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For Construction Coordination, Lease Crutcher Lewis Goes 'Single Source'

For Construction Coordination, Lease Crutcher Lewis Goes 'Single Source'

Customer challenge

Lease Crutcher Lewis has been providing construction services in the Pacific Northwest and beyond for over 130 years. The scale and complexity of recent and ongoing projects have brought with them an imperative to up their game in digital construction and project coordination—with award winning results. While an early adopter of BIM and virtual design construction (VDC), Lewis continually expands their digital collaboration capabilities with the help of their local Topcon Solutions Store (TSS) as a single source for applicable product online training, support, and business transformation consulting.

Project goals

Lease Crutcher Lewis has multiple goals in mind such as expanding use of ‘single source of truth’ environments for models and documents. Next would be expanding the adoption of live collaboration platforms. In addition to that, engaging and encouraging their subcontractors to adopt solutions compatible with their BIM/VDC environment. Growth in cloud-based project management, file sharing, and change management

Solution

A standard now for Lewis is to house all models and documents in Autodesk BIM 360 Docs,” says Mark Boden, Senior BIM/VDC Coordinator, Lease Crutcher Lewis. “The traditional process with model coordination was for the designers and trade contractors uploading their models to an FTP site. And then the model coordinator would download all those models—often only on a weekly basis.” The challenge, as Boden notes, is that they would have to federate them in Navisworks each time, and then run the clash analyses. “In our new process, everything lives in the cloud, in BIM 360 Docs—live models—so everything, the most current models, are there,” say Boden. “And the software pulls those together and federates them for us. Then all we're doing at the back end is opening up that Navisworks model for clash detection. To expand coordination in all phases of the project lifecycle, across project teams and contractors, Lewis also began to implement BIM Collaborate Pro for their most recent projects.

Business outcome

The Center for Population Health at the University of Washington, recently completed, is where Lewis implemented both solutions. The project has garnered numerous awards, including the Design Build Institute of America’s 2021 Project of the Year. “This project demonstrated how highly collaborative relationships with the architects, design and construction contractors should work,” says Boden. “The MEP designers hand over models, and the mechanical contractor can do layout, like with Point Layout on total stations. We’ve seen increased efficiency using Collaborate Pro.” A current project is the expansion of a specialty lab, with limited common spaces in the structure for mechanical, electrical, and chemical systems. “We have to continually do clash detection of the models the contractors are using,” say Boden. “BIM 360 Docs, as the single source of truth, allows us to meet tight construction timelines, and we’re able to centralize project and model coordination with Collaborate Pro.”

Conclusion

Boden says that implementation of Autodesk BIM 360 Docs was relatively easy, even considering the mix of data formats the various contractors provide. It simplified the process of model updates for all involved, so the immediate benefits outweigh any learning curve lags. As had the adoption of Autodesk Collaborate Pro. “We usually train the contractors ourselves, because we'll have our specific settings and we want to make [sure] everyone is hitting the bullet points, and making sure models are aligned and published correctly,” says Boden. “At the beginning of a project we have a VDC kickoff meeting with the project team, to make sure that expectations are consistent.” While TSS offers in-person and virtual training, Lewis primarily taps the TSS online training library for their project teams, which is a testament to the depth of materials. Lewis is already eyeing other new solutions to enhance their single source VDC environment.

Project summary

    Duration & delivery

  • 365
  • 2021-09-07

    Autodesk solutions

  • Revit
  • Navisworks Manage
  • BIM 360 Docs
  • BIM 360 Collaborate Pro
  • BIM 360 Glue
  • Point Layout
  • BIM 360 Build

    Services provided

  • Product Training
  • Technical Support
  • Business Transformation Consulting

    Customer industry

  • Construction
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