair. These are the trade packages. These are the individual companies, the subcontractors that are involved in this one stair. There's cast-in-place concrete, precast, glass, guardrails, embedded shoes, which is miscellaneous metals, illuminated handrail, and embedded sleeve, which I think was structural steel. I don't remember exactly how. And all that comes together to make a stair.
In the normal process-- in a two-dimensional only process. The drawings you see here is what you get. And the one issue with that process is that every one of these subcontractors are required to make a shop drawing, but they're going to make a section however they want, at whatever scale they want, wherever they want. They're going to make floor plans of however they need it to look. And they're going to make sections and details and drawings of it.
And it's very difficult in a two-dimensional world to overlap all those different things if they're not using all the same standards. And you're not going to get 15 companies to use the same standards when they're drafting their shop drawings. I promise you. You guys can try it. Go for it. It's not going to happen. But when you also have them model it in a real-world scale, because that's what models use, within an area that can overlap, it becomes a lot easier to actually combine all of this information and coordinate the systems and the shop drawings as is. And so that's what we're doing.
We are making sure that trades beyond the MEP/FP are modeling their systems as needed. And then you have the ability now to actually overlap them and make sure that those shop drawings, what they're going to fabricate, what they say they're going to build, actually works in conjunction with each other. So here's a little view of the model of that stair. Some of the details overlapping, and so on and so forth. Expanding on the project that I was talking about before, the chemical storage building, this is the CMU wall. And you'll notice there's this big offset in the ductwork.
During one of our model coordination meetings, somebody mentioned, hey, why are there so many offsets here? And he said, well, I'm trying to miss the bond beams, which are in blue. And then they said, OK, mason, why are there so many bond beams like this? And, well, it's because the drawings say a bond beam every 10 feet. But then the mason said, but I could-- but that says a maximum of 10 feet. So all I have to do is pull the bond beams down to let's say, 8 feet. They're aligned with the header of the windows. And now you have this massive window that you can do your MEP systems in.
It seems like a little silly example. But in a normal two-dimensional process, bond beam would not have been on any drawings. It might have been on a typical drawing, a typical detail, like I just said, where it has an arrow that says maximum offset for 10 feet. And maybe they build it once, or during one wall. Somebody makes a comment in the field, and they adjust the rest of them. The worst case scenario, or the scenario that probably would have existed is they'd probably run it straight like this for the duct work. And they'd be saw cutting out a whole bunch of bond beams everywhere they needed to make an opening.
So it's a small example, but a super powerful one, in my opinion, to seeing the advantages of everybody working in a model-centric approach. And what forces that to happen is making the model a contract document. Yes, you can do it without-- as reference, sure. But then you're kind of just doing it out of the goodness of the project. And not everyone is held to the same standard. Once you do it as a contract document, everybody is focused on the model the same way they focused on the two-dimensional and three-dimensional drawings.
So if we go back to the original diagram that I shared at the beginning-- which again, I made back in like 2013 or whatever-- what are we going to do moving forward? This is not going to be something that takes a year to implement. This is one owner that required this. I've heard of another owner. So it's coming. Owners are going to start requiring it. But what do we do as the AEC industry to do this. And the first is, of course, encouraging whatever first steps make sense. As I mentioned before talking about the QA/QC process, talking about your checklists. Thinking about what this means.
But then also it could also be educating clients on the value of the model that you're creating. And there is value in taking this step forward. Maybe it's baby steps. It's not a full contract document, but some form of a contract where you're utilizing it a little more. But also advocating for that change and realizing what it is. Because the future state is what we're talking about here, which is that the 3D and the 2D documents are interlinked. And the same amount of importance and stress goes to both of them.
And so what I'm asking you to do today is take any first little step you can to help us drive this in the industry. And then, hopefully, there's more projects like this and more case studies like this that we can share at the next AU. So with that, I want to thank you guys so much. And hope to talk to you next time.