BIM Implementation on Marine Engineering Polytechnic Project

BIM UMP Holdings provides four main services which are organizational transformation, project and consultancy, training and education and research and development. They have many facilities to ensure seamless collaboration and coordination among stakeholders such as a BIM LAB equipped with 24 workstations, Multi-monitors Project Coordination rooms (BIM BIG ROOMS), Technical Coordination and Management room, Seminar room and more. 

The BIM UMPH team has been involved with many types of projects such as Institutional Building, Public Housing, Government Building, and Residential Building. They also get involved with the development of CIDB National BIM Module, CITP BIM Ecosystem Programme, National BIM technical training and organizational BIM Transformation Programme to assist companies to adopt and implement BIM applications.

During projects that involved BIM, the most common challenges faced by the construction industry are BIM adoption and BIM readiness due to lack of manpower expertise to implement the work. Even though UMPH is fully capable to execute the BIM works, the rest of contractors and consultants are lacking behind in BIM capabilities. Due to the nature of the Construction industry, it is crucial for all project stakeholders to have full understanding and BIM capabilities according to work needs.

Other than that, the construction industry also faces unclear or confusing scope of work, unclear standard for data management, and poor process flow coordination between digital and physical activities. The issue regarding coordination will still arise even with BIM application; hence, why proper site validation and verification is very important to ensure a smooth BIM workflow. 

Marine Engineering Polytechnic Bagan Datuk is a design and build project under the Public Work Department which is an agency under Ministry of Work Malaysia. Project end user for this project is Politeknik Malaysia, an agency under Ministry of Higher Education Malaysia who will operate and manage this facility. For this project, UMP Holdings Sdn Bhd has been appointed as a BIM Consultant to lead, facilitate and manage the entire BIM implementation process including design development, construction and as-built.

There are five BIM objectives in this project:

1) Facilitate the design review process. 

2) Manage client’s expectation through 3D visualization. 

3) Generate documentations to model including drawings, schedule or any related document that needs to be extracted from the BIM model according to client’s requirement. 

4) Minimize conflicts and reworks at the construction site by executing 3D coordination before construction at site begins. 

5) Facilitate the record model and capture for FM system use by the end user later.

The requirement for BIM usage based on the contract are to develop a multi-disciplinary BIM model, Authoring for Detail Design, Construction and As-Built, to prepare spatial analysis requirement on Architecture Model, BIM coordination for clash and design review. Next is Room Data Interaction (RDI) which is one of the critical requirements. Since the project involves many machineries and special equipment, the Public Work Department specified the requirement for RDI in the contract requirements. Next, to update construction models regularly and to produce coordinated models for all disciplines. Finally, to produce a record model for operation and maintenance. BIM UMPH is required to update all asset data into the model using strata format before handover to client later on.

To achieve the project goals, there are several documents BIM UMPH must comply and refer to ensure project standardization. The first document to refer is BIM: Garis Panduan JKR, second document is BIM Piawaian BIM JKR and the last document is JKR Building Information Modelling (BIM) Requirements for Design & Build Projects. Both guideline and standard documents are readily available for download online but the requirement document is only shared by public work department to the parties involved with the project.

Other than that, BIM UMPH has to come up with a process flow to develop a BIM Execution Plan which is one of the critical elements to have for a successful BIM project. The process flow begins with identification of BIM Scope delivery and requirements that need to be delivered based on the contract. From there, digital work breakdown structure would be established and transferred to project BIM process mapping. The BEP will be referred by all project team members for the entire project phase and will be updated based on requirements set by the client.

For this project, a Common Data Environment was adopted throughout the project lifecycle to ensure all project team members have the latest BIM information. The benefits of CDE for this project are able to manage and disseminate project documents for multi-disciplinary teams in a managed process. CDE serves as a digital hub, allowing for the efficient and accurate sharing of verified and coordinated information with all project team members. It will enhance the effort for more complex and deep implementation of BIM to companies and it will increase investments on training new BIM abilities. 

Construction designs using BIM provide a more accurate, three-dimensional view of the project's final product. This leads to a greater understanding of the final product. Contractors and the client may benefit from this in order to gain a better understanding of the built asset. Better planning with more detailed insights allows contractors to deliver higher quality. Due to architects being able to visualize the building earlier on also puts greater emphasis on the appearance of the building. As such, BIM produces higher quality built assets.

By using the Autodesk AEC Collection, BIM UMPH are able to achieve the project goals and comply with project standardization and project requirements. 3D authoring tools like Revit, Civil 3D and InfraWorks allow seamless designing and integration with project requirements with local standards and specifications in order to produce 3D informatics BIM models. By having 3D informatics BIM Models, BIM UMPH are able to overcome the critical parts in construction which are producing an accurate as-built drawing. They are also able to avoid any mistakes during material take-off when there is an amendment that has been done in the model and finally to have a better visualization and documentation of the design improvements.

Autodesk Navisworks Manage is also used for design review and coordination purposes. The BIM UMPH team are able to visualize and unify design and construction data within a single federated model, identify and resolve clash and interference problems before construction begins and lastly, we are able to keep project teams collaborating and connected with Navisworks issues and integration in the Autodesk Construction Cloud. Other than that, BIM UMPH are able to produce Integrated Drawings and Schedule. 

The benefits are divided into 3 areas:

1) All of the views involved in this project were totally integrated. Any amendment of the BIM Model will automatically integrate with the drawing and the schedules itself. 

2) The accuracy of the drawing can be ensured precisely as per BIM Model created. 

3) The benefits for long term uses and any renovation, operation and maintenance that need to be done for future can be easily referred to the digital drawing that had been developed. 

4) By having CDE, BIM UMPH teams able to create a single source of information to facilitate collaboration between project team members and helps to avoid duplication and mistakes.