说明
主要学习内容
- Learn the different techniques to managing in-wall coordination through a virtual process, from basic to advanced.
- Learn how in-wall coordination unlocks many prefabrication opportunities for both the general contractor and the trade contractors.
- Gain insights into how automation and robotics are used throughout the in-wall coordination process.
讲师
- Dustin RidleyDustin Ridley leads a large group of 40+ VDC professionals in DPR’s southwest region. Dustin works closely with project teams and regional leadership to lead, influence, and empower Building Information Modeling (BIM) and Virtual Design and Construction (VDC) driven project management, process workflow, and field technology deployment in Arizona and Southern California. Prior to joining DPR Construction, Dustin had spent time working at civil, interior design, structural, and architectural design firms as well as freelancing 3DS MAX Vray 3D Rendering before joining the trades side of construction. On the trades side, Dustin spent 5 years modeling and detailing for concrete and 6 years managing BIM at a local electrical subcontractor. Dustin has helped to create a program and maintained for 6 years a teaching position at the Electrical Joint Apprenticeship Training Committee in Phoenix, Arizona, bringing BIM education to local electrical foremen and journeymen so they can better be equipped to be part of BIM & VDC on their projects. These experiences have shaped Dustin’s career path to be equipped and prepared to lead in the construction industry technology as a seasoned veteran with 20 years in the industry.
- VRVarun RajaVarun Raja is an accomplished technical builder with expertise in leveraging Virtual Design and Construction (VDC) best practices and Building Information Modeling (BIM) tools to advance project outcomes. He utilizes his extensive experience to establish both custom and standardized workflows that fully harness BIM, driving teams towards leaner processes and superior quality construction. With early career experience as an MEP engineer/coordinator, Varun has developed a unique perspective and skill set that enhance project coordination through design thinking and constructive production. As a proficient design integrator, he excels in guiding teams to make informed decisions that improve construction production and facilitate seamless multi-trade coordination. He is a forward thinker who challenges the status quo, constantly seeking more efficient methods to execute workstreams and pave the way for scalable innovations. An innovator at heart, Varun approaches every problem as an opportunity to innovate and solve it efficiently. His recent endeavors in implementing prefabrication solutions through Lean and VDC principles have further strengthened his design integration workflows, making them scalable and templatized.
DUSTIN RIDLEY: Hello, everybody. Welcome to Autodesk University. Today, we are going to provide instruction on how to implement model-based in-wall coordination, and you will be learning how, through in-wall coordination, we can enhance labor, quality, and prefabrication on your projects.
That said, I would like to note the technical handout and our presentation. Though full of really great information, it is not meant to be a literal "thou shalt do this" guidebook. Rather, the content itself should give the audience ideas and inspiration on how to implement what makes sense for their projects.
But first, before we get started, we want to introduce ourselves so you know who your speakers are. My name is Dustin Ridley, and I am the Southwest Region VDC Leader for DPR Construction, and I do have 12 years experience implementing coordination from both the trades and GC side.
VARUN RAJA: Everyone, my name is Varun Raja, and I'm a little shy of Dustin's experience here, but getting there, and I'm the VDC Manager for the Bay Area region in California. And I see my passion as being a design integrator, where I try to get involved as much left of the line as possible and make a influence change. And then what keeps me motivated is essentially just finding solutions to democratize information to the project team.
DUSTIN RIDLEY: Awesome. On a final note, I do want to say what I like about Varun and I presenting together is that I represent old-school in-wall coordination, and Varun represents next gen in-wall coordination. And together, we are creating and pushing the boundaries of in-wall to its next evolution. So hopefully, that is something that shines through our session.
OK, so Varun and I both work for DPR Construction. If you're not familiar with DPR, we are a large commercial general contractor. And one thing I want to call attention to is that we build technically complex and challenging projects, and as such, our core markets lend themselves to benefiting from this more advanced in-wall coordination approach to how we build.
Additionally, we self-perform our interior framing, and we have 100% VDC adoption goal in our company. So this all marries very well with pushing the industry expectations around in-wall, and this is why we want to share this with you today.
And one more thing that I want to point out-- the text that you see on the screen here is one of DPR's vivid descriptions on how we approach quality and innovation, which is really about continuous improvement and endless innovation. And innovation is our ever forward spirit.
So if one were to ask, why do we take in-wall coordination to the level that we do, which is well above industry expectations, it is because we build technically complex projects and it is part of our mission at DPR to drive for endless improvement and to be most admired.
VARUN RAJA: And a few of the key highlights about our presentation here is we want to make sure you walk away with learning different techniques on managing in-wall coordination. And it could be as basic as we showcase it, or some of the advanced workflows that we're going to be talking about.
