Thomas Nyrud
Uncover the transformative power of Solibri Office in BIM coordination, providing unparalleled reliability and trust to project teams worldwide.
Coordination and model validation are challenging tasks for BIM Coordinators. Even though among their prime goals is the mitigation of risk -- both at the planning stage and when breaking ground on site -- the tasks carry their own risk, particularly when the time comes to bring multiple models into one reliable version of the truth. A version the whole team can trust.
In this blog, I outline why, and how Solibri Office enables you to deliver that reliability and trust; putting an end to uncertainty by making it easy to identify issues at the outset, coordinate and communicate validated data, and simplify/automate rules-based model checking (your rules, your way).
At the outset of a new project, excitement affects the whole team. So does a degree of anxiety, regardless of how experienced the team may be. The thing is, they’ve usually seen it all before. They’ve seen projects run smoothly, on time and on budget, but they’ve also seen how relatively small oversights at the planning stage can have unexpected consequences and disproportionately big impacts as the project evolves.
Accepting that at some point in a building project the need for re-work (or re-thinking) will arise, is almost part of the construction industry culture. As adept as skilful site teams might be at fixing the issues, additional costs will be incurred, progress delayed, and owners less than impressed, no matter where the problem originated.
Errors can start life in the model all too often.
If they’re not spotted early enough, they linger.
They put down roots, they grow, and they may sprout
at the point where remedies start to cost money and consume time.
If you’re a BIM Coordinator, your responsibilities are huge: Ensuring delivery, quality assurance, adherence to multiple standards, and enabling and monitoring accurate BIM information flows, not least via a reliable 3D model.
Although architects design the model, it’s for the BIM Coordinator to envision and implement the right framework for the collaborative workflows that ensures it correctly fulfils its function -- throughout the lifecycle of the project, from conception through to handover, and beyond.
The most likely source of errors germinating in the model in the first place is lack of communication arising from approaches to collaboration across the team – architects, engineers, designers, contractors, and even project owners.
The more robust and seamless the collaboration,
the greater your ability to find issues early on;
removing errors by their roots to weed out project risk.
This is the ability you’ll gain with Solibri Office.
Choosing the right tool for the job can be a challenge in itself, always with that goal of ensuring diligent risk mitigation to ensure that whatever needs to be done to avoid re-work on site, has been done; not an altogether easy task as the model evolves with multiple input from multiple project participants.
Combining models from different disciplines into one federated model (also known as a ‘combined model’) is where clash detection comes into its own. It’s in this area that the nature of the project is likely to dictate how sophisticated you need the software to be.
Some software focuses on hard clashes; physical collisions. In infrastructure, or mega, projects hard clash detection is acceptable at conception given the sheer size of the project and the length of time it is going to take. Finite detail at an early stage is simply not needed.
In buildings, however, with far greater potential for any manner of clashes, finite detail is a must – soft clashes must be understood early on, since space or size variations in the interests of on-site adjustments must be allowed for. In this scenario I recommend that your choice of software is easy. Solibri Office is the gatekeeper for quality.
There’s a lot to explore with Solibri Office, and a range of efficiencies that you’ll be amazed have been taking you so much effort to achieve without it. Here are some key benefits for BIM Coordinators:
As far as automation goes, once you set the rules you can save them and use them on project after project. Commonly required BIM guidelines can be turned into rules since they will apply to all BIM-related projects. This means that as soon as you are in possession of the model, within a few clicks the heavy lifting can begin. You’ll spot anomalies, errors and non-compliance issues almost immediately; saving a significant amount of time and ensuring that errors don’t live on to any later stage in the project.
The team here at Symetri can help you achieve your goals with confidence and greater speed than you may be used to. We offer a number of training modules on Solibri and are always here to help. Feel free to get in touch to explore a little further.
