Get the concise facts and data about LEED through an infographic developed by Arch Daily and shared by the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) below:

What is LEED?

LEED certifies that a building and/or community is designed and built using strategies to achieve high performance and quality in key areas in human and environmental health. Using a point system to measure certification, the USGBC has created categories to direct development to LEED standards. Rating levels consist of certified, silver, gold, and platinum with a minimum 40-point rating requirement.

What it measures:

• Sustainable sites
• Water efficiency
• Energy & Atmosphere
• Material & Resources
• Indoor environmental quality
• Regional priority
• Innovation in design

So who is currently leading in LEED? According to USGBC.org, Washington, DC is leading the top ten states with a 31.50 rating. This could be due to the increased spending budget and efforts to “green” its new facilities.

Learn more about LEED at www.usgbc.org.

Related Articles

• How Green are your State Buildings? Meet the Top 10 States for Green Buildings
• GSA Moves to LEED Gold for all New Federal Buildings and Major Renovations

Background

This is the third in a series of blogs that shares the extraordinary and sometimes life-changing stories and experiences of a group of CAD, AEC, GIS and BIM experts who have chosen to share their knowledge with under-served communities and nations. These volunteers work hand-in-hand with KnowledgeWell, a non-profit organization whose goal is to transform the barriers faced by under-resourced nations into opportunities for successful business enterprise and public sector programs. From Moscow to Micronesia and beyond, KnowledgeWell helps these communities to become more self-sufficient, increase their visibility in the global marketplace and create awareness of sustainable, environmentally friendly business practices.

When Kirk Rightmyer, a civil engineer with Carolina CAD Solutions, Inc., first learned about KnowledgeWell, a nonprofit that delivers business expertise to emerging parts of the world, he was impressed. “As I learned more about the projects KnowledgeWell was working on, I decided it would be neat to join in,” Rightmyer says. So for the past decade, Rightmyer has volunteered on several KnowledgeWell missions, helping to bring U.S. business and engineering expertise to underserved areas. He says his work as a KnowledgeWell volunteer has been as important for him as it has been for the people in the communities he’s helped.

On one such mission, Rightmyer visited Pohnpei, Micronesia, an island in the Pacific Ocean located between Honolulu and Manila. The island’s landfill was completely full and local authorities were attempting to burn it, a long process that was causing severe air quality problems. The landfill was not designed to meet modern standards, and important steps, such as treating the water sources nearby, were overlooked. The island had a site available for a new landfill and a grant for GPS equipment, and Rightmyer was charged with training islanders to use the GPS equipment and help with topography work on the new site. “We were trying to fix an environmental need,” he says.

Solving the problem wasn’t without challenges. There was no road all the way to the new landfill site; workers had to pull themselves across a river on a Styrofoam raft to get there. Additionally, neighbors of the new site did not welcome the landfill and tried to make workers’ jobs difficult, removing markers left by topographic workers after hours. And of course, there were cultural differences: Rightmyer says he learned never to ask “yes or no” questions, as the Pohnpei natives would never answer “no” for fear of offending him.

However, Rightmyer overcame the challenges to train local workers and get the job done. He trained them to use Autodesk’s Civil 3D, which they used to do all the modeling work for the new site and compute volumes. Autodesk partners back in the States helped by completing a rendering of the new project, which local workers could use in their presentations to educate the neighbors and intergovernmental agencies about the project.

Rightmyer says one of his favorite memories of the trip was when a man in his training class, who he had met in North Carolina a year earlier, introduced Rightmyer to everyone there as his friend. “That was one of the best compliments I’ve ever been given,” Rightmyer says. “Once you win their confidence, everyone accepts you and is willing to ask questions and really try to learn from you. They were really a very smart group of people.”

After preparing the site for the new landfill and training local workers to use the GPS systems provided by Ashtech (a Trimble company), Rightmyer’s work was over. But the results of his time there will continue to have a positive impact on the people of Pohnpei for years to come. “As they relocate the burned trash from the old site to the new site and begin using the new site, air quality on the island will significantly improve,” Rightmyer says.

Because the old site is located right next to the airport, its smoldering remains and similarities to an auto junkyard have not been a welcome sight to island visitors or natives. Designed to modern standards with the help of Autodesk Civil3D, the new landfill will improve the local environment and allow the island to show off its beauty to visitors from the time they arrive on Pohnpei.

For Rightmyer, success stories like Pohnpei’s keep him coming back for more KnowledgeWell projects. In October, he’ll travel to Kosrae to participate in KnowledgeWell’s Leadership Forum.

www.knowledgewell.org

Read the other articles in this series:

• Experiencing the Power of BIM – Volunteering to Empower the Island of Guam
• Food for the Soul – A Little AEC Knowledge Shared goes a Long Way

1. Typing in cross streets to find a destination.  This is a great method for places where people tend to describe everything by cross streets.

