Construction Firm Leverages BIM Collaborate for Model Coordination

Clearwater Construction are a construction firm with offices in Auckland and Christchurch New Zealand, who offer services in design and build, construction and interiors for the apartment, commercial and industrial markets. Established in 1984, Clearwater Construction has built a solid track record of innovative design and smart structural solutions for the NZ construction market. Clearwater Construction traditionally relied on manual coordination of construction models. This was both time consuming and inefficient. With a tight construction program to work with and a desire to maintain quality control across the wider design teams, Clearwater’s main challenge revolved around reducing timelines and improving their overall construction coordination process.

Clearwater Construction had a number of specific project goals to achieve: 1.Reduce time and improve efficiencies on coordination tasks. 2.Democratise the model coordination process to the wider team. 3.Keep pace with regular construction model changes.

With technical advice and services provided by CADPRO, Clearwater Construction implemented BIM Collaborate for managing model coordination. BIM Collaborate provided the team with simple to use tools to automate the clashing of models and a common data environment to efficiently identity and close out coordination issues. Automatic clash detection allowed the wider project team to participate in the model coordination process, without the need for specialist software. Project team members performed constructability reviews on demand, with all requested design changes and communication tracked back to the relevant design teams. Working from a common data environment, all project team members could store, manage, and review project models from a single secure location. As frequent model updates intensified, revisions were tightly controlled throughout the project lifecycle and with latest information available, field teams readily embraced the use of mobile technology.

BIM Collaborate allowed Clearwater Construction to perform model coordination reviews faster, with less omissions and less rework. Coordination issues are identified and resolved earlier, providing more assurance at each stage of construction. The use of mobile technology and overall team collaboration has improved, with reviewing of models in the field now common practice.

The adoption of BIM Collaborate has enabled Clearwater Construction to transition from a manual coordination system to a cloud based digital solution. This transformation has enhanced model coordination, quality assurance and document control processes, reducing project errors and cost. This model centric practice is now repeatable and integrated across all new projects, resulting in improved productivity, as well as project transparency for all stakeholders.