And really, you could see how it unlocks some of the potentials in managing your construction in a more lean and productive manner by unlocking prefabrication and also the robotics and construction. In order for us to also get to that point, you would need some workflows that you could scale, essentially.
And that's where automation of some of these workflow discussions are going to be part of this presentation as well. That's going to be key to this whole process.
DUSTIN RIDLEY: Awesome. Thank you, Varun. OK, before we cover some of our more technical aspects of in-wall coordination, it is important to go over some insights on highlighting the why, of why in-wall coordination in the first place.
It is to improve this. Shown on the screen here is an elevated wall, and these are my mark-ups from nine years ago, when I worked in the electrical trades. I was pointing out missing information, conflicting devices, duplicate devices, and framing needs. And this is just one of thousands of walls on the project.
Ultimately, through in-wall coordination, we are trying to improve the design intent by bringing the constructible means and methods into the model, versus doing that in the field. And it is to avoid this. And by this, I mean rework.
What you see here on the screen is a myriad of patchwork fixes from the field. And when we have to do patchwork like this, the cost for every instance can range from a few hundred dollars to a few thousand dollars, depending on project type and situation.
And that is not even taking into account the other things, such as lost opportunity to focus on moving the project forward instead of doing rework, or the impact to schedule and morale. Additionally, if RFIs are involved with the patchwork fixes, each RFI itself can cost a project up to $1,000 in total administrative time.
Now imagine thousands of instances of this across hundreds of projects. We are looking at potentially millions of dollars of waste. And it is also to avoid this. [LAUGHS]
Obviously, this is an exaggeration, but the intent here is to bring attention to what is on the wall is just important as what is in the wall. And there is nothing more disappointing to an owner that to see the aesthetics of their walls not as they imagined. Because after all, it is not what is in the walls or above the walls that the public will see, it is what is on the walls in the room that they will see.
And it is ultimately to avoid this too, a long, tedious punch list, which ultimately costs the project time, money, and resources. Not to mention, again, if we are sending teams back to do rework, we are losing optimization of time and energy to move the project forward.
And so the more that we can focus on preventing issues and installing work the first time, the less time that will be spent out looking for issues. So now, a reflection of the previous slides. I do recall, and I want to bring up this very short story of a time that I spent with Mr. Jeff here on the screen, on a project in Tucson, Arizona.
He was expressing a healthy dose of frustration with me regarding the lack of information and coordination of the architectural elevated drawings for his project. And in my efforts to calm Jeff's nerves, I explained to him, this is why we have model coordination environments in the first place, is to address the design intent to constructible means and methods gap in the industry.
And I remember Jeff pausing for a moment and thinking. And then he said, well, if a picture is worth a thousand words, then I guess a 3D model is worth a million. And I think this was his way of accepting our current situation and saying, OK, let's use this model environment to solve these problems.
This conversation stuck with me for quite some time. And so speaking of 3D models and a million words, here's a big, beautiful 3D model, which is a healthcare campus in Phoenix, Arizona. Beautiful model.
However, if we zoom in a bit closer, we begin to see there's more to this beautiful 3D model, which are these complex, busy environments that we call rooms. And the more detail we put into these rooms, the more we can do with it. And the exam room shown here on the screen is one of thousands of rooms on this hospital campus.
Now, if we zoom in a little bit more to see inside these rooms, we begin to see there is more going on here, such as wall protection modeled, medical equipment modeled, framing modeled, wall devices, wall backing strips, conduit sealing devices, and fixtures and et cetera. There's a lot going in here. These are busy environments.
And if we zoom in one more time to a single wall, what we see here is infill framing models, conduit routed up vertically through the wall, devices modeled and located to correct dimensions, conduit from devices stubbing above the modeled ACT ceiling, and so on. And really, the value at this level of detail brings, is that it informs on design optimization with constructible means, quantities pulled from the model, cost management opportunities, schedule optimization, and prefabrication opportunities, which ultimately improves our productivity.
However, if we don't take the model environment seriously, as a one source of truth, you get these dull and less environments-- less useful environments, excuse me. Here I have removed all the in-wall focus scope that I was showing you on the previous screen, and the other related scopes to leave just the overhead MEPF. Quite lackluster, isn't it?
So what we end up with really is a bunch of question marks. That's not good. So what are we really trying to improve here? In the traditional approach, there is a tendency to take the design documentation of elevated walls and to go straight to construction, wall framing, and roughing.
However with a fuller, more complete room environment through in-wall coordination, we can achieve better certainty on what we are building through constructability reviews, fuller coordination with more detail, and detailed elevated drawings, and therefore, having certainty on what we are designing and building and driving quality and efficiency.