2. Other than the default driving directions, you can get walking, bicycling, or public transit instructions by clicking on the icons at the top.

3. Need to make a quick stop or want to avoid a traffic accident? After you have used Google Maps to get directions to a destination, you can simply change the route by clicking and dragging any point along the route (on a computer only).

4. Want to avoid toll roads? Don’t we all!  Click on the ‘Show options’ link located below the destination address.  If you click on any Google map, you will see a multitude of shortcuts.

5. If you have a website or a blog and want to embed a map on it, you can click on the ‘Links’  icon at the top to get the embed code.  This also allows you to get a link to e-mail, post on a social site, or text message.

6. Create customized maps that will give you the ability to add text descriptors, embed video and photos on the map, and then share them publicly or publically by way of Google Earth.

7. Google gives you the ability to move location markers and edit the details. You can add a lot of details or offer specials on Google Places.  This capability is free too!

8. The ‘Pegman’ icon gives you the ability to use the street view of any map.  Street views are a really great tool for finding visual landmarks that can help you look for things in unfamiliar destinations.

9. ‘Mashups’ are where information from other resources are ‘mashed up’ with the maps.

Check out Google Maps: 100+ Best Tools and Mashups to learn more about Google Maps tools and mashups!

Acronym Headquarters as seen from Google Maps! (Google Maps)

Read the full article here: Power tips for Google Maps

Related Articles

Google Maps and Local Photographer Team to Visualize the Destruction in Joplin, MO
Google Earth and Google Maps – Going to Work for Public Good

This blog is part six in a series that discusses the challenges and process involved in implementing BIM at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, a project which saw the team win the 2011 [acronym] Magazine Public Sector CAD Award.

In my last post, Brian and I discussed the benefits we both experienced from implementing BIM at Ohio State’s Wexner Medical Center.  In this post, I will discuss some of the additional benefits we are expecting to see from our adoption of BIM along with some of our future plans for expansion.

Enhanced Planning Support

Utilizing the newly created models allows our Facility Planners a more robust and communicative method of planning for the future of the Medical Center from a space perspective.  The ability to more easily demonstrate vertical and horizontal adjacencies, along with comparing how space is currently being used to how it will be utilized in the future not only aids in understanding the implications of their plans, but helps communicate those plans to decision makers and customers throughout the Medical Center.

Improved Patient and Visitor Way finding

The building information models will also allow for a more realistic representation of our space. With such a large campus, way finding can be confusing to a new patient or visitor, but the ability for us to now create wall mounted maps with a three dimensional look and feel will certainly improve this effort.  One possibility is to create video walkthroughs using the BIMs that take a patient or visitor from a parking garage to their location, thus familiarizing them with space within the Medical Center and helping them visualize their personalized path to their destination prior to their arrival, helping to improve their overall experience.

Energy Analysis

With Sustainability being a clear goal of every new building and major renovation at Ohio State, we see BIM as yet another way to contribute to this effort. We’re always looking for ways to reduce the energy consumption in existing buildings and see BIM as a way for us to quickly extract the needed data for this analysis. Leveraging technologies such as Autodesk Green Building Studio and eQUEST will allow us to analyze different sustainability projects to determine which will provide the greatest return on investment.

Recruitment and Fundraising Tool

Building off the success of our initial project, using BIM to enhance the recognition of a donor, we’ve found that providing renderings of proposed lab or office spaces can also support the recruitment of new faculty, researchers, and staff.  These renderings can also be used during the process of fundraising to help a potential donor visualize how their recognition might actually appear in the space they are donating to.

Improved Asset Management

Following new construction or major renovations, there is typically significant work to get all the systems of the building into our preventative maintenance system.  If a BIM was provided at the close out of a project, this could potentially speed up that process and increase the accuracy, while also providing the basis for improved asset tracking by connecting to asset management systems.

Capacity Planning and Detour Effects

We are also currently looking into additional technologies that would allow us to analyze our BIMs for people and vehicle capacity analysis, to better understand the effects of a hallway being closed or a street being limited to one lane during a construction process.  This would allow us to better understand, ahead of time, how severe the effects of a closure are going to be, and better prepare for the negative effects of those detours.

Adding Additional Data to Models

As more and more of our internal customers see the value BIM can provide, they are asking for additional data to be added to our models beyond the already robust information defined in Phase 1.  Major building components such as fume hoods, accurate casework, major building systems, signage, and site information are all slated to be added to the models in the coming phases of the project.  These additions will provide a better foundation for the renovation visualizations and space planning decisions I discussed earlier.

