DALLAS & SAN DIEGO — (BUSINESS WIRE) — June 16, 2015 — Balfour Beatty Construction has been honored with the buildingSMART Hong Kong International BIM Award 2015 in the “Best BIM Application in Education” project category. The awards program recognizes outstanding performance and project team excellence with the use of building information modeling (BIM) technology in problem solving, decision making, productivity, and operation management. buildingSMART is an international organization developing and maintaining open international standards for BIM.
buildingSMART recognized Balfour Beatty for the innovative use of BIM technology on a project at the University of San Diego (USD). As part of the university’s ongoing campus improvement program, it sought to reconfigure existing facilities in order to facilitate the expansion of its engineering school, the SHILEY-MARCOS School of Engineering. Taking place on a busy college campus with limited space for new systems, the objective was to efficiently complete the project with minimal interruption to student and faculty activities. To meet these challenges, the importance of leveraging virtual design and construction practices and BIM technology throughout the project was paramount.
“From an owner’s perspective, Balfour Beatty’s use of BIM technology and processes was very helpful in enabling all of the project’s stakeholders to better understand what the final project would ultimately look like,” said Tim Doudna, senior project manager, University of San Diego. “By leveraging BIM early in the process, we were able to identify potential clashes on the project ahead of time, which saved the university time and money. Based on our experience on this project, the University of San Diego will require all future projects to use BIM.”
The team made significant progress during the constructability review phase by implementing the BIM process, which saved valuable time by identifying potential design conflicts prior to construction. As a result, the Balfour Beatty team successfully developed collaborative relationships with the design and trade teams. BIM, and the collaborative approach it facilitates, enabled the project team to keep the client informed and engaged in decision-making in real-time, ultimately saving time and money.
To accommodate USD’s desire to relocate an existing facility into a smaller and more limited space, the collective project team, including design and trade partners, leveraged BIM to enable problem solving at multiple levels. The extremely tight spaces involved made the project quite complex, particularly as it related to installing new systems and connecting to existing ones. By leveraging BIM at the right stages of development, the team successfully overcame these complexities.
About Balfour Beatty Construction US
An industry leader for more than 80 years, Balfour Beatty Construction US provides general contracting, at-risk construction management, and design-build services for a wide variety of markets, serving clients in both the public and private sectors. The company is the U.S. subsidiary of London-based Balfour Beatty plc (LSE: BBY), a leading international infrastructure group that finances, develops, builds and maintains complex building programs focused on social and commercial buildings, power and utility systems, and transportation. Consistently ranked among the nation’s largest building contractors, Balfour Beatty Construction Services US has been cited as a Top 5 Domestic Building Contractor and Top 10 Green Builder by Engineering News-Record. To learn more, visit www.balfourbeattyus.com or look for BalfourBeattyUS on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
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