So to recap, why do we do in-wall coordination? Well, it is to achieve the highly detailed, elevated wall details that you see on the right of the screen here. It is to increase quality and reduce rework, to optimize design and labor utilization, to facilitate better overall model coordination experience, enable prefab opportunities, and ultimately deliver a superior experience and as built model to the client. This is why we do this.
And on a final note, in the Southwest region of DPR Construction, we really tried our best to track some data on six of our larger healthcare projects that we have implemented in-wall coordination on, and this is as of recent as the last few years. In total, we have coordinated over 13,000 walls. We have coordinated over 35,000 devices and we have created over 4,000 elevated sheets and we have identified over 3,000 issues.
And these are issues, not clashes. And so just think of this. If just 50% of those issues made it to the field and resulted in RFIs and rework, we are looking at several million dollars worth of cost to the projects in the form of waste, potentially.
OK. So now we know why in-wall coordination, the next topic is getting buy-in. And this is an important topic to cover because we get to more of the technical aspects of the project, the more buying you're going to need. And what I mean by that is you can't just start a project and go out and start doing in-wall coordination. There's a lot of planning and buy-in that needs to happen upfront to be successful in this.
This is because making the transition from traditional overhead coordination to a fuller, more complete, total room coordination approach can be very complex, especially if every wall in the project is given coordination time. However, there is a meet in the middle approach, and that is depicted here in the middle of the screen, which is what we call Traditional Plus.
And this is where we would plan for traditional overhead MEP coordination, however, with selected critical walls identified to implement in-wall coordination on, such as head walls, foot walls, full height walls, precast panels, et cetera. These type of walls often will be part of various prefabrication strategies.
That said, to implement advanced in-wall coordination in the more total room approach that we're describing here, where all walls are addressed, there are some very important key factors and steps for success that need to be taken into consideration, which I will talk about next.
So here, we've done our best to outline the 13 key steps to achieve advanced in-wall coordination on your project. Admittedly, some of these steps are steps you would take on any project leveraging BIM, regardless if you're doing in-wall coordination or not.
And in those instances, you just want to make sure to include in-wall in the documentation and dialogue. However, some of the other steps are more complex and nuanced and need further explanation, such as synergy and scope buyout. So let's get into it.
Step 1, synergy. What does that mean? This is essentially the first step that precedes all others, and it is the most important step. And it is the most important step because in order to achieve advanced in-wall coordination in the first place, there needs to be synergy or alignment between all the players on the project, which include the owner, the architects, GC, engineers, trades, and vendors, which I'll explain in a little more detail in the next slide.
Step 2, scope buyout. This is also a very important step. This is where you need to be very clear on the ask of your trade partners at bidding, which we'll go into more detail in the next couple of slides. Steps 3, 4, 5, and 6, you're going to do these things anyways on your project if you are implementing them, or at least I hope you are.
That said, you just want to include the in-wall related details in those steps. And if you want more information on that, I would recommend referring to our technical handout, which covers these steps in a little bit more detail there. Step 7 and 8, sheet management and prefab strategy. We have actually chosen those two steps to cover in more detail in this session today, so we will talk about that a little later in this presentation.
Step 9, review and sign off strategy. The one thing I will mention here is to ensure you have upfront discussions with the design team on the in-wall coordination plan and review expectations. Sometimes the expectations can catch the design team off guard and you risk getting add services to the project from the design team if they find themselves answering questions outside the normal RFI workflow.
Step 10, change management. Here you want to make sure to have a custom workflow to address PR changes or RFI changes, especially if walls are be constructed at the same time design changes are being made. It is very easy to fall behind pace of construction and get confused with revisions and updates. So you want to have a little bit more attention to how you're addressing changes to the design when you're doing in-wall coordination.
And step 11 and 12, bend the field and QA/QC. We have also chosen these two steps to cover in more detail in our session today, so you will hear more about that a little later. And lastly, step 13, and this is really the last stage in the form of a handoff. And if we do all the other 12 steps, then the owner is going to get a superior product, an as-built turned over to them, well above their expectations.
So congratulations. We've gone through the 13 steps. OK. As promised, we were going to talk about step 1 a little bit more, which is synergy. And really, this is a prereq, as I would call it, to getting to the other steps. This is about having proper alignment with all the parties that need to have buy-in to implementing in-wall coordination.
And if any one of these things are missing, this will be challenging to execute. So BIM culture. Does the general contractor have a good BIM culture? Do they believe in BIM? Do they build from the model? Do their leadership support this?
You want to make sure that this is one of the very first things that exist when evaluating in-wall coordination. And through that BIM culture, does the pre-construction teams understand the value of implementing in-wall coordination? After all, they will need to bring on trade partners that can support it, and trade partners that will price to it.
And pre-construction teams will need to evaluate if the project budget overall can support it. Buy-in with owner and design teams. How does the owner view in-wall coordination? Do they see value on providing that level of detail to their project in their walls?