In addition, we’ve purchased a Faro 3-D Laser Scanner in the summer of 2011 to aid in the collection of data.  Thus far, we have utilized it to improve the quality of our new model documentation as compared to our traditional AutoCAD drawings (in buildings were the AutoCAD drawings were especially inaccurate, or didn’t exist at all) and have scanned a space that had significant historical value to the University, but was undergoing a complete renovation.   In the future, we plan to use the scanner to rapidly model mechanical spaces in Revit and support the collection of highly accurate “behind-the-wall” conditions during the construction process improving our knowledge of the building once construction is complete.

Expanding the BIM Implementation to the Rest of the University

We are currently completing the transition of the last two buildings at the Medical Center to BIM and expect to be done by early summer.  A handful of our buildings have already moved on to Phase 2, which is the addition of fume hoods, some building equipment, catwalks, casework, furniture and basic plumbing fixtures.  But the end of the summer, we plan to have Phase 2 completed for all of our Medical Center buildings.

Recently my team has merged with a similar team at the University and I have been provided leadership of this combined group.  This has allowed us greater influence in the adoption and expansion of BIM across the University.  With this strong understanding of how BIM can aid the University as owners of our buildings, we are working with colleagues throughout Facilities at the University on moving towards BIM supported workflows in our construction process.

In addition, we want to begin making the transition to BIM for existing buildings for the rest of Ohio State.  Our transition efforts at the Medical Center included 53 buildings and 6 million square feet.  The rest of the University includes about 850 buildings and over 30 million additional square feet.  Obviously, our first goal will be to prioritize what buildings will see the most value in developing models for them.  Our collaboration with DesignGroup has had benefits to both our organizations, and we anticipate future possibilities in having DesignGroup continue to support the expansion of BIM across the University.

This project was successful through the excellent teamwork of the Facilities Information and Technology Services team consisting of Joe Porostosky, Dave Pifher, Tracy Palmer, Keri Ours, Okey Tolley, and Peter Pollock.  In addition, our core group of outstanding students who did the bulk of the work, included Sarah Bonser, Liz Schneider, Kyle Wright, Tony Nguyen, and Tyler Kvochick.  Our recent student additions of William Hoover, Cassandra Sampeur, and Tebebe Gebremedhim have accelerated work on Phase 2 of the project.

As we expand our use of BIM at the Medical Center and the University as a whole, and show the value of the models to our various customers, new uses are always being suggested.  We expect that the next couple of years will show the investment we’ve made in the transition to BIM for existing buildings was a wise investment that will pay back many times over.

About Joe Porostosky

Joe Porostosky is the Senior Manager of Facilities Information and Technology Services at The Ohio State University.  His background in technology management has provided a foundation for utilizing BIM to improve the speed and quality of decision making at OSU. Joe and the team at OSUMC were awarded first prize in the [acronym] Magazine Public Sector CAD Awards in 2011.

About Brian Skripac

Brian Skripac, Assoc. AIA, LEED AP BD+C, is the Director of Building Information Modeling (BIM) at DesignGroup in Columbus, Ohio. A recognized industry leader, he focuses on the integration of digital design technologies into all of the design processes, including sustainability and building lifecycle management. He is frequently solicited by institutions, as well as professional organizations to present his expertise on the value BIM brings to industry.

AutoCAD experts, Kate Morrical and Heidi Hewett, will be broadcasting live from San Francisco to share all the latest and greatest new features included in AutoCAD 2013.

Bring your questions for a chance to get answers during the Q&A.

If you missed the event, check out the AutoCAD Facebook page for an archive of the Facecast.

This blog is part five in a series that discusses the challenges and process involved in implementing BIM at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, a project which saw the team win the 2011 [acronym] Magazine Public Sector CAD Award.

As our BIM Implementation Project progressed both Joe and I found this process to be mutually beneficial in many different ways. While there were both extremely positive and some unexpected outcomes, this effort allowed us to capture knowledge and insight that we weren’t initially expecting. In addition, we’ve both been excited to see the industry’s response to the project.

DesignGroup Benefits – New Perspectives and “On-the-Ground” Insights (Brian Skripac, Director of BIM, DesignGroup)

From a technology perspective, working with Joe on this project allowed me to share the more than six years of experience I’ve had with the Revit Architecture and BIM related processes in general. Sharing these experiences did not always match up with the way the Medical Center needed to work which provided a challenge in taking these past experiences and defining the best practices that would most benefit this project and the desired outcomes. Being able to take a step back from how you work and accomplish daily tasks proved to be a unique opportunity for me to think critically and strategically about how to optimize new design and documentation processes. While this effort was focused on the needs of Joe and his team it has enabled me to take those new perspectives and effectively apply them to unique challenges that come up regularly on projects.

