In collaboration with [acronym] online, Joe Porostosky and Brian Skripac, have been invited to contribute a series of blog posts documenting the BIM Implementation Project at The Wexner Medical Center at The Ohio State University. This entry 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. To catch up on our earlier entries, see part one titled “How do you shift more than six million square feet of CAD information to a BIM process?” and part two titled “Implementing BIM at Ohio State’s Wexner Medical Center – The “Big Bang Approach.”

This post was originally posted on March 27, 2012 by Caron Beesley on the [acronym] online website.

By Joe Porostosky, Senior Manager of Facilities Information and Technology Services at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center and Brian Skripac, Assoc. AIA, LEED AP BD+C, Director of Building Information Modeling (BIM) with DesignGroup, Columbus, Ohio.

Phase 0: Standards and Process Development

As discussed in the previous post (update link to DG’s blog), 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.

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.

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.

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.

Visit part four of the series, “Executing the Big Bang BIM Implementation through Customized Processes, Training and a Unique Team Approach.”

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 Awardsin 2011.