Does a core market and project type support it? Will the design team be part of the review discussions? Will they answer your questions in a timely manner? You want the buy-in there.
BIM as a source of truth. Even if you have a good BIM culture, a GC, sometimes that may not trickle all the way down to a project team. They might have other ideas. So you want to make sure that the project team actually building the project sees BIM as a one source of truth and will build from the model.
Technical capability of your trade partners. You want to make sure to evaluate if your trade partners have on-site resources, in-house resources, versus off-site resources, because this can have impact on how the flow of communication happens and the speed at which that happens. This becomes very crucial when design changes start happening with real-time construction.
Do they have the resources to support the work and the technical capability? Because it can be complex. Vendors. Do we know what we need from them? For example, medical equipment vendors, there could be an opportunity in which we need better models from them to include in these rooms that we're coordinating. And if they can't do that, we will identify that as a scope gap that we pick up.
All in all, do you have the resources to do this? Depending on the intensity and complexity of the in-wall coordination effort, you might need a full-time resource from a GC standpoint to execute the work. Or maybe it's a split between a PE and a VDC engineer or VDC manager, and the same questions can be applied to trade partners.
So you really want to evaluate all these things. However, hope is not lost. If you're not checking all these boxes, there are ways to manage in-wall coordination internally as a GC, which we will highlight at the end of this session. But definitely want to make sure that these things are very important to evaluate.
Step 2, scope buyout. We said we're going to talk about this a little bit more. And this is really about. Making sure we're articulating to our trade partners at bidding what we expect from them. And this is going to happen after we all agree we're going to do in-wall coordination, now we need our buyout trades to support this.
And one of the things that has been very helpful for us is just to think about the rooms that we're going to be building and what is in the room. And then we basically just matrix out all of that into a model responsibility matrix and assign expectations on who we need model content from.
So you can see on the right here of the screen, we have mechanical with modeling expectations that we are needing for them. We have electrical and framing with modeling expectations that we can articulate to them. We have also identified in this particular example, scope gap.
We couldn't get the particular trades that would provide those list of items to carry that within their budget, so we identified that as scope gap and needed to address this internally. And of course, there's going to be items that the design team is going to provide that get incorporated to that bottled environment.
And we need to ensure who's reviewing all this work from a model and sheet review standpoint. So this really helps articulate what are we needing and to what level of detail and development and when. Also, on another note, I really want to emphasize the framing model.
This is probably one of the single most important pieces to have included in your scope at buyout, is a 3D framing model by the framers. This is a skeleton into which coordination and in-wall coordination depends on. In fact, even if you were not doing involved coordination on a project, just having a framing, a detailed framing model, part of your BIM coordination process will enrich it in many ways that are lesser known.
For example, infill. A lot of teams will model the kings and corners and bottom and top track of framing, but we ask them to include infill as well. And it's an easy thing to do. It's just a few more button clicks and you get the infill in there.
And really, what that does is it provides the MEP trades opportunities to weave their onesie twosie pipes between the framing so that is done ahead of time, rather than having that conversation in the field. So we're optimizing that. So in coordination itself, it improves. But for in-wall, we really need to see this framing to know where to position devices and how to block out openings. It's very important.
So once we get all this organized, you really can start packaging this up in your VDC execution plan, your exhibits, an A2, and have that all stacked correctly so that you're buying things out with clarity and accountability. OK, so we're going to move on to sheet automation, which is what I find very exciting.
If I had this many years ago, this would have made my life much easier. And the reason we chose sheet creation for today's instructional step-by-step is it can be very tedious and time consuming. So we want to pass this off to Varun and he's going to walk us through this and how to make your life easier if you're doing sheets.
VARUN RAJA: Thank you, Dustin. Thank you for walking us through such detailed step-by-step process to get us to that starting point of actually in-wall coordination itself. And now that we've all understood what needs to be done way left of the line to have that successful coordination process, let's really talk about the process itself and how to scale that, and really understand what are the necessary key ingredients to have successful in-wall coordination process.
So I want to start here with the understanding, the first point right here, which is removing silos. And what I mean by removing silos here is essentially moving away from a Bluebeam session to ACC. So this snapshot here shows you a workflow where we have posted all of our spool sheets into the collections module of Autodesk Construction Cloud sheets module.
And how this removes silos is-- nothing against Bluebeam, but when you have a workflow that might be focused but it's restrictive to the broader team, it creates those silos and it's not a collaborative environment anymore. What is really powerful here is as you go through the weekly cadence, the sheets themselves version, and you could really track the progress of your coordination and look at the history of why a certain device has moved, or where it is right now.
And that's the power of removing that silos and making sure you start with the collaborative environment. And moving on to the next one. It's really talking about how do we enable easy access to this information.