Another extremely beneficial outcome of this project was being able to gain a unique insight to how our clients are actually using the design documentation that we as architects provide the building owner, once construction is complete. The ability to see what information is most critical for their daily activities and how they apply those items during the operations and maintenance, and lifecycle planning of their facilities proved to be extremely informative. This not only enabled us to think about how we can expand the usefulness of our project deliverables to a long standing client like The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, but how we can work to educate all of our clients on the opportunities they have to leverage these building information models to their advantage.

Medical Center Benefits – BIM-Powered Decision Making (Joe Porostosky, Senior Manager of Facilities Information and Technology Services at The Ohio State University)

As discussed in the previous posts, the Medical Center found great value in partnering with DesignGroup for this transition to BIM.  The expertise they brought to the team would not have been able to be gained easily in any other way.  Beyond that, the Medical Center has found a number of beneficial outcomes from our transition to BIM, which all revolve around the idea of helping our staff, and faculty, and to a lesser extent, patients and visitors, make better decisions faster.  We call it BIM-Powered Decision Making.

Renovation Decision Making

One of the first benefits we’ve seen is the ability to visualize several different renovation options for a given space.  Previous to BIM, customers would be provided several 2-D floor plans of a space and asked to decide which one they liked best.  While those of us who work in this industry every day might be able to visualize a space from a 2-D floor plan (Image 1), most of our customers cannot.  They would make their best guess, but would frequently not be completely satisfied once they saw the completed space.  During our BIM Implementation, in the summer of 2011, we had a new senior leader join the Medical Center.  Before arriving, she was sent several 3-D renderings of potential office layouts.  With these images available she was able to easily understand the space and formulate a decision on which option best met her needs (Image 2).

Image 1: 2-D Floor Plan

Image 2: 3-D rendering of potential office layouts

Funding Decision Making

Closely related to the above example, BIM is allowing the Medical Center to mock up spaces in great detail to inform the decision making process for future project funding.  Recently, the Medical Center was working to determine if we should invest in renovating the Emergency Department with all new finishes.  Since we already had a model of this building, we were able to quickly add the actual finishes to the space producing a visualization that was as close to accurate as possible.  Instead of using a traditional finish board and asking the decision makers to interpret what the space might look like, they were able to see renderings and a video walkthrough of how the space will appear, complete with accurate finishes and furniture (Image 3).

Image 3: Rendering and video walkthrough of Emergency Department

Donor Recognition Decisions

Visualizations of space is providing the ability to enhance our development process by providing prospective donors the ability to see how a space might look and how they will be recognized for their contribution.  During the summer, the Medical Center wanted to improve the exterior recognition for a major donor.  Utilizing our new developed models, it took little time to develop several signage options that the University Architect and the Department of Development could consider.  This allowed them to quickly make a decision about which signage looked best and provided the best visibility to visitors.  The installed product matches almost identically to the rendering, further reinforcing the value of BIM in decision making (Image 4).

Image 4: 3-D rendering allows for review of various signage options for building exterior.

Customer Decisions

While Columbus has a number of high quality health systems that compete with one another, our ability to develop renderings of renovation, new buildings, or new spaces is aiding our marketing efforts to the community as yet another way to advertise our services and differentiate our care.

Improved Accuracy

The effort to develop models for Medical Center buildings has also improved the accuracy of our building floor plans which was due to research into the original building documentation and field verifications.  In addition, our building models include data that our traditional 2-D AutoCAD plans do not, such as exteriors, roofs, window placement, ceilings, and heights contributing to the improved the accuracy and value of the models.

Extending the Educational Mission

As an academic medical center, education is one of our three primary pillars for existing.  The ability to hire a group of students and to partner with their education was a benefit to the Medical Center and to the students.  They received real world experience that their formal education cannot provide.  In addition, the skills and contacts they have received working on this project will differentiate them from others once they graduate from Ohio State.

In the next post, Joe will discuss the future expected benefits of the Building Information Models and how the project will be expanded going forward.

About Joe Porostosky

Joe Porostosky is the Senior Manager of Facilities Information and Technology Services at The Ohio State University.  His background in technology management has provided a foundation for utilizing BIM to improve the speed and quality of decision making at OSU. Joe and the team at OSUMC were awarded first prize in the [acronym] Magazine Public Sector CAD Awards in 2011.