In order to understand this process, we are leveraging the ACC assets module. And what you see here in the screen is a snapshot of a floorplan that within which each room is tagged as an asset, and we connect that asset to the spool sheet that we're going to be using for in-wall coordination process itself, where we'll be able to mark up issues.
Everyone consumes information in a different way, but within the AC industry, I think we can comfortably say that we all understand floorplans better, and we consume information in this format. And this would be something that you really need to think through and see if this is the best fit for your project team as well.
So once you have really talked about understanding how that easy access to information workflow is, next, it's about creating those spool sheets and how do you automate that package creation. What you see here in the snapshot is the beautiful spool sheet that we've created for each room to help us enable that in-wall coordination process itself.
And in order to achieve this, we've used a plugin called Glyph within Revit, and I'll dive into a step-by-step process on actually how to get there in an automated fashion. And the last and final process is you essentially need to make sure you have a tracking methodology in terms of understanding where you are within the coordination process itself.
Again, we are leveraging the ACC assets module to keep track of the coordination progress. And what you see here is essentially different colors with each color connected to a particular status, milestone, or a handoff within that process itself.
And now, let's jump into that sheet automation that we all are eagerly looking for. So in order to get to that beautiful room level spool sheets, we'll have to do some initial setup. And what the first initial setup entails is around the view template alignment.
And it's exactly what it means, which is you pull up a panel view, like what you see in this image, and you collaboratively have a discussion with the participants of this coordination meeting to make sure you're aligned with respect to the devices that you want to see in these views, and maybe the color scheme of these devices that makes sense for the team itself and makes your coordination process a little bit simpler.
And by color scheme, I mean, really diving into the details, right? So often, you will find while doing in-wall coordination, you'll ask questions about these equipments within the room layout. If the equipment such as mobile, if the equipment is fixed. If it's fixed, does it have a utility tie-in, or even if it's on wheels, does it have a utility tie-in or does it need utility tie-ins?
So this could go on with so many combinations. And in order to answer these questions in a more visual manner, it's good to have that setup kind of done in the very initial stages itself. And what you see in this image is exactly that. We have categorized those different type of combinations into different work sets, and we've assigned a color so that visually you will be able to understand what you're looking at.
So once you're done with this view template setup, the next setup is around the room boundary settings. And this is really key for actually using the Glyph module because that's how Glyph understands the constraints of a room. And when you try to create these packages by room, the trigger point is essentially through the room boundary itself.
And we try to get these room boundaries from the architectural model where we copy monitor them into our file. Maybe we'll throw it in a different work set so it's a little bit organized. One key step to remember once you have done the copy monitor is essentially pick an elevation view of a particular room boundary and make sure the expense of that room boundary goes from floor to floor.
Because when you create a panel view, you would want to see the entire panel itself and you don't want anything cropped out. So once you're done with the initial setup, now we can really talk about how to essentially use Glyph to automate these packages. So this is essentially the first step, and this is the interface of what Glyph looks like.
And Glyph makes it very easy for us to actually get to that final point of spool sheet creation. So they have a module called As Creating Bundles. What you see here in this example is we created a bundle called Inwall Coordination bundle, and its bundle is nothing but there are several automated tools just combined together, put in a sequential operation.
So here, we've got three automated tools within the bundle which starts from creating the views by room, followed by creating the sheets for that room, and finally, placing those views that you've created into the sheets that you've created. So now, let's understand each step in a little bit more detail and see how the workflow entails.
So moving into the next step here, which is about creating those views. Here, in this example, I've picked creating a floor plan view. So remember our first step where we talked about getting that view template aligned, that's essentially what you are selecting what it calls out here for room QC plan view. You essentially select your view template.
So once you're done with that, we need to make sure to select the call out instead of separate views, so that you don't get disjointed views but instead, you have a view that's created, that's connected to the parent floor plan. And finally, you want to make sure you come up with a naming convention so that you're consistent.
Once you're done with this, we move on to the next step of creating the sheets. Now, here, it's really critical that you select this option where you're tying a connection between this ongoing step to the previous step so that Glyph understands it's a sequence. So make sure you hit that output from previous task.
Once you're done with that, now you really define the properties of what this sheet is going to look like. It's recommended that you have your own title block. Here, you could see we have selected DPR's own title block format, followed by coming up with a naming convention for these sheets so that it's consistent.
Once you're done with that, we move on to the final step of actually placing these views on the sheets themselves. So remember to again, make sure you are selecting the output from previous tasks so that again, Glyph understands that it's a sequence. Once you're done with that, now we really dive into the details of defining what the sheet really looks like.
So what you see here in this graphic is Glyph giving us options to define the zones of what the sheet can be divided into to help place those views that you've created. So in this example, you could see there is seven of different zones in a sheet. And this is essentially, if you hit that pencil button icon, you can really define your zones.
If you hit Next, you can see the highlights. And then, Glyph also gives you an option where you can actually attach a particular view type to a particular zone as shown in this example. Like I always prefer the floor to be in the center, so that's something that I could be able to define it, which is really convenient.
So once you're done with these settings, you're really good to go, and you hit that play button. Actually, don't. What we have found out with a lot of trial and error is Glyph takes a little bit lengthier time to process when you have all of the related trade Revit links turned on.
And since we have already defined our view template settings, we should be OK to unload them, except for the architectural file, and then hit the Play button. So this actually really improves the efficiency by almost 80%. So once you're done unloading and when you hit that Play button, your sheet is created, and it looks something like this.
Not to worry about it. Now all you have to do is go back to that Manage Links, and then hit Load, and then your sheet will look something like this, where you have all the relevant content and you are achieving this at a much faster pace with greater efficiency.
So now that you've seen how you could essentially create these amazing spool sheets, you could really scale this process across projects to give you that opportunity to implement in-wall coordination. And why this matters is you'll start seeing this directly or indirectly, that it unlocks some of the opportunities to improve production on site.
So let's dive into how exactly this unlocks some of the prefab opportunities and how you can manage this process through ACC assets. Over to you, Dustin.
DUSTIN RIDLEY: Awesome. Thank you for Varun for making my life easier. [LAUGHS] OK, so how is prefabrication improved by in-wall coordination? Well, there are two avenues to prefabrication, and that is off-site prefab and on-site prefab.
And when we think of in-wall coordination, a lot of off-site prefab products that come to mind are headwalls, foot walls, exterior wall paneling, precast panels, modular pods and et cetera. And the one common thread that all of these products have is doing really good, detailed in-wall coordination. It's really kind of a must.
So we also have use cases of doing on-site manufacturing of head walls and foot walls, which you can refer to in our technical handout for more details, because we actually spent some time detailing that out. Those steps, which also require detailed in-wall coordination. It was vital to the success and execution.
Now, that being said, it is true there is a lot of focus in the industry on what a general contractor can prefabricate as a product and how we can design to this prefab. However, I think we can give more attention, even in the most smallest ways. We really should be thinking about these things.
When you move beyond selected critical walls to prefab to a more total room coordination approach, you can then truly unlock and enable any prefab opportunities that you can think of, such as black boxes for electrical. When you have the level of detail that's shown here in the 3D model image to the left and multiply it across the entire project, you can then truly plan for, quantify and strategize for prefabrication of anything.
In fact, the list that you see here to the right of the screen is a list of 85 different use cases for trade prefabrication from a recent healthcare hospital we built. Pretty amazing, if you ask me. So here are some images of those brief application opportunities for the trades on this hospital project.
You're seeing light fixtures that were prefabbed, electrical panels, conduit racks in the overhead, zone file boxes and plumbing, and so on and so forth. Not really in-wall related, but this next image is.
What you see here in the image on the top is a bunch of containers that are on wheels with prefabricated components for in-wall put in them, and they can be wheeled to the rooms that they associate with in terms of the elevated drawings that have been created. So to be able to quantify this and prefab this ahead of time, whether it's on-site or off-site, really is a powerful thing to have.
VARUN RAJA: And what we have also learned is that in order to be successful in these pre-fabrication efforts, it's very important to have a detailed step-by-step process written out, similar to our in-wall coordination step-by-step process. So what you see here in the snapshot is essentially that.
At a high level, we have categorized it into two different buckets. What you see in yellow is the physical action itself that involves putting the panel together. And what you see in blue highlights are an ACC asset action.
Because to track the production flow of a prefabricated panel, we have used the ACC asset module itself, where it starts by scanning a QR code that enables the access to this spool sheet through that asset module, and it captures the handoff between different teams through the status workflow.
And you'll start to see that in the next image on how the end product looks like. So the fruits of having a detailed in-wall coordination is essentially what you see in this picture, which as a coordination process is efficient and the tracking progress is efficient, and all of that tying together. So this is essentially, each panel here and colors are representing the status of where that panel is within that production line.
And that panel is linked to, as an asset, through the native authored file itself. So when you select a panel, you can actually see the spool sheet that was used to build it and also a reference image that the crew took during the handoff for better documentation. And what you see here is essentially that we have detailed what each status means and essentially, it is to capture that handoff between the teams.
So when you pull up a detailed activity log of a panel E2-621, as shown in this example, you could really see the flow of that panel through the production line from start to end. And with the timestamp. So you could take this data and find out the production of your production line in a very easy manner. And you don't have to spin up another dashboard to do so.