About Brian Skripac

Brian Skripac, Assoc. AIA, LEED AP BD+C, is the Director of Building Information Modeling (BIM) at DesignGroup in Columbus, Ohio. A recognized industry leader, he focuses on the integration of digital design technologies into all of the design processes, including sustainability and building lifecycle management. He is frequently solicited by institutions, as well as professional organizations to present his expertise on the value BIM brings to industry.

This blog is part four in a series that discusses the challenges and process involved in implementing BIM at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, a project which saw the team win the 2011 [acronym] Magazine Public Sector CAD Award.

Phase 1: Big Bang Implementation

Following the all important completion of Phase 0, we were ready to kick off the actual work of developing Revit-based building information models from our AutoCAD floor plans.  In June of 2011, the implementation process started with two undergraduate architecture students and two graduate architecture students from the Knowlton School of Architecture, along with one undergraduate civil engineering student, all from The Ohio State University.  While their first week included on-site orientation, team building and a project overview, the students quickly became acclimated with the technology they would become expert at during a focused three day training session on Revit Architecture.

This highly customized training, led by Brian Skripac from DesignGroup, was a product of the Standards and Process Development effort and focused on the execution of the newly defined process map and workflow integrations to translate information from 2D to 3D. The students were not only taught how to use Revit Architecture but it was presented in a way that would mimic their everyday use of the software as they began to model the existing facilities. Another benefit to this effort was that the project team was exposed to the wealth of newly created content and “kicked the tires” on how well our processes worked. This allowed us to improve and refine our process to the benefit of the project as a whole. As the training concluded, the students were immediately assigned a building and began the process of developing their first model.

Phase 1 included the development of a basic BIM intended to capture the following elements:

• Basic Exterior Wall Construction
• Interior Walls & Cubicles
• Doors & Windows
• Basic Roofs
• Basic Plumbing Fixtures
• Columns & Column Grids
• Basic Floors & Ceilings
• Basic Stairs
• Rooms & Areas

Following the completion of the first set of models, Brian Skripac conducted a careful audit of each building and documented their adherence to the BIM standard which was presented back to the team as a whole. This allowed the students and full time staff to learn how to create the most accurate and useable models as they continued their work. In addition, this effort provided Tracy, as the BIM Coordinator, a roadmap to audit the rest of the models moving forward. As issues arose during this process, they were identified and the students were provided an opportunity to make the recommended modification and resubmit their models to be shared as a final version.

By the end of the summer, the students logged 2,750 hours, primarily engaged in the model development process.  Our calculated metrics indicated we should have been done with the bulk of modeling effort by this point, but we had only completed about 77% of our buildings, by space.

One of the several factors that increased the amount of time – to accomplish Phase 1, was the students desire to add more detail than we initially planned during Phase 1.  The result of this increased detail was more valuable models.  This affected several aspects of Phase 1:

• Instead of using basic windows, most of the BIMs included detailed window families.
• The exterior wall construction was accurately reflected, and almost all exterior facing wall details were visualized.
• A higher level of focus on accuracy than expected, meaning more time tracking down documentation and performing field verifications.

In addition, during the summer, several high impact projects were brought to our attention.  These projects required us to move students off their BIM development to focus on detailed modeling and renderings of both interior and exterior spaces.  While they slowed down our progress, they provided excellent opportunities for us to show the value and power of BIM to senior leadership, which will be described in future posts.

Lastly, we further developed the Revit files to make information more readily available to the masses who would not be using Revit every day. Additional prototypical and printable view, schedules and sheets were built in requiring more time to update all our models with these changes.  We also required the students to produce several renderings of their buildings to maintain on our online gallery of images, which can be found here.

Once the school year started, the conversion rate slowed down due to reduced hours from the students.  As of March 2012, all buildings have been started, and only two have work remaining (although they are our most challenging buildings).  Based on our current calculations, the development of the BIMs from our AutoCAD floor plans, to the level we developed them, took approximately 0.037 minutes/square foot.  If support staff (management of students, document collection, etc.) is taken into account, the development of the BIMs is closer to 0.055 minutes/square foot.

End User Training

Transitioning to BIM is not primarily a technical challenge, it is culture change.  To aid in the adoption of BIM across the Medical Center, DesignGroup was also tasked with developing and conducting a series of training sessions customized to the specific needs of our varying end user groups.  These training sessions were held at the end of the summer of 2011, when a number of models were available to use.  The hands-on training was broken down as follows:

• Engineering and Operations: A three day session covering how to navigate/interact with a Revit model and how to extract information from the model.
• Interior Designers and Space Planners: A four day session covering everything from scheduling to views to moving walls and placing families, along with how to create renderings and walkthroughs.
• Construction Managers: A half-day session on navigating DWF versions of the Revit model in Autodesk Design Review.
• Energy Engineering: A two day session on how to translate the existing Revit models as gbXML files for their use in tools like Autodesk Green Building Studio and eQUEST.