Now we've seen that how all of this ties to unlocking some of the opportunities around prefab. On a similar note, we want to talk about how doing an effective in-wall coordination and planning for it actually helps us unlock some of the robotic layout capabilities. Over to you, Dustin.
DUSTIN RIDLEY: Awesome Thank you, Varun. So this is an area that is pretty exciting because in this part of the session, you start to see the byproducts of doing great in-wall coordination. And in this example, the images on the right, what you see is pony walls that have been detailed, and we leverage Dusty Robotics to go lay that out.
Well, where we're taking this a step further is, OK, if we're doing in-wall coordination, how else can we leverage this for multi-trade layout? And this is where through in-wall coordination, you have certainty on device placement, in terms of elevation and horizontal position.
You can get information related to the MEP blockouts in the framing and backing strips and other information. So that's where we really start to see the benefits of in-wall coordination come out, is when you can leverage robotic total stations and Dusty Robotics for layout.
And this is a benefit, not only to the bottom track layout of the walls, but you can start to lay out sleeve penetrations and device locations and elevations, and block out openings in the wall. And so we are really starting to explore different ways how in-wall coordination can benefit the BIM to field process.
So we touched on prefab strategy and we touched on Dusty Robotics as great byproducts of doing good in-wall coordination. Another area we're actually very excited to show you is how we're leveraging augmented reality for QA/QC. And there are many different ways you can think of to leverage augmented reality, but the one that we're going to focus on today is in-wall QA/QC, with AR.
And what would we look for in a QA/QC effort with AR? Well, it's incorrect in-wall device locations and in-wall devices installed but not shown in the model, incorrect stud spacing and framing openings, incorrect in-wall pipe stub ups, and so on and so forth.
If we have this information in the model and we have a fully coordinated room, why not take that and overlay it to the field to quickly see if we have deviations? So Varun's going to take us through how we're doing that and what products we're using to do that.
VARUN RAJA: Thanks, Dustin. That's essentially it. We want to make sure there is a way for the project teams to access information in a very easy fashion, and they're not really struggling to get there. What you see here in the video is essentially how easy it is to pull up your phone and scan maybe the two QR codes at a minimum.
And once you've done that, you essentially have the overlay of a coordinated model, and then you can toggle different layers as you need based on what you want to review. That's essentially it. You're essentially providing a tool that's easy to use and easy to deploy, and essentially helping that QA/QC workflow to be very successful.
In order to do this, we want to also make sure on the left of it, the setup is also very easy and scalable. And that's what this three steps kind of detail out in a very easy manner for us to understand. It starts with that setting up of the model itself, and then followed by how you correlate the model to the real world using QR codes that you saw in the video.
And finally, the most important one is really finding the champions that really help push folks on the project team to leverage this technology, and actually spend some time training the folks to use this. So let's look into some of the details of how exactly the setting up of the model within the platform called Sitelink works.
So what you saw in the video in the previous slide, is again, from Sitelink. And this is one of the platforms that DPR is invested in and is currently deployed in several job sites. That's very active.
And you can see some of the formats that this platform supports and it essentially starts with the integration with ACC. That's what is the key differentiator for this platform, that it integrates well with the Autodesk Construction Cloud itself. And with that ability, we are able to pull all the models into the Sitelinks portal as individual layers that you could turn on and off.
So once you're done with that model setup, now you have to try to correlate that to the real life. And the way we do that is with these QR codes. And the QR codes are either pasted on the floor or on the columns with a minimum spacing of anywhere between 12 to 15 feet.
And the reason we maintain that distance is to control the level of drift and the accuracy of the model alignment itself. And what Sitelink kind of makes it easier on us is it gives you that feedback on exactly how accurate that model alignment is, and how bad or good that drift is. So depending on that feedback, you can really adjust your placement of the QR codes itself.
And you can also get creative by using Dusty to print out those QR codes on the floor, as you see. So now, what to do? Once you have that set up, you're ready to start that QC process.
So one such example that I want to share with you folks is, at a recent project site, we established this workflow where two weeks prior to something getting installed, we want to do a field walk with this tool in our hand and make sure we have a better understanding of what's coming up, and see if we can spot any issues. Well, we did.
In this walk, what happened was we spotted a misalignment of a plumbing riser against the layout of the drywall itself. And the way we track the progress of that issue resolution is through that pin that you see in the first image, which we call it as a Sitelink. And what's neat about it is it integrates very well with ACC issues.
And once we have a resolution, you can see the model is updated and the ACC issue gets updated. Throughout all this process, the entire project team is kept informed. Everyone has transparency towards what's happening on the jobsite, and this is a very efficient way to manage your field issue control.
So that's just one example. Another example, maybe not related to in-wall, but you could obviously use it for in-wall QA/QC, is this is another recent example where our site superintendent kind of felt the layout of the mechanical shaft was a little funky and it was not what was planned.
What's the next step that he has to do in order to verify? Obviously, they pull out a tape measure and try to measure the layout itself against something that is a fixed reference. Well, in this case, the sheer wall that was closer to the layout itself happened to be that reference.
But once you're done with that measurement, he really has two options. Either he could verify that himself by looking at it and comparing it to the shop drawings, or he can delegate that over to a PE or a VDC resource, because we all know how busy the superintendents are.
Well, what's a different way to approach this problem and to resolve this? What you see here is another example of how you could utilize the existing hardware on your phone within the Sitelink app itself. In lieu of taking markups, you can actually scan the environment using the LiDAR scanner.
And that's what you see in the video. Once you're done with that scanning process, you can publish that to the cloud. And then from that point onwards, if you go to the next slide, you'll really see the evolution of how you could go from having to do these markups to essentially, doing the comparison yourself by comparing it with the model.
So in this snapshot, you see the point cloud data of the ground compared against the coordinated model. And really, the key here is the superintendent himself is able to do all this in the same day without having to involve an additional resource, or having a lag in actually understanding if this actually is a problem.
Fortunately, this was not a problem. Everything was OK. We moved on. So you could see how you could really connect the dots here with in-wall coordination.
DUSTIN RIDLEY: Awesome. Thank you, Varun. So, exciting stuff and you might be asking, OK, where is this going? Here's an image of something I shared earlier on in our presentation. And this is a ACC punch list that we were doing for electrical scope. And if you look at the top right picture or document, what you're going to see is some in-wall framing.
And then to the very left of that is an iPad with the elevated drawing, which represents our coordinated in-wall efforts. Now, what they did, and we're very happy that they did this, is that they're bringing up the drawing on their iPad, and they're looking at the wall and making comparative notes.
Where this AR technology is going is instead of doing that, you can just bypass that step and just overlay the model to the wall itself in the field and create the ACC issues right there. And that is going to continue to enhance and evolve how we're doing in wall coordination and QA/QC, and leveraging augmented reality to do that. So very cool stuff.
So I promised I was going to talk about this and this would be quick. The basics. What do you do if you're not DPR? What do you do if you're not a self-performing GC of interior framing? What do you do if you don't have 100% VDC adoption culture in your company?
What do you do if you don't have a framing model? So hope isn't lost. There are methods you can take to implement in-wall coordination on your own, as low hanging fruit. These two examples represent two examples done by a MEP coordinator and a PM at DPR.
On the left here, this is done on a smaller project. This was done several years ago, where the project didn't have a budget to provide to the trade team to do in-wall coordination. So the MEP coordinator was determined not to let this be a barrier and they, in AutoCAD, modeled and detailed their own framing, and they overlaid all the electrical devices in the wall by doing a cross disciplinary review of the documentation for the project.
And they leveraged this to answer questions, to request information through RFIs, and to coordinate with the trade partners and owner. And this was helpful to the project. And on the right, this is the exact same process, but done with our strategic partner vConstruct.
And we employed them on this project to model the framing and overlay the electrical devices in the wall and create these elevated details. And this enabled the PM to do the same thing, to ask questions about the interior framing and electrical devices and information that may have been missing conflicting. So this was something that they did on the project themselves.
And now, I wouldn't recommend doing this on a 500,000 square foot hospital project, because this would be very tedious. But on a smaller project, you can absolutely do this. So the most important thing to take away here, as long as you're putting attention to in-wall coordination in any effort, there's going to be value to your project.
What we're doing today, mostly is showing you how to implement advanced in-wall coordination. So that being said, this concludes our session. And on a final note, we just wanted to say that we truly believe at DPR in the value of leveraging technology and construction on all projects, regardless of size.
And this is something that resonates from our presentation last year, small projects, big VDC. We believe in endless innovation and continuous improvement. And this really feeds our Ever Forward spirit. And so how we approach in-wall coordination at DPR is absolutely industry setting and we hope that we inspired you to try something new.
And if anything that you walk away with today is, don't look at this as a literal, you have to do every step this way. If you can just walk out of this session today with a couple new ideas on how to approach in-wall coordination and leverage technology to do that, or to try something new, then we see this as a win and an improvement to the industry. Varun, any final thoughts?
VARUN RAJA: No, I think you summed it up pretty well. It's essentially, hopefully, inspired you enough that you either fall in the bucket of oh, this is really overwhelming, or you really say, I have a good guiding book now to refer to in-wall coordination. Either way, we wanted you to at least start having the thought of implementing in-wall coordination, and this is like your first step to maybe helping you to do that.
DUSTIN RIDLEY: Awesome. Thank you.
VARUN RAJA: Thank you.