In the next post, we will cover how the Med Center has used the BIMs along with the value that DesignGroup has found in working with the Medical Center on this project.

About Joe Porostosky

Joe Porostosky is the Senior Manager of Facilities Information and Technology Services at The Ohio State University.  His background in technology management has provided a foundation for utilizing BIM to improve the speed and quality of decision making at OSU. Joe and the team at OSUMC were awarded first prize in the [acronym] Magazine Public Sector CAD Awards in 2011.

About Brian Skripac

Brian Skripac, Assoc. AIA, LEED AP BD+C, is the Director of Building Information Modeling (BIM) at DesignGroup in Columbus, Ohio. A recognized industry leader, he focuses on the integration of digital design technologies into all of the design processes, including sustainability and building lifecycle management. He is frequently solicited by institutions, as well as professional organizations to present his expertise on the value BIM brings to industry.

About this Blog Series:

This is the second in a series of blogs that shares the extraordinary and sometimes life-changing stories and experiences of a group of CAD, AEC, GIS and BIM experts who have chosen to share their knowledge with under-served communities and nations. These volunteers work hand-in-hand with KnowledgeWell, a non-profit organization whose goal is to transform the barriers faced by under-resourced nations into opportunities for successful business enterprise and public sector programs. From Guam to Palau and beyond, KnowledgeWell helps these communities to become more self-sufficient, increase their visibility in the global marketplace and create awareness of sustainable, environmentally friendly business practices.

If someone would have told me five years ago that one day I would be standing in Chamorro Village (on Guam) watching people dance to a ukulele-filled island version of “Achy Breaky Heart”, I would have given them a look of disbelief.  Although the song was quite an entertaining surprise, it was just one of many unexpected, yet wonderful, experiences that I would encounter on my trip to Guam with KnowledgeWell.

This volunteer excursion in 2010 was my first experience working with KnowledgeWell, and it definitely won’t be the last.  While there, I was given the opportunity to head several technology hands-on experiences for local Guam leaders, as well as a volunteer site project at the Port Authority of Guam.  My teammates were Las Vegas Valley Water District AM/FM/GIS Manager Jon Pickus and Parsons Brinckerhoff VP Rachel Arulraj. The KnowledgeWell Sustainable Solutions Series was entitled “BIM- Design and Operational Efficiencies.”  As experts, KnowledgeWell gave us an outline of what educational topics needed to be covered and then granted each team member the freedom to choose content that we felt would not only be relevant to, but excite the attendees as well.  Unlike standard training, the purpose of my sessions was to allow CEO’s, owners and government leaders to experience the power of BIM. I chose to introduce them to Navisworks Manage, a BIM collaboration software used for interference checking and construction sequencing produced by Autodesk.  This provided a great networking opportunity, and even led to these owners sending employees to attend my company’s for-profit training class that I led later that week.

It was exciting to share my technical knowledge face to face with professionals who have limited access to this knowledge.  On Guam, many people are still producing 2D work.  Exposing them to the ways that new technology can help their offices was very rewarding.  Accessibility to these new technologies in a rapidly-changing industry is something I think most of us take for granted.  I’ll never forget how appreciative the Guamanians were to have the opportunity to use the technology first-hand.  Furthermore, I am grateful that my employer, U.S. CAD, practices corporate social responsibility by supporting my volunteer experience.

BIM clash detection hands-on experience for owners and other leaders

Me with fellow volunteers and wonderful people, Rachel Arulraj and Jonathan Pickus

Fast-forward a few hours after a great event, and I’m sharing an amazing evening near Tumon Bay with a group of incredible people – volunteers Rachel Arulraj and Jonathan Pickus with his wife, and the KnowledgeWell crew.  Amongst great food, conversation, shopping at the Chamorro cultural market, and yes, to the tune of Achy-Breaky Heart, I had a blast and made new friends and colleagues while I was at it.  I have since kept in touch and see them at conferences.  Every time I do, I’m reminded of the wonderful experiences we shared on Guam.

Our Knowledge Well volunteer team of experts on the trolley into town

Happy Chamorro Village shoppers!

Lastly, of course, it’s great to travel to exciting places like Guam, a gorgeous island in the Pacific.  Although I was living in Hawaii at the time and had been snorkeling and diving to my heart’s desire, there was something unique and beautiful about the waters off of Guam (and Palau too, so I’ve heard).  One thing that a low exposure to technology and development has promised is an untouched, clear, healthy underwater environment.  It’s like seeing the ocean in High-Definition!  Now, with more rapid development, Guamanians must have a full understanding of new technologies which will allow a minimal impact on the environment. KnowledgeWell, in combination with experts like you, can deliver this for the people of Guam.

The next time I get an opportunity to volunteer with Knowledge Well, I will jump at the chance.   If you have an opportunity now, there’s just one question to ask yourself – why not?!

www.knowledgewell.org

Kristina Bollin | Technical Specialist
www.uscad.com

Related Articles

• Food for the Soul – A Little AEC Knowledge Shared goes a Long Way
• Improving Air Quality in Pohnpei – Volunteers and Civil 3D Fix an Environmental Need

This blog is part three in a series that discusses the challenges and process involved in implementing BIM at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, a project which saw the team win the 2011 [acronym] Magazine Public Sector CAD Award.

Phase 0: Standards and Process Development

As discussed in the previous post, Ohio State’s Wexner Medical Center senior leadership signed off on the “Big Bang” approach to converting all 6 million square feet of Medical Center space from a 2D CAD based process to an intelligent BIM managed process in November of 2010.  Starting in February of 2011, we began Phase 0 of our implementation plan, which included four primary objectives:

• Creation of the BIM Implementation Team
• Development of BIM Standards and Revit Templates
• Development of a process and workflow for model development
• Preparing for Phase 1 (Big Bang Conversion) kick off

The first step was to determine who would be responsible for what during this project – this included everything from a project champion, technical staff, BIM experts, and more.  The team eventually included:

• Brian Skripac:  Project Consultant from DesignGroup
• Joe Porostosky: Project Champion
• Dave Pifher: Technical and Process Lead
• Tracy Palmer: BIM Coordinator
• Okey Tolley and Peter Pollock: Project Support

As the BIM Coordinator,  it was determined that Tracy  would be responsible for the day to day supervision of the students, along with maintaining the on-going collaboration with Brian to provide management and development of the BIM standards.

Over the next couple of months, creating standards and templates was not just about rebuilding our AutoCAD content in Revit, but reinventing those systems and process to create a new and better way of doing things. This enabled Brian to guide the conversation and bring his past experiences and unique perspective to this part of the Medical Center’s BIM evolution and development of our BIM Standards.

There were also extensive conversations about what the appropriate level of detail for the models would be (for both now and in the future) to accomplish the outcomes we had defined for this project. This dialogue not only provided a structure for the content/standard development in this phase of the project, but also set a foundation for the process map and workflow integration that would be defined as well.

Knowing there is no easy way to move from AutoCAD to Revit, our collaboration with Brian allowed the team to clearly understand how the conversion process would occur.  This would include using the AutoCAD floor plans as an underlay in Revit for the team model on top of.  While this provided the floor plan information there was a significant amount of data needed to build a full 3D model that did not exist in the AutoCAD files, such as floors, ceilings, roofs, exteriors, and window, door and wall heights.

With this in mind, the last step in Phase 0 was to collect as much existing building information as possible to ensure the students could hit the ground running when they started in June of 2011.  For each of the 53 buildings we planned to construct models for, we would need to:

• Conduct a field verification to determine accuracy of the existing AutoCAD floor plans
• Collect supporting drawings such as: as-built plans, wall sections, building sections, elevations, etc.
• Photo document the building exterior and any of its unique features

As part of this implementation project it was our intent to have each of the building information models accurate within a 1% deviation from the actual conditions. Following our field verifications, only 7 buildings did not meet this standard as AutoCAD drawings, and would get additional attention during the next project phase.

Our estimates indicate that Phase 0 took approximately 1080 hours over about a 4 month period of time spread across five staff, with Tracy Palmer, as the BIM Coordinator, incurring the bulk of those hours.  Based on this, preparation time for the project was about 0.011 minutes per square foot.

The initial project preparation of Phase 0 proved to be critical to the success of the project, as significant and long lasting decisions were made that would have been difficult and painful to change once our implementation began. In addition, the Phase 0 work that was conducted significantly accelerated the students’ work in creating the building information models.

In the next post, I will cover the execution of the actual conversion process, along with our training program, and updated time metrics.

About Joe Porostosky

Joe Porostosky is the Senior Manager of Facilities Information and Technology Services at The Ohio State University.  His background in technology management has provided a foundation for utilizing BIM to improve the speed and quality of decision making at OSU. Joe and the team at OSUMC were awarded first prize in the [acronym] Magazine Public Sector CAD Awards in 2011.

About Brian Skripac

Brian Skripac, Assoc. AIA, LEED AP BD+C, is the Director of Building Information Modeling (BIM) at DesignGroup in Columbus, Ohio. A recognized industry leader, he focuses on the integration of digital design technologies into all of the design processes, including sustainability and building lifecycle management. He is frequently solicited by institutions, as well as professional organizations to present his expertise on the value BIM brings to industry.

This blog is part two in a series that discusses the challenges and process involved in implementing BIM at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, a project which saw the team win the 2011 [acronym] Magazine Public Sector CAD Award.

Partnership & Collaboration

As Joe discussed in the previous post, the Ohio State’s Wexner Medical Center had already reached a decision to adopt BIM in order to get more value out of its space data and transition from AutoCAD, but he now needed to better understand how to implement it. Having decided on Revit Architecture as an important foundation to their overall BIM initiatives, the team still needed to have a much deeper understanding of the technology and more importantly how it would integrate/redefine their existing team and processes.

The conversations that Joe and I began to have were driven from DesignGroup’s leadership with BIM through our early adoption of this technology in late 2005. As we’ve evolved into a 100% BIM environment, since the beginning of 2009, Joe had the assurance that we could successfully lead his team through their BIM implementation. Ultimately, the idea of partnership and collaboration became the cornerstone of our success and provided a mutually beneficial outcome for both of our organizations.

Project Definition

The first step to the implementation was defining the outcomes for the Medical Center, and making sure a solid plan was in place for Joe to present to senior leadership assuring that he would have the commitment of resources to accomplish this project. Understanding how they were going to use the model geometry was important, but equally important was knowing what additional data was needed in the models to optimize their use and met the wide range of uses and expectations for the team at the Medical Center.

In addition, we had lengthy conversations about how the internal team at the Medical Center would be structured. Who was going to take on the task of modeling the more than six million square feet of buildings? Would it be the Medical Center, DesignGroup, or both? Who would provide the needed internal technical leadership for this project and the larger ongoing BIM initiatives, and how could that person quickly get up to speed with the technology so they could provide the needed owner’s perspective to the on-going project development?

A key driver behind this discussion was to make sure we were reinforcing the larger educational mission of the Medical Center, and taking a “teach a man to fish” approach to the project. With this in mind we concluded that the best way to accomplish this project was to further educate the Medical Center team on the applications of BIM rather than doing the work and passing off a completed model for their use.

The final outcome was a decision to bring on a team of architectural and engineering students from The Ohio State University to learn how to develop these models, while providing a valuable real world, educational experience.

Multi-phased approach

These combined approaches proved invaluable as it allowed for a continuous dialog where shared experiences and desired outcomes allowed for a defined scope of work, schedule, and a well planned multi-phased approach to the overall BIM Implementation project. Part of determining the overall schedule was leveraging Michael Lindawan’s initial modeling experience with metrics that DesignGroup provided to identify how long it would actually take to complete the modeling effort of Phase 1 which became known as the “Big Bang Approach”. Joe and his team concluded that a modeling effort covering .025 minutes/sf would be a realistic expectation. Balancing this against a desire to have Phase 1 completed during the summer of 2011 meant the Medical Center would need to hire 5 full time students to meet the schedule.

• Phase 0
  • Standards & Template Development
  • Process Map and Workflow Integration
  • Best Practices & Consulting
• Phase 1
  • Implementation – “Big Bang Approach”
  • 54 Buildings – 6,012,540 square feet
  • Includes basic building information: exterior, walls, windows, doors, columns, etc.
  • Student and User Training
• Phases 2 and 3
  • Planned future detail to models.

The final result of our planning was a successfully presented implementation plan that senior leadership signed off on. This provided Joe the resources to build a team of 5 BIM Assistants, define an internal BIM leader within the FITS team, and begin to execute the multi-phase implementation seen above.

The initial phase of this project kicked off in the early part of 2011 and our next blog post will elaborate on the different phases and how they came together allowing the BIM Assistants to hit the ground running on the “Big Bang Approach” to delivering this project.

About Brian Skripac

Brian Skripac, Assoc. AIA, LEED AP BD+C, is the Director of Building Information Modeling (BIM) at DesignGroup in Columbus, Ohio. A recognized industry leader, he focuses on the integration of digital design technologies into all of the design processes, including sustainability and building lifecycle management. He is frequently solicited by institutions, as well as professional organizations to present his expertise on the value BIM brings to industry.

About Joe Porostosky

Joe Porostosky is the Senior Manager of Facilities Information and Technology Services at The Ohio State University.  His background in technology management has provided a foundation for utilizing BIM to improve the speed and quality of decision making at OSU. Joe and the team at OSUMC were awarded first prize in the [acronym] Magazine Public Sector CAD Awards in